Podcast Club ONLINE: Why Are Young People Embracing Socialism and Mamdani?

This week's podcast is Honestly, with host Bari Weiss and guests Tyler Cowen and Kyla Scanlon. Cowen is an economist, writer, and professor of economics at George Mason University. He is general director of George Mason's Mercatus Center, a university research center focused on the market economy. Cowen is the author of numerous books and articles, was a regular columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, and has written for many high-profile publications. In a 2011 poll of experts by The Economist, Cowen was in the top 36 nominations for most-influential economist in the past decade. Scanlon, age 28, is a financial content creator, economic commentator, educator, and author of the book In This Economy?: How Money and Markets Really Work. She is also the founder of Bread, a financial education company.

PLEASE NOTE: We require that attendees listen to the podcast below before attending the meeting to optimize discussion.

https://www.thefp.com/p/why-young-people-are-voting-to-burn

or

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415?i=1000717313256

(58 min.)

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What's this podcast about?
This week's podcast examines why young people in America seem to be embracing socialism, as evidenced by polling and the definitive victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
Mamdani has called for rent freezes, free buses, and even government-run grocery stores. He won 56% of the vote in a campaign fueled by young, highly educated, wealthy people—many of whom believe in reviving socialism. According to a Cato Institute poll from May, 62% of Americans age 18 to 29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism. And 34% had a positive view of communism. Polls by Emerson and Marist from May and June had shown Mamdani leading with voters under 45 by as much as a 2:1 ratio against Andrew Cuomo. This all has left many people wondering: Why are so many young people embracing a failed economic system? Is it their university education? Is it the influence of social media? Is it just “cool”? Is it a desperate call for anything to fix wealth inequality? Or is it something else? This week's podcast looks at these questions and goes further in trying to understand where we are politically headed as a country.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3682869318?pwd=SC80SzI1S3JkeW1pbGhzcTNVQWVmdz09. Password for event might be W5hDy7

What's a podcast club?
It's like a book club for podcasts. Each week we discuss an interesting and currently-relevant episode from podcasters like Ezra Klein, Michael Shermer, or Russ Roberts. We start off as a large group and spend most of the time talking in small break-out groups, which we remix 3 times over the course of the evening. Our conversations are casual and open. We ask that everyone speak respectfully at all times, and we encourage free and concise discussion relevant to the week's podcast topic. To do this, we try to adhere to Grice's Maxims: https://bit.ly/2p4uSQm

Ultimately, the idea is to help each other think a little differently, learn a thing or two and have some fun.