4 ms·

But it's interesting to see that "capitalism" is becoming a dirty word, when in the cold-war era it was the opposite of "communism" which was a synonym for "evi

• twblalock 10y ago
  Yet "socialism" is an even dirtier word according to the survey results. What we really have here are young people who are fed up with the low level of economic opportunity available to them, relative to the level of opportunity they expected to have.
  • mindcrash 10y ago
    You are not looking for the word "socialism". The word you are looking for has the highest approval rating in this poll. Then everything makes sense.
• snowwrestler 10y ago
  During the Cold War, Americans opposing communism believed they were standing up for "freedom" and "democracy"--not capitalism. People today get so caught up in economic arguments that they overlook the fact that communism was a system of government during the Cold War... a system that required censorship and oppression to maintain power. The word "capitalist" has never been embraced broadly as a social movement in the U.S. Its earliest usages in the U.S. were largely pejorative, by socialists and communists attempting to highlight differences. Even today, people who create and accumulate capital in the U.S. rarely refer to themselves as "capitalists." They call themselves entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, executives, businesspeople, investors, etc.