I visited one of my oldest friends this past December. As a “geriatric” millennial pushing 40, it was jarring for me to realize I’ve known this man for 21 years, since we were freshmen in college, cheerfully predicting capitalism’s imminent demise in our dorm rooms. He was the friend who introduced me, in 2001, to the ideas of a firebrand socialist from his home state of Vermont named Bernie Sanders. He told me Bernie was going to do big things in the future.
We were, of course, wrong about capitalism. It’s going strong. But we aren’t alone, as millennials, in our ambivalence about an economic system that seems to have failed our generation at every turn, leaving us despairing about our prospects for home ownership and retirement, and facing down an increasingly undeniable environmental disaster.
