With the 2020 presidential election quickly headed for a choice between capitalism and socialism, Fox Business host Charles Payne is hosting a town hall Thursday to discuss the two economic systems.
American attitudes toward socialism have shifted in recent years, with a 2018 Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of 18-29 year olds have a positive view of capitalism, and 55 percent have a positive view of socialism.
This positive view towards socialism was on full display in the 2016 Democratic primary, which saw self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders pull in thousands of votes from college students.
Joining the Todd Starnes Show Wednesday, Payne previewed the upcoming town hall, and offered his own take on why young people especially have been drawn to socialist ideas.
“These are young people who have been taught in their schools that socialism is superior to capitalism,” Payne said. “And in addition to that, they have been taught that something is wrong in their lives, in other words that that they haven’t seen prosperity like their fathers and their grandfathers and grandmothers and that some for some reason it’s escaped them.”
The irony of a generation hating capitalism that has become obsessed with “thousand dollars cell phones,” Uber rides, and spending $25 on a mixed drink was not lost on Payne, who noted that it was on those “thousand dollar cell phones” that the younger generation complains about capitalism.
“They have romanticized this to the point where it may be one of those things where you can’t talk anyone out of it if they’ve been conditioned their entire lives that this current system is unfair,” he said.
The town hall, which will be televised Thursday at 2 p.m. eastern time on Fox Business, will feature also socialists, Payne told Starnes.
“People need to just hear both sides understand know what we are truly talking about let’s not necessarily gloss everything over and just use simple words like we’re gonna make things fair,” Payne said. “Let’s find out exactly what people are are being asked to do in this country because we are fundamentally being asked to change America.”
Starnes noted to Payne that President Obama had promised a cell phone for every American, and called the idea of wanting the government taking care of us “a frightening concept.”
“It is a frightening concept,” Payne replied. “And we have been told for the last several years that America is not this rugged country of individualism where we’ve strapped on our bootstraps, we’ve gone out there, but that is our history that is the history of this country. And it’s why this young upstart nation in a very short period of time became the number one economy the most primitive power in the world.”