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Do 20- and 30-somethings prefer a womb-to-tomb quasi-communist corporate culture like Japan, or do they prefer a less secure, more competitive, corporate culture of modern America? There was a time when Americans worked for a ...

o I got a sort of a shock today when I started playing with the Kaiser Family Foundation's subsidy calculator. I had it at the back of my mind that a single young freelance writer living in California, Washington, or New York, and making $32,000 a year, would qualify for insurance at a basically nominal cost. (The profession doesn't matter so much, but for obvious reasons, this is a type that I'm particularly familiar with.) It turns out that this person will qualify for a subsidy of about $213 a year, based on an expected "Silver Plan" (the medium coverage...

On Friday, President Obama will once more revive one of his ol’ campaign-favorite memes and remind college-age and younger voters of what it is exactly the Democrats can do for them — besides, you know, engendering a sluggish economy with a youth unemployment rate of sixteen percent, but I digress. On the campaign trail last summer, the president spoke to younger crowds about preventing the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans from doubling to 6.8 percent as a way of boosting the economy, and Congress sent up a one-year extension of of the 3.4 percent rate for him to...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about conservative groups’ college-aged interns, prompting outrage from one of the country’s top conservative activist organizations and leading one former intern to wonder whether his family’s pizza parlor would be endangered. The IRS requested, in an audit, the names of the conservative Leadership Institute’s 2008 interns, as well as specific information about their internship work and where the interns were employed in 2012, according to a document request the IRS sent to the Leadership Institute, dated February 14, 2012. The IRS requested: “Copies of applications for internships and summer programs; to include: lists...

According to recent polls, younger Americans are increasingly disillusioned with government and cynical about the political process. Maybe they will finally realize that they are being played for patsies by the Obama administration. After all, on issue after issue, President Obama has fed younger voters a steady diet of high-minded rhetoric and then delivered policies that leave them holding the bag. The most recent example is Obamacare. For one, in order for the president’s health-care law to work properly, large numbers of young people will have to buy insurance. Those young and healthy individuals, with their low claims costs, are...

Markets work. But sometimes they take time. That's the uncomfortable lesson that proprietors of America's colleges and universities are learning. For many years, market forces didn't seem to apply to them. There was a widespread societal consensus that a college education was a good economic investment. Politicians gave lip service to the idea that everyone should go to college. No one should be stopped by a lack of money. There was historic precedent. The G.I. Bill of Rights vastly expanded college populations and helped build prosperous post-World War II America. Putting even more through college would make us even more...

In a survey launched by Young America's Foundation and conducted by the polling company, Kellyanne Conway, Inc., more than 60 percent of college-age students feel that government should not take an active role in their day-to-day-lives, and half of respondents believe that the federal government is mostly hurting economic recovery. If history teaches us anything, a lower tax rate, less spending, and less regulation is the recipe for success. When President Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act in 1981, 20 million jobs were created, inflation plummeted, and net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 increased by nearly...

(snip) "The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government," he went on, "the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone." And what "big and important things" cannot be done except through government? On the president's list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans "chose to do these things together," he added, "because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition."Notice...

Former President Bill Clinton said in Los Angeles his daughter, Chelsea, helped make him more sympathetic to the cause of civil rights for homosexuals. Speaking at a gala for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Clinton said the former first daughter has some homosexual friends and together they reminded him that all people should be treated equally.

I can't help but think that many of the *idealist* (dopey) young people who voted for Obama must be getting the shock of their young lives. Many college students who voted for Obama were only children when 9/11 happened, it may not have been real to them but THIS is their 9/11, they will not forget it. The massive coverage that the Boston Marathon bombing has had has penetrated their little air-head experience of tweeting, social media and celebrities. Maybe they will be more grown up and sober people next time they vote.

We all know them, the kids who were raised in church. They were stars of the youth group. They maybe even sang in the praise band or led worship. And then… they graduate from High School and they leave church. What happened? It seems to happen so often that I wanted to do some digging; To talk to these kids and get some honest answers. I work in a major college town with a large number of 20-somethings. Nearly all of them were raised in very typical evangelical churches. Nearly all of them have left the church with no intention...

Today's young evangelical Christians, or "millennial" evangelicals, are too influenced by the culture and do not practice deep thinking, or a "life of the mind," several young evangelical leaders argued at a Monday panel hosted by The Institute on Religion & Democracy. Millennial evangelicals are too influenced by "Oprah-doxy" rather than orthodoxy, Eric Teetsel, director of The Manhattan Declaration, complained. "Orthodoxy," Teetsel said, "requires the cultivation of what my professors at Wheaton called the 'life of the mind.' When considering an issue, orthodoxy lays out first principles and are non-negotiable truths, with the Bible as a touchstone, creating a framework...

The Department of Labor estimates that some three million Americans with Bachelor degrees work in jobs that don’t require an education at all–janitors, barristas, bartenders and retail clerks.There are a lot of obvious reasons why junior is now living in your basement at age 25.

Unless you’re under 40.Today,those in Gen X and Gen Y have accumulated less wealth than their parents did at that age over a quartercentury ago.Their average wealth in 2010 was 7 percent below that of thosein their 20s and 30s in 1983. Even before the Great Recession, younger Americans were on a strikingly different trajectory. Now, stagnant wages, diminishing job opportunities, and lost home values may be merging to paint a vastly different future for Gen X and Gen Y. Despite their relative youth, they may not be able to make up thelost ground. If these generations cannot accumulate wealth,...

High school dropouts are costing some $1.8 billion in lost tax revenue every year, education advocates said in a report released Monday. If states were to increase their graduation rates, state and federal lawmakers could be plugging their budgets with workers’ taxes instead of furloughing teachers, closing drivers-license offices and cutting unemployment benefits. While advocates tend to focus on the moral argument that all children deserve a quality education, they could just as easily look at budgets’ bottom lines. … Lawmakers in state capitols are making tough choices about whether to raise taxes to keep classroom lights on or to...

Those looking for a reason for sluggish housing, weak retail sales, and low family formations rates, need only look at the plight of millennials (those aged 18-33). Many millennials have no job, high student debt with no way to pay the debt off, and few job opportunities beyond part-time employment in food services or retail. Millennials are the ones who Obama targeted to pay for Obamacare. Indeed, the forced inclusion of youth (who will overpay for health care) is supposedly what made Obamacare "affordable". Yet, even with the screw job on youth, the "Affordable Health Care Act" is so unaffordable...

In the past few years, the number of affiliated student secular organizations has increased more than threefold This month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a select group of students will show their humanitarian spirit by participating in the Bleedin’ Heathens Blood Drive. On February 12, they will eat cake to celebrate Darwin Day, and earlier this year, they performed “de-baptism” ceremonies to celebrate Blasphemy Day, attended a War on Christmas Party, and set up Hug An Atheist and Ask An Atheist booths in the campus quad. These activities and more are organized by the Illini Secular Student Alliance...

Young Americans are faced with joblessness, skyrocketing school loans, and burdensome entitlement programs. Now, health care prices will be rising considerably, threatening “rate shock” on America’s consumers. Aetna is “cautioning that premiums for plans sold to individuals could rise as much as 50 percent on average and could more than double for particular groups such as the young and healthy,” according to the Washington Post’s N.C. Aizenman. For Aizenman, the question is not whether these hikes are justified, but whether young consumers will skip health insurance entirely–and take the penalty instead. “Most of the new rules that could push up...

A comprehensive new Harvard University report on Americans under 30, the so-called Millennials, shows that the economy is having a crushing impact, with just 62 percent working, and of those, half are toiling at part-time jobs. The report, released by Harvard's Institute of Politics, paints a depressing economic portrait of young Americans, many of whom are stuck with huge college tuition bills and little chance of finding a high-paying job...... Contrary to common media wisdom, most younger Americans did not vote in the last election. Of the 46 million Millennials, just half voted. "Although turnout was higher than it was...

HUNTINGTON, WV, February 4, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Planned Parenthood is not only facing an uphill battle in state legislatures seeking to deprive the organization of taxpayer dollars, it is also receiving a distinctly chilly welcome at some university campuses. "So many people rejected us. They acted grossed out. They didn't want to talk about it at all," said Jordan Bean, a leader of Vox, the college chapter of Planned Parenthood. Bean handed out condoms at Marshall University, where she is a senior, but said she had few takers. “We get a lot of backlash on campus, and people approach us...

EDITORIAL: ‘Assault weapons’ are popular with the young. Are gamers key? In a recent Reason-Rupe poll a slim majority of American supported the private ownership of “assault weapons” (51 percent in favor, 44 opposed) and a slightly larger majority of Americans believe that the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is being exploited for political means (52 percent see it as politicking, 41 as responsible governing). But there were some other findings that are sure to surprise many people, especially politicians. Specifically that age, not politics, has a greater bearing on whether or not a person has the right to...

Young people walk with a banner past the U.S. Capitol during the annual March for Life in Washington Jan. 25. The pro-life demonstration marks the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion across the nation. (CNS photo/Bob Roller) (Jan. 25, 2012) WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the beginning, Nellie Gray imagined there would be a need for one march for life. It was a year after the Roe v Wade decision, and there was perhaps just enough outrage that people felt a legislative remedy could be attained. “But then we realized that Congress wasn’t going to help,...

A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing. Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years. This data is not unexpected. I have been writing a great deal over the past few years...

A music theater student has won a stalking order against her parents who admitted they installed monitoring software on her computer and phone to ensure that she succeeded. David and Julie Ireland have been ordered to have no contact with their 21-year-old daughter - their only child - before September 23, 2013 and must keep 500 feet away from her at all times. The unusual case concerns Aubrey Ireland, a musical theater major who regularly fills lead roles at Cincinnati's prestigious College-Conservatory of Music and has made the Dean's List every quarter. Despite this success, her parents often drove 600...

Last week, when I wrote about the pornification of American college campuses, many readers expressed their loss of hope in the current generation of students, as well as the administrators who encourage such a debased culture. If my column made you weep for the future, you’ll probably be even more disheartened by the book I referenced last week, “Sex and God at Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad” by Nathan Harden. The book is an expose of how, in the words of Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain, “some of our nation’s finest universities have allowed themselves to...

In this day and age, the 18- to 34-year-old crowd have lived up to their reputation as perpetual renters. Most blame the trend on the housing crisis, which led so many homeowners to downsize and stunted the home buying power of younger consumers. But whatever trauma the Great Recession had on the minds of millennials, it hasn't stymied their hopes for owning a home of their own one day, a new study shows. Real estate tracker Trulia found more than 90 pecent of millennial renters plan on buying a home in the next two years. The question is whether they'll...

From a blog comment on a Drudge link: Congratulations to the Democrats and Young People! You now own it and you can't blame Bush. The next terrorist attack, you own it. Can't get a job after graduation, you own it. Sky rocketing energy prices due to Obama's EPA shutting down the energy producing states, you own it. A nuclear Iran, you own it. Bowing to Russia, you own it. Another severe recession, you own it. A volatile border with Mexico, you own it. Trouble getting good health care, you own it. Higher health insurance costs and health care costs, you...

Young people will have an impact on Tuesday's election, according to a poll commissioned by Students for Life of America.Seventy-seven percent of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote on Tuesday, compared to the 49-percent youth turnout in the 2008 election. Students for Life president, Kristan Hawkins, says, "The HHS mandate -- that mandate that forces employers of faith and conscience to have to provide abortion causing drugs for their employees -- carries negative political currency for two-fifths of young voters." Hawkins adds that the plurality of young Americans, including those in every major demographic and geographic group, said they would...

Over 200 students from Virginia Catholic college pray outside D.C. abortion facility by Thaddeus Baklinski Mon Oct 29 12:27 PM ESTWASHINGTON, DC, October 29, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Shield of Roses, the student pro-life group at Virginia’s Christendom College, held its biggest abortion protest in the 35 years of its existence this past Saturday. On October 27, over 225 students, faculty, staff, and visitors traveled to Washington, D.C., to peacefully protest abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic, located just north of the White House, on 16th Street. “I am so happy that we were able to get so many to come...

The cheering midst of a rally featuring President Barack Obama and a largely college-age crowd of 15,000 on the Oval at Ohio State University would not seem a likely place to encounter those not in the presidentÂ’s corner. Yet, the first five students approached at random by a Dispatch reporter on Oct. 9 turned out to support Republican Mitt Romney and his aspirations of replacing Obama in the White House. The must-vote adoration and enthusiasm for Obama isnÂ’t what it once was among 18- to 29-year-old Millennials in central Ohio, a must-win area in a must-win state for presidential hopefuls....

Jonathan Assink is a lifelong Democrat and unabashed supporter of Barack Obama. But asked about the president's plans for Social Security and Medicare, the 29-year-old shakes his head. "There's nothing there. It's just, 'We'll protect it.' Well, great, thanks. How?" said Assink, who lives in Edmonds and works as a barista in Seattle. "At least the other side talks about it."

The Economist ominously reports: The struggle to digest the swollen generation of ageing baby-boomers threatens to strangle economic growth. As the nature and scale of the problem become clear, a showdown between the generations may be inevitable. The statistics are frightening: The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an...

(Obama with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.)FAIRFAX, Virginia, October 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – President Barack Obama told an audience of campaign supporters at George Mason University last Friday that free contraceptives for college students was the reason “why we passed” his healthcare reform law. Citing the ‘preventive services’ mandate that requires healthcare plans to provide sterilization, contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to women free of charge, Obama said, “I don’t think a college student in Fairfax or Charlottesville should have to choose between text books or the preventive care that she needs. That’s why we passed this law....

According to a recent study, religion is dying in America. And it’s a trend that has grave implications for our politics, culture, and the fate of our civilization. Ben Fearnow of CBS News reports on the story, writing: ...The study also posits some theories for this burgeoning irreligiosity, which, writes Fearnow, “run the gamut from a backlash against the entanglement of religion and politics to a global relationship between economic development and secularization.” Now, I don’t know if that “gamut” includes the obvious, but these two theories miss the mark. Question: Do we wonder why Pakistan is spawning jihadists when...

Paul Ryan's realism about the fiscal cliff is showing signs of appealing to younger voters, a group which overwhelmingly voted for Obama, and which has been buffeted by the economy worse than most other demographic slices. The Washington Examiner reports on the latest Zogby poll: "According to Zogby the Ryan pick helped Romney with younger voters and independents, two key battleground constituencies. "Romney saw a bump in support among 18-29 year olds with 41 percent saying they would vote for the ticket of Romney and Ryan," said Zogby. "More importantly, Romney and Ryan led Obama and Biden among independent voters...

The Republican and Democratic parties had better watch out. More and more “Millennials” or Generation Y youth are avoiding party membership. And many of their reasons make sense. For starters, neither party has catered to youth’s generational needs. The parties have supported politicians who have sold youth down the river. If you are young, let this sink in: Politicians in this country, mostly liberals, have sold out your future. They have put you in hock. They have borrowed astronomical sums of money to fund their current political programs, and you will have to pay it back. It gets worse. ...

I love my son dearly, and I was looking forward to seeing him, but I couldn't face another summer living with him. For six months, it had been an ongoing topic of discussion. But by May of this year it was abundantly clear that the time had come for our 23-year-old son, Flannery, a UCSB graduate in film, to get a place of his own. I live and teach creative writing to college students in Alabama during the academic year. It's not ideal living 2,200 miles from my husband, but it's what we do to make a dent in the...

Who knows whether or not Cathy’s remarks will create risks for his sales over the long term—a temporary boost appears to be underway, and customers can have short-term memories. But at a time when young people increasingly support same-sex marriage, what kind of risks do they create for the company’s pool of potential employees?

Interested in some ideas for a very basic basic primer to provide some foundation for a new college conservative going on a road trip...nothing too involved--just an easy-to-read basic first book that will provide basic information on politics, culture, economy from a conservative (or limited government libertarian) viewpoint.

Young Americans love tax cuts--even for the wildly successful. A new McClatchy-Marist poll revealed 69 percent of young people (ages 18-29) favor tax cuts for all Americans, while only 29 percent oppose. The wealth redistribution and "fairness" rhetoric coming from both academia and the Obama administration seems to be failing. Young Americans like financial and personal freedom. And, maybe they like jobs too. Private sector businesses--not the federal government--employ young people, and every government spending stimulus has led to economic stagnation for America's youth. In contrast, the Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush tax cuts led to nearly immediate job growth for...

Today’s youth, both here and abroad, have been screwed by their parents’ fiscal profligacy and economic mismanagement. Neil Howe, a leading generational theorist, cites the “greed, shortsightedness, and blind partisanship” of the boomers, of whom he is one, for having “brought the global economy to its knees.” How has this generation been screwed? Let’s count the ways, starting with the economy. No generation has suffered more from the Great Recession than the young. Median net worth of people under 35, according to the U.S. Census, fell 37 percent between 2005 and 2010; those over 65 took only a 13 percent...

Hey kids, wake up! Stop playing your X-Box while listening to your Facebooks on the iPod and wearing your iPad with the cap turned backwards with the droopy pants and the bikini underwear listening to Snoopy Poopy Poop Dogg and the Enema Man and all that! Take a break from getting yet another tattoo on your ass bone or your nipples pierced already! And STFU about the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent! You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad.

Gay-rights supporters are openly rallying sympathizers who until now may have been content to stay in the closet - young conservative Republicans. “Freedom and family are core conservative values,” said conservative gay activist Margaret Hoover, a leader of a new campaign called Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry. “We have a historic opportunity to reaffirm these.. values by supporting the fundamental freedom to marry... ” ... Other members of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry leadership... said they expect their new group to inspire other young conservatives “to ... “accelerate” the acceptance of same-sex marriage. However, the leader...

Bigger than the post-World War Two baby-boom generation but without the middle-class expansion that drove the earlier group's consumer habits, Generation Y includes an increasing number of people for whom driving is less an American rite of passage than an unnecessary chore.

Nearly four years after enthusiastic younger voters poured into polling booths to help push Barack Obama over the finish line and into the Oval Office, their hope has turned to fear and pollster John Zogby says that they are ready to give up on politics. “I truly am worried about today's twenty-somethings,” he frets. “They are our global generation and I have seen them move from hope and grand expectations for themselves and their world to anxiety and disillusionment. We can't afford to lose them,” he adds. Zogby previewed his remarks to the League of Women Voters 50th anniversary convention...

President Obama was the commencement speaker Monday at Barnard College, the women's college in New York. "While opportunities for women have grown exponentially over the last 30 years, as young people in many ways you have it even tougher than we did. This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper," Obama said. CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that is why today half of recent college graduates can't find full-time jobs. Jihan Forbes got good grades and a degree two years ago. The only thing she didn't get was a full-time job. "They said, 'You get a degree,...

John T. Rogers, age 26, grew up in rural West Texas, raised by a single mother who often worked three jobs to make ends meet. He says his 59-year-old mother remains fiscally conservative, refusing to spend a dime on herself, though she now earns a respectable income. But when it comes to spending, Rogers is not following in her footsteps. "Not to knock J.C. Penney's, but I definitely wanted to step up my style," he said. Earning $46,000 a year as a communications manager for a private, non-profit university in Denver hasn't held him back. He bought a hybrid Lexus...

You're breathing a sigh of relief because you've filed your taxes for 2011. But what if your taxes reflected the true cost of the federal government's annual expenditures? How much more would you have to pay? To find out how much that true cost might be, go to Debt Bomb, a new 99-cent app launched last week for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. You key in your age, your income, your expected income over the next few years, and the software will give you your household's average tax bill to cover Uncle Sam's annual spending. Then, through the app,...

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work. A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge. Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans. An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for...

Young Americans are eschewing cars for alternative transport, leaving carmakers to wonder if this is a recession-induced trend or a permanent shift in habits. For generations of American teenagers, the car was the paramount symbol of independence. But in the age of Facebook and iPhones, young adults are getting fewer drivers’ licences, driving less frequently and moving to cities where cars are more luxury than necessity. Figures from the Federal Highway Administration show the share of 14 to 34-year-olds without a driver’s licence rose to 26 per cent in 2010, from 21 per cent a decade earlier, according to a...