Millennials are disillusioned

When Frank Dowd IV (in his recent CDT opinion piece) blames parents, schools and Obama for why millennials don’t like capitalism, he is dead wrong.

Millennials grew up in an era in which capitalism, as embodied by American business, is associated with the greed and bad management of firms such as Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Tyco, Bear Stearns and Arthur Andersen.

Many young people have seen the pain caused by corporate downsizing and the 2008 financial crisis. Firms like Merrill Lynch continued to pay out executive bonuses even when on the brink of bankruptcy, and no executive went to jail for hurting so many people during the financial crisis.

The same young people have seen CEOs rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in performance bonuses while bankrupting their firms. They associate corporate America’s social responsibility with the iconic image of a man being dragged down the aisle, bleeding from the mouth, on a United Airlines flight or a clueless BP CEO who was more concerned with missing his golf game than with the environmental disaster of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

While Dowd blames Obama for anti-capitalist views, he might consider what young people think of when they hear how Donald Trump profited by declaring bankruptcy and using that maneuver to avoid paying small business creditors. If Dowd wonders why millennials are disillusioned with capitalism, he should look in a mirror.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 10:14 PM with the headline "Millennials are disillusioned."