Just so I’m reading this correctly, young women are almost at the turning point to becoming more right wing as well, right? With what appears to be only a .01 or .02 difference from young men.
Sounds like the article should be more focusing on why everyone in the world except the boomers are feeling more despair and the young are rapidly trending towards “control”.
The problem, for the likes of Reuters (who is owned by the Thompson family, who are the richest people in Canada) that the problem is the very system that’s enriched them and people like them over the last fifty or so years.
They’d need to admit they were wrong in their desires to dismantle the post-WW2 New Deal era, and that while neoliberalism has worked out just dandy for them, it’s been a net loss for a lot of people and is only getting worse. And that admission would mean they’d have to make do with less. Not that they’d be poor, but they’d need to be less obscenely rich.
And because this is such a hard admission to make, and because neoliberal technocracy has been working great for them so far, they’ll nibble at the edges of the problem, maybe scapegoat a group or two, or fret about culture wars or indulge in the macroeconomic version of bikeshedding instead of dealing with the core issue.
Upton Sinclair was bang on with “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
For anyone who read to the end of the comment above, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is one of the most powerful books of the 20th century. It is credited with the formation of the FDA and the growth of labor movements throughout the United States. If you have not read it before, read it now.
He also ran as a socialist, and it was the first time in history when the Republicans and Democrats banded together publicly to defeat a 3rd party candidate. They didn’t care which of them won, as long as a socialist didn’t win. He still won something like 35% of the votes.
Note that the younger generations here (18-34) are primarily comprised of people who were not in that cohort the last time this survey was done. Only 18-24 from the first dot is still in that cohort.
Most of that cohort moved into the middle aged group already.
I don’t think you’re reading it correctly. Men 18-34 were the only group that trended towards the control axis compared to 2014. Both women and men 18-34 went much lower on the despair axis compared to 2014, but women still moved towards the freedom axis instead of the control axis.
Look at young women, they went from 3.69 to 3.70, a rapid slow down and only 0.02 point off from a complete reversal.
The next age of women went from 3.45 to 3.55, a much larger move to “freedom”, but they also barely grew despaired.
Young women are almost at the turning point of being more control oriented as well.
In a few more years young women will be more to the control side as well.
What’s alarming is that both young age groups have a massive increase in despair and both are trending towards control, with men leading the path by only a 0.02 difference.
If you extrapolate from that, it will be on the control side in short order. That is a trend, we can predict what will happen based on the observed changes.
You could also interpret those results as young women hitting a wall on how much towards freedom they will go. Every other group was much lower on the freedom scale, so they had more room to move.
I’m not sure I follow. Freedom is a huge issue for young American women, which is why we lean so much towards freedom on the scale. I would imagine the lack of hope would move young women to push for freedom, since a lot of this ‘control’ stuff involves controlling women. I think it’s just as likely if not more likely that the increase in despair didn’t change the political leanings because they are already so freedom leaning rather than the young women are a few bad days away from embracing fascism.
Went toward freedom in any amount of time, extrapolated to any other time, will still be in the same direction, aka toward freedom. The direction cannot change when you have two data points and linearly extrapolate
If they went up 0.1 in 10 years, if you extrapolate 10 more years, they’ll go up 0.1. If you extrapolate 5 years, they’ll go up 0.05. They’ll always go up at the rate of 0.1/10 years
Not if you look at the rate of change as well as the change. If it’s trending towards zero, it can be a curve rather than straight line. That can then trend negative.
Think of a car going fast, then applying the brakes. It slows down until it eventually stops.
Now think of a boat. It doesn’t have a brake. It has a reverse throttle. When you want to slow down, the motor goes backwards. When you hit zero, you start to then go backwards. That’s what they are extrapolating.
There’s only 2 points, not 3. You can’t look at the change of the change with only 2 points. For all we know, if they had done the survey in 2005, women would have been further towards freedom and moved towards control for 2014 and the change of the change would show they’re accelerating towards freedom.
Just so I’m reading this correctly, young women are almost at the turning point to becoming more right wing as well, right? With what appears to be only a .01 or .02 difference from young men.
Sounds like the article should be more focusing on why everyone in the world except the boomers are feeling more despair and the young are rapidly trending towards “control”.
The problem, for the likes of Reuters (who is owned by the Thompson family, who are the richest people in Canada) that the problem is the very system that’s enriched them and people like them over the last fifty or so years.
They’d need to admit they were wrong in their desires to dismantle the post-WW2 New Deal era, and that while neoliberalism has worked out just dandy for them, it’s been a net loss for a lot of people and is only getting worse. And that admission would mean they’d have to make do with less. Not that they’d be poor, but they’d need to be less obscenely rich.
And because this is such a hard admission to make, and because neoliberal technocracy has been working great for them so far, they’ll nibble at the edges of the problem, maybe scapegoat a group or two, or fret about culture wars or indulge in the macroeconomic version of bikeshedding instead of dealing with the core issue.
Upton Sinclair was bang on with “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
For anyone who read to the end of the comment above, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is one of the most powerful books of the 20th century. It is credited with the formation of the FDA and the growth of labor movements throughout the United States. If you have not read it before, read it now.
He also ran for governor of California and had significant popular support, but was ratfucked by Hollywood.
The United States would have been a very, very different country today if Sinclair and people like him had gotten traction.
He also ran as a socialist, and it was the first time in history when the Republicans and Democrats banded together publicly to defeat a 3rd party candidate. They didn’t care which of them won, as long as a socialist didn’t win. He still won something like 35% of the votes.
Note that the younger generations here (18-34) are primarily comprised of people who were not in that cohort the last time this survey was done. Only 18-24 from the first dot is still in that cohort.
Most of that cohort moved into the middle aged group already.
I don’t think you’re reading it correctly. Men 18-34 were the only group that trended towards the control axis compared to 2014. Both women and men 18-34 went much lower on the despair axis compared to 2014, but women still moved towards the freedom axis instead of the control axis.
I don’t think you read my post correctly.
Look at young women, they went from 3.69 to 3.70, a rapid slow down and only 0.02 point off from a complete reversal.
The next age of women went from 3.45 to 3.55, a much larger move to “freedom”, but they also barely grew despaired.
Young women are almost at the turning point of being more control oriented as well.
In a few more years young women will be more to the control side as well.
What’s alarming is that both young age groups have a massive increase in despair and both are trending towards control, with men leading the path by only a 0.02 difference.
‘Went towards freedom slower than other groups’ isn’t the same as ‘trending towards control’ 🤷♂️
Yes it bloody is.
If you extrapolate from that, it will be on the control side in short order. That is a trend, we can predict what will happen based on the observed changes.
You could also interpret those results as young women hitting a wall on how much towards freedom they will go. Every other group was much lower on the freedom scale, so they had more room to move.
. . . Because freedom is less of an issue for young American women these days eh?
I’m not sure I follow. Freedom is a huge issue for young American women, which is why we lean so much towards freedom on the scale. I would imagine the lack of hope would move young women to push for freedom, since a lot of this ‘control’ stuff involves controlling women. I think it’s just as likely if not more likely that the increase in despair didn’t change the political leanings because they are already so freedom leaning rather than the young women are a few bad days away from embracing fascism.
Thats not how extraplation works…
Went toward freedom in any amount of time, extrapolated to any other time, will still be in the same direction, aka toward freedom. The direction cannot change when you have two data points and linearly extrapolate
If they went up 0.1 in 10 years, if you extrapolate 10 more years, they’ll go up 0.1. If you extrapolate 5 years, they’ll go up 0.05. They’ll always go up at the rate of 0.1/10 years
Yup, zero similarity in the trajectory of both age/gender demographics.
Thats not extrapolation, that’s interpretation.
Not if you look at the rate of change as well as the change. If it’s trending towards zero, it can be a curve rather than straight line. That can then trend negative.
Think of a car going fast, then applying the brakes. It slows down until it eventually stops.
Now think of a boat. It doesn’t have a brake. It has a reverse throttle. When you want to slow down, the motor goes backwards. When you hit zero, you start to then go backwards. That’s what they are extrapolating.
There’s only 2 points, not 3. You can’t look at the change of the change with only 2 points. For all we know, if they had done the survey in 2005, women would have been further towards freedom and moved towards control for 2014 and the change of the change would show they’re accelerating towards freedom.
Yes, I agree. However, looking at other similar data could lead to that conclusion. I don’t necessarily agree, but its not that left field.
I was even simplifying as in didn’t want to look at juatbthebrate of change but also the difference between positive and negative values.