That’s an extraordinary reversal and simply telling young Americans that socialism doesn’t work won’t reverse it. To make the case for free markets, we first have to understand why socialism is appealing to so many young Americans.
Consider the Democratic Socialists of America have become a visible political force appealing far beyond the extreme left. In 2024, DSA offered donors a limited-edition membership card and encouraged them to count themselves as a “card-carrying Socialist.” What was once a label politicians ran from has become an identity activists proudly advertise.
Education may be part of the equation. Many young American students have encountered one-sided critiques of American institutions, capitalism and traditional ideas in high school and college. PRI’s Lance Izumi has documented one-sided classroom instruction, critical race theory and other ideological approaches that teach students to view society through systemic racism, equity, identity and oppression. DSA speaks a language many students have already heard. Its own materials tie capitalism to racial, gender, class and sexual oppression and offer socialism as the answer.
Ideology alone does not explain socialism’s growing appeal. Vice President JD Vance recently made a point that free-market advocates should not ignore. He told Fox News that young Americans who can’t afford a home, start a family, get an education or find a good job have legitimate grievances. “You don’t stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market,” he said. “You stop socialism by making people’s lives better.”
Start with housing. Pew Research Center found that between 2019 and 2024, inflation-adjusted median home values rose 30% while incomes for households headed by Americans under 40 rose just 9%. In 2019, 56% of renters under 40 earned enough to afford the estimated monthly costs of owning a home. By 2024, that figure had fallen to 37%. Nearly nine in ten Americans under 40 said buying a home was harder for their generation than it was for their parents. The National Association of Realtors’ 2025 survey found that the median first-time buyer had reached a record age of 40, while first-time buyers accounted for a record-low 21% of buyers.
The problem extends beyond housing. For years, young Americans have heard the same formula: go to college, get a degree and land a good job. Too many employers require four-year degrees for jobs that could be learned through experience, apprenticeships or employer training, shifting more of the cost of preparing workers onto young Americans themselves. Yet the New York Federal Reserve reports that 41.5% of recent college graduates were underemployed at the beginning of 2026, while outstanding student loan debt stands at $1.66 trillion.
A 2021 DSA member survey found that more than 80% of members age 25 or older held bachelor’s degrees, while 45% of respondents lived in households earning less than $60,000. College should not be a barrier to the American Dream, nor should higher education be reduced to expensive job training. Apprenticeships, skilled trades and technical education can offer other routes into productive careers, while universities should expose students to history, philosophy and competing ideas about how people should live and govern themselves.
DSA’s own program offers a different answer. It calls for universal rent control, publicly owned social housing, cancellation of student debt and “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.” Housing, debt and economic insecurity are real problems. Giving government more control over the economy will not make Americans more economically independent.
A growing, competitive economy should offer many paths to the middle class. Lower barriers to entrepreneurship, investment, and job creation would give businesses greater incentives to hire and train workers with a wide range of skills. That gives more Americans the opportunity to earn, save, invest, and eventually own property, without making a bachelor’s degree the price of admission to a middle-class life.
Young Americans are not wrong that the path to a middle-class life has gotten harder. They are wrong to believe socialism will fix it. The free-market answer is to remove the rising barriers to build homes, start businesses, create jobs and invest in the future. A generation that increasingly believes it will never own anything will be easier to persuade that private ownership is not worth defending. The answer to economic insecurity is not more government control, but greater opportunity to earn, save, invest, and own.
Anthony Velasquez, MBA, is Pacific Research Institute’s Communications Specialist.
