Why Younger Voters Don’t Vote As Much

Anyways why I think they don’t vote as much.

I think mostly people younger people don’t vote because older people are going off a memory of when government was less corrupted by big money lobbyists and government actually directed public resources to education and healthcare and the public good. Like when we rescued the world from fascism in Germany and Japan, or created Medicare and put men on the Moon.

That stuff was always in the minds of the WWII generation and baby boomers born after those folks came back from or survived the war.

So they vote because its part of paying back our country for the privilege of being here and so we can honor those who sacrificed everything for us.

But many of those who came later took that stuff for granted and grew up after Ronald Reagan said “Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” They grew up with forty years o the money and resources that should have gone to healthcare, public education, science and transportation instead going to the wealthiest few and giant corporations who dodge taxes.

They grew up during a time after the forties and fifties when the American median wage just stopped increasing and in a time Americans had virtually zero upward mobility. So they say why should we vote, nothing ever really gets better for us!

Things can get better. But they can also get worse if all of us including younger voters fail to show up as participating citizens to stake out their place in the roles of voters. They can get lots worse.

That’s what I’ve seen and experienced.

I bet if our nation invested in and created tuition free four year college to build a new American middle class and created Medicare For All so nobody goes without healthcare or goes broke because they get sick, I bet an entire new generation of Americans would become proud habitual voters for life. And who knows, maybe one or two of those new college grads will end up finding a cure for Alzheimer or cancer or some new world changing technology we can’t even imagine right now.