What do Gen-Z socialists really want? | The Economist

The quintessential policies of Gen-Z socialists are things like wealth taxes, things like price controls on rents, caps on grocery prices, and so on All of those you can absolutely find precedents in prior waves of socialist thought What separates these, we'd argue is it's a bit more of what you almost call a “selfish socialism” It's very “me first”, it’s very “what can be done for me to lower my rent now”, rather than a broad collectivist notion that everyone should chip in And one of the ways you see that is on taxation, for instance, where they're very, very keen on wealth taxes, very keen on taxing billionaires, not so keen on taxing really anyone else And so even if you go back a decade, let's say look at Bernie Sanders, AOC in America, for instance, they're pretty happy with just a higher tax rate across society Nowadays, it's no taxes or certainly no tax rises for you, maybe even tax cuts for most people Don't worry, we can get all the money from billionaires That's a very different message That's really interesting So it's the sense that the system is rigged But rather than a kind of revolutionary, completely overhaul the system, we just want to make sure that money is taken... Yes, it's rigged so give it to me now Give us a sense of what are the main tenets of their social policies It’s a grab bag of traditional leftie, liberal ideas around LGBT rights and pro-immigration policy But I think one thing that really sets them apart is how much they've seized on Gaza as their defining issue So a lot of them talk constantly about the war in Gaza and their own country’s, what they would call, “complicity” in it And I think that does motivate a lot of young people So I was looking at some data this week It’s not something that many voters say is their top issue But if you dig into the voters who say they really care about it or they care about Palestine, they have also moved left on all these other issues So I think for people in particular like Zack Polanski, it's a kind of way in where you introduce yourself to a certain type of young voter who's really passionate about Palestine, and then you take them into the economic arguments or onto other social policies