😟 A look at gloomy, dystopian Generation Z (Wayback Wednesday)
Our education system is failing younger Americans. But we can fix it.
✈ A quick note: I will be traveling over the next couple of weeks and will be posting a bit less than usual and perhaps a bit shorter than usual.
(This Wayback Wednesday piece orginally ran on July 24, 2023. Micro reads, below, are current.)
Whatever your opinion about the quality of American secondary and university education — and whether the subject matter is too politically biased to the left — you should be concerned with results from a new survey of 2,250 undergraduate students currently enrolled in four-year US colleges and universities.
The disturbing, Down Wing news: Far too many of them simply don’t understand the basic current state of human civilization and how our society works. While I am superoptimistic and hopeful about the future, these polling results reinfornce a pessimistic outlook.
Humanity is doing better than young people think
Let’s start with the results about the state of human civilization:
“Only 47 percent of students believe that based on what they have learned in college the world has gotten better in terms of extreme poverty, life expectancy, hunger, and literacy over the last 50 years.”
“The belief that the world has gotten worse or hasn’t changed over the last 50 years is shared by a majority of liberal, conservative, and independent students.”
“Based on what they have learned in college, 41 percent of students believe that life has gotten better in the U.S. over the last 50 years, considering life expectancy, income per person, and education level. 46 percent of students think it has gotten worse, and another 13 percent say it has not changed.”
“Liberal students (44 percent) are more likely to believe the U.S. has gotten better over the last 50 years in comparison to conservative (38 percent) and independent (35 percent) students. Interestingly, this is in reverse to our 2022 findings, where 51 percent of conservative students thought the U.S. had gotten better and 38 percent of liberal and 40 percent of independent students thought the U.S. had gotten better.”
While we can debate why America and the world have gotten better — of those who think it has, the plurality, 46 percent, credit “increased economic and political freedom rather than more government intervention” — the facts of its improvement as framed by the question are pretty indisputable. From the survey:
As shown in the figures above, college students do not have a very good understanding of human progress. There has been tremendous progress worldwide and in the U.S. over the last 50 years. Global extreme poverty has declined dramatically, with 43.6 percent of the world’s population living in extreme poverty in 1981 and less than 9 percent today. Global life expectancy has increased from 60 years in 1973 to more than 72 years today. World literacy rate was 67 percent in 1976 and 86 percent today). Despite this progress, only 47 percent of students think the world has improved over the last 50 years.
To those figures, I would add that a) between1980 and 2017, the share of people consuming less than the standard of living of the 1980 official government poverty level fell from 13.0 to 2.8 percent, b) middle-class incomes grew by a cumulative 59 percent from 1979 through 2019, c) between 1970 and 2021, US life expectancy rose by seven years, and d) and the college-educated share more than tripled over the same period.
Misunderstanding capitalism and socialism
The news isn’t much better when it comes to a basic understanding of our planet’s dominant socioeconomic system, capitalism.
“When presented with two different definitions of capitalism, 56 percent of students define capitalism as a system where property is privately owned, exchange is voluntary, and production and pricing of goods/services are determined by market forces (free market). 30 percent of students define capitalism as an economic system in which corporations utilize grants, special tax breaks, political connections, and special rules that favor them over competitors to earn profits (cronyism). 14 percent are unsure of the definition of capitalism.”
“Conservative students (69 percent) are more likely to define capitalism as free market capitalism in comparison to liberal (55 percent) or independent (45 percent) students. Liberal students (35 percent) are more likely to define capitalism as cronyism in comparison to independent (30 percent) or conservative (18 percent) students.”
“When presented with two different definitions of socialism, 44 percent of students define socialism as an economic system with active government involvement and policies that ensure an equitable distribution of resources (redistribution), while 35 percent define it as an economic system involving central planning and collective ownership of goods and property (central planning). 21 percent of students say they are not sure how to define socialism. “
“Students who have conservative political views (47 percent) are more likely to define socialism as central planning in comparison to independent (32 percent) and liberal (32 percent) students. Liberal students (52 percent) are more likely to define socialism as redistribution in comparison to independent (36 percent) and conservative (34 percent) students.”
Given the above definitional responses and previously noted negativity about the past — as well as only 10 percent of students saying college has given them a more positive view of capitalism, with 20 percent saying the same about socialism — none of the following is surprising to me:
Less than a quarter of students have a positive view of capitalism.
Less than a quarter of students believe that capitalism can help solve major challenges.
Slightly more students have a positive view of socialism than have a negative view.
Slightly more than one-third of students believe that socialism can help solve major challenges.
A quarter of students are optimistic about the future of the U.S.
Look, if you think the past half century hasn’t been great for Americans, and America is the leading capitalist nation, then why would you think the future would be bright for capitalist America (even if it became more “socialist”)?
It’s the opposite of the famous Thomas Babington Macaulay quote, “On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” In this case, it’s, “On what principle is it that with nothing but deterioration behind us, we are to expect nothing but improvement before us?”
If we misunderstand the past, how can we make smart decisions about how we move forward? Indeed, that misunderstanding seems to be breeding a strong sense of helplessness and nihilism among younger Americans. And our education system has plenty to apologize for if it can’t even manage to transmit some basic facts about our existence.
Of course, Hollywood and the news media also bear plenty of blame. In the case of the former, you have all manner of dystopian sci-fi to make us dread technological advances. In the case of the latter, it’s the lack of news coverage that contradicts the “late capitalism” narrative, from wage growth to social mobility to inequality. For example: Little media attention has been paid to a recent Congressional Budget Office report finding that although post-tax-and-transfer income inequality did rise by 7 percent from 1990 to 2019, all the increase occurred between 1990 and 2007. Since 2007, inequality has fallen by 5 percent.
Then there’s climate change. As I wrote last year:
According to a big weekend feature in The New York Times, “Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room,” there’s a growing field of climate psychologists who treat eco-anxiety. Early skepticism about the diagnosis, the NYT explains, is fading: “Though there is little empirical data on effective treatments, the field is expanding swiftly. The Climate Psychology Alliance provides an online directory of climate-aware therapists; the Good Grief Network, a peer support network modeled on 12-step addiction programs, has spawned more than 50 groups; professional certification programs in climate psychology have begun to appear.”
Much of the piece is devoted to telling the stories of eco-anxiety sufferers — perhaps triggered by an overly packaged item in a grocery store — who end up “doomscrolling” worrisome climate news or plunging down a rabbit hole of YouTube research. “Multi-day panic episodes” afflicted one person mentioned in the piece. Another, seeing the plastic toys and disposable diapers in her home, described her condition this way: “I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life.”
As you readers know, I unapologetically argue that warp-speed techno-capitalism is the key to a healthier, wealthier, and more resilient civilization. But for that to happen, Americans need to have at least a somewhat accurate view of both past and present if they are going to accept a world where rapid progress inherently entails uncomfortable disruption. I mean, how hard it is to send students to Our World in Data?
Let me again point out that conservative futurist Herman Kahn back in the early 1980s, right before his death, was working on a project to address, “the imbalance of unrelenting negativism” about the future of the world being taught in public schools with “more accurate and therefore more optimistic data” about energy, pollution, resources, population, food supplies, economics, and technology.” It’s a project needed now more than ever.
The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised
“If America is to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, take full advantage of emerging tech from generative AI to CRISPR to reusable rockets, and launch itself into a shining tomorrow, it must again become a fully risk-taking, future-oriented society. It’s time for America to embrace the future confidently, act boldly, and take that giant leap forward.” - James Pethokoukis
Micro Reads
▶ Business/ Economics
Market forces are not enough to halt climate change - FT Opinion
Diving Into Private Fixed Investmen - Richmond Fed
Building a Wall Around Science: The Effect of US-China Tensions on International Scientific Research - SSRN
Employer and Employee Responses to Generative AI: Early Evidence - SSRN
Policy Changes and Growth Slowdown: Assessing the Lost Decade of the Latin American Miracle - arXiv
▶ Policy/Politics
The Underground Network Sneaking Nvidia Chips Into China - WSJ
Multiple nations enact mysterious export controls on quantum computers - NS
▶ AI/Digital
▶ Clean Energy/Climate
Huge, Faltering Fusion Reactor Project Finally Completes Its Magnet System - Gizmodo
What Running Tide's demise means for carbon removal's future - Latitude Media
UK's ZEV Electric Vehicle Quotas Unsettle Automakers - Bberg Opinion
Nuclear Power in Australia Under Debate - IEEE Spectrum
Climate change is pushing up food prices — and worrying central banks - FT
Giant international fusion project is in big trouble - Science
▶ Robotics/AVs
▶ Space/Transportation
▶ Up Wing/Down Wing
‘Superintelligence,’ Ten Years On - Quillette
Great post, James. I will be sharing it as widely as I can.
I agree that the results are concerning. It made me ask another question: is the education system we went through responsible for our positive view of capitalism and technological advance? Or did we arrive at this view by some other means?
The survey about the definitions of capitalism and socialism is flawed. For capitalism the first definition mentions some of its characteristics and the second definition cites ways to game the system. For socialism the first definition mentions some of its characteristics and the second restates those characteristics using different words.