When you get what you want, you find out it’s not what you need. That is what Millennials are experiencing right now as the liberal program they voted for in 2008 and 2012 is being implemented.
Back in 2008 Candidate Obama’s gauzy promises sounded so poignant and charismatic, as he read them off his carefully placed teleprompters, traveling from university to university. Obama would continue his famous plea for hope and change, compassionately explaining and stressing to the electorally powerful millennial generation, that reforming healthcare was the defining issue of our time. A healthcare system that was affordable to all and didn’t leave patients financially bankrupted when receiving the care they needed.
Millennials were promised reform and intense regulation of the financial institutions as well, so that another catastrophic ‘Republican-fueled’ recession would never happen again. Obama implored, “we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.” They were promised a trillion dollar stimulus to get them back to work, not to mention millions of “shovel ready” jobs. Younger Millennials, in or on their way to college, were promised affordable education that would not send them into decades of mountainous student loan debt.
President Obama ended his 2008 victory speech by saying, “This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”
All of these magically inspired words painted the rosiest of pictures of liberal ideology; a utopia of free healthcare, free birth control, no gun violence, no more greedy mean rich people, affordable education, and a Prius for all. Sadly, reality has arrived in America and it has millennials saying, “Dude, I didn’t sign up for this!”
Millennials are now seeing an America they cannot thrive in. The trillion-dollar stimulus and out of control government spending ushered in by liberal politicians produced few shovel ready jobs, while leaving per capita debt at $52,948. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2013 labor force participation rate of those in their twenties has hit the lowest level on record since 1981. Furthermore, since President Obama took office the number of twentysomethings who were not in the labor force in an average month climbed from 8,756,000 to 10,511,00, an increase of 20-percent. It is now the highest ever recorded.
Youth unemployment is at a staggering 15.8 percent and 1.7 million young adults have given up looking for work, according the Department of Labor. And the average millennial graduating college is sent on his or her way with $30,000 in student loan debt, the highest in American history. Didn’t Obama say this is the time we put Americans back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids? If this is the definition of liberal opportunity, we should have stuck with Bush.
Now, that glowing picture of free healthcare has turned into a disaster that millennials neither want nor can afford. An analysis by NerdWallet says the average millennial that enrolls into the exchanges will spend five times more a year out of pocket on healthcare than those who forgo insurance and take the penalty. Whatever happened to the promised liberal utopia of free birth control and affordable healthcare?
In 2009, before Obamacare and the aftermath of the president’s ambitious first two years, nearly 50-percent of millennials viewed Democrats favorably. Now, that number has dropped to a staggering 36-percent. Furthermore, over half of millennials disapprove of the president job performance, up from 38-percent prior to his 2012 reelection. The unpopularity of liberalism in America has not only affected the beltway politicians but also presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton. The Democratic frontrunner enjoyed a comfy 60-percent approval rating from millennials in 2009, but today that has fallen to 42-percent in a recent poll by the Wall Street Journal.
Also, the recent scandals of the IRS targeting conservatives, the NSA spying on Americans, and Healthcare.gov security issues now have only 29-percent of millennials trusting the government to do the right thing most of the time. This number is down from 44-percent just before President Obama took office in 2009.
Liberalism in America has caused the youth misery index, which figures in youth unemployment, average graduating student-loan debt, and the national per-capita debt, to reach a record high of 98.6.
Millennials who once laid down at night to dream of the paradise President Obama painted are wishing they could have seen the real future he would bring to their generation. A future of high unemployment, high student loan debt, unabashed infringement of their 4th amendment rights, and a worsening and unaffordable healthcare system.
