Education system produces anti-capitalist millennials, by Tom Switzer.

According to a Centre for Independent Studies/YouGov poll, 58 per cent of Australian millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — have a favourable view of socialism, with only 18 per cent having an unfavourable one. They believe government should have more control of the economy.

However — proving Cicero’s point that “to be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain a child” — only 21 per cent of those questioned said they knew well who Mao Zedong was and 51 per cent said they knew nothing of him at all. Just 26 per cent were familiar with Vladimir Lenin and 34 per cent with Joseph Stalin.

It is perhaps a sign of grace that the older these millennials are, the more sceptical they become about the socialist dream: 64 per cent of the youngest support socialism against only 51 per cent of the oldest. Perhaps there is a chance that they will, eventually, grow up.

However, their support for socialism is only half the story. On, it seems, evidence as flimsy as that on which they base their enthusiasm for the left, millennials also revile capitalism. Almost 60 per cent believe it has failed. …

That 62 per cent of millennials believe Australian workers are worse off today than 40 years ago is in direct contradiction of all available economic evidence: from the mid-1980s to about 2012, the country experienced the biggest national income boom since the gold rushes; and our economy is in its 27th consecutive year of economic growth, surpassing The Netherlands for the gold medal for the longest economic expansion in the modern era. …

While the wickedness of Mao, Lenin and Stalin is unknown to these youthful idealists, they are well schooled about the wickedness of the extreme right: 73 per cent of them are well aware of Adolf Hitler and his iniquities.

hat-tip Stephen Neil