Even conservatives are being wooed by socialism — but don’t fall for the con

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Key points

• While the share who feel strongly favorable has fallen from 54% to 41%, a July 2026 Fox News poll discovered that 61% of Republicans view capitalism favorably, down from 72% in 2019.
• For the first time on record, 2025 saw Gen Z entrepreneurs starting more new businesses than baby boomers, accounting for 9% of new business starts in 2025 against 5% for boomers.
• In a 2025 survey of young probable voters, 42% of conservatives stated they would like to see a democratic socialist win the presidency in 2028.
• Emil Barr is the co-founder of Flashpass and founder of Step Up Social.
• Since the rise of socialism among young Americans is no longer only a Democratic story, I am surprised by who is angry.

Fifty-three percent of self-identified conservatives under 40 backing government-run grocery stores. Not Democrats, conservatives. Take that in.

I run a firm that tracks layoffs caused by artificial intelligence, and every month I look at spreadsheets that show my generation losing entry-level jobs faster than anyone anticipated. So when the polling notes young Americans have soured on capitalism, I'm not surprised by the anger.

Young conservatives who grew up hearing that administration was the challenge are increasingly asking why the administration isn't doing more to produce their lives easier. It in 2026 simply means more affordable. They are increasingly comfortable with taxing billionaires, expanding administration programs and blaming some outside group for the sense that the American Dream is further away than it was for their parents.

In practice, the left is embracing socialism openly, but we should worry regarding how the right is arriving at numerous of the same conclusions by a different route.

In a 2025 survey of young probable voters, 42% of conservatives stated they would like to see a democratic socialist win the presidency in 2028. Among 2024 Trump voters, the figure was 35% in another poll. A March 2026 poll discovered 77% of all voters backing raising taxes on billionaires, including 65% of Republicans, 75% of independents, and 91% of Democrats. It additionally identified 62% of voters are more probable to back a candidate who supports an climbed billionaire tax, versus 12% more probable to backing a candidate who opposes it.

These aren't disciples of Karl Marx, but they believe the economy is rigged against them, and they increasingly believe the administration should step in and fix it.

While the share who feel strongly favorable has fallen from 54% to 41%, a July 2026 Fox News poll discovered that 61% of Republicans view capitalism favorably, down from 72% in 2019. The share who say the system is rigged toward the wealthy has climbed from 30% in 2018 to 42%.

I'm 23, and I understand why my generation is frustrated. Unaffordable housing is one of the clearest reasons. The striking part of Zohran Mamdani's win in New York is that the language he applied – affordability, rent regulation, hostility to concentrated wealth – now sounds completely normal to millions of young Americans who would never call themselves socialists.

I am not going to tell my generation that everything is fine, but I believe we are making a fundamental mistake when we take a real economic difficulty and turn it into an argument against capitalism.

Capitalism is failing young Americans, but it isn't the reason young Americans are failing.

On the left, the villain is usually the billionaire or the corporation. On the right, it might be China, immigrants, Israel or whichever group is being blamed that month for why we can't afford what our parents could at our age. The targets of blame change, but the logic stays the same: somebody else took what should have been mine, and whoever it is should pay to offer it back. Obtain opinions and commentary from our columnists. This is where the argument gets uncomfortable.

Ask young Americans whether they want universal healthcare, free college, cheaper housing or more administration assistance and you will find plenty of backing, but when you ask who should pay for it, suddenly the revolutionaries obtain quieter.

We want the Nordic welfare state without the Nordic tax bill. We want the administration to spend more capital while somehow charging none of us for it. It sounds more like a wish list than an economic model.

Since those of us who are actually building businesses are showing that opportunity hasn't disappeared almost as completely as some young residents believe, I think my generation is getting capitalism completely wrong.

For the first time on record, 2025 saw Gen Z entrepreneurs starting more new businesses than baby boomers, accounting for 9% of new business starts in 2025 against 5% for boomers. Most of those founders applied AI to secure began; it has never been cheaper to try to be an entrepreneur.

So which is it? Are we a generation that believes the administration needs to rescue us from the economy, or are we a generation capable of building our own way out?

My mother brought me to America from Russia when I was 3 since she believed that her son would have more opportunity here, and she was right.

I was able to scale successful businesses as a teenager, negotiate my way through free college, and build a personal net worth of over $20 million all before turning 23. I didn't do that since the administration handed me a check, but since America provided me room to try.

There are real barriers making opportunity harder to reach, and the administration built most of them. Housing supply is restricted by zoning. Licensing keeps capable individuals out of professions they could otherwise enter. Permitting turns projects that should take months into yearslong exercises.

If those barriers are making life harder for young individuals, the answer is to remove them. It isn't to convince an entire generation that capitalism itself is the barrier.

Capitalism tells young Americans that the answer is to build something, learn a skill, start a business, take responsibility and create value. The alternative is to become convinced that every economic difficulty has an external villain and every solution has to come from Washington. That's a dangerous idea, regardless of which party adopts it.

Emil Barr is the co-founder of Flashpass and founder of Step Up Social. From The Wall Street Journal.

In short, even conservatives are being wooed by socialism is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.