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Oct. 9, 2021

345: Give Millennials Some Credit! (feat. Eric Brakey)

345: Give Millennials Some Credit! (feat. Eric Brakey)

The Millennial generation gets a bit of a bad rap... Eric Brakey wants to change that.

The Millennial generation gets a bit of a bad rap... Eric Brakey wants to change that, as today he returns to the program on our special "Saturday Solo Short"!

 

Eric explains where Millennials get things wrong (like some embracing socialism), where we are getting things right, and how we can help pick up the pieces when things get worse.

 

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Transcript

Eric Brakey  
Hello, this is Eric Brakey, senior spokesperson for young Americans for liberty and host of the free American now podcast which you can subscribe to yourself on Apple podcasts or a SoundCloud or Spotify. Those are the three that we're on. I want to say thank you so much to Brian Nichols for inviting me to speak to his audience this Saturday. I appreciate it. Brian, though, Brian gave me free rein to talk about pretty much anything I wanted to, which is a dangerous thing to do, especially when you give that offer to a politician. I am a recovering politician. I served two terms in the Maine state senate. And I got involved in this whole political craziness because of a certain Texas Congressman Ron Paul, back in 2012. But today, I'm going to be speaking about something that is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, but I haven't really vocalized before, and that is, in defense of the millennial generation.

The millennial generation gets a bit of a bad rap, I think, especially in right wing politics. I think it has something to do with, I think especially has something to do with the fact that millennials, when polled seem very receptive to socialism. You asked millennials, what they think about socialism, a lot of them say they're open to socialism. And I think, especially for older generations, who grew up with the specter of the Soviet Union, and the, you know, the red enemy. That's, that can be pretty alarming. And I understand that, and I personally, I'm no fan of socialism, I reject the concepts of socialism very adamantly. But I think that there's a degree to which that when many millennials say that they're open to socialism, I think that we have to understand the broader context here. Now, Millennials did not grow up in a world where, you know, the Soviet Union was the boogeyman made me and I've been very appropriately they were the boogeyman. They were a terrible, brutal regime. But we grew up after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was not the political context that we came of age and. And I think that one, something that's interesting to note is while millennials say that they are open to socialism, when you ask them how they feel about concepts like free enterprise and entrepreneurship, which are very much bedrock, capitalistic concepts, Millennials say that they're very much in favor of those things. So what gives? I think that we need to understand the millennial generation grew up in the shadow of corporate bailouts, financed with a national debt put on us by older generations, and signed in our name. At the same time, we were told from kindergarten, that we would be failures if we didn't go to college. So many millennials were pressured into signing their lives away at the stroke of 18. And student loans for paper degrees that didn't come with a strong job market at the end. Now I know a lot of my peers in my generation who slaved away in coffee shops, paying mortgage sized loans off to those same big financial institutions who got those bailouts with those national debts signed in our name before many of us even had voted for the first time in our lives. All the while a central bank fleeces, everyone's wages, with inflation taking away even what little people are able to save. Some have even had the gall to call this system of corporate plunder capitalism. Now you and I might understand that that is not capitalism. This is crony capitalism, this is corporatism or somebody even goes so far as to call it, fascism. I mean, that's what Mussolini would have called it. That's how Mussolini defined fascism, the merger of corporate interests, and government interests. But for a lot of millennials, that point is kind of lost on them. Because this is what we understand, to be capitalism, so many in the millennial generation. This is what we were told for so long that capitalism is so personally, I mean, I would say, if this crony capitalism is capitalism, then you can count me out of that. I don't support this system, whatever you call it. We are living under a financial conspiracy of corporate and government interest that ensures the banks are always too big to fail privatized profits and socialized losses. That's the system for the big guys. When millennials see that those big corporations get the benefits of socialism for themselves

with bailouts and corporate welfare. Who wouldn't begin to wonder why if there's so much for To go around for the big guys, why the little guys don't get a piece? Why aren't we getting free health care when the military industrial complex gets trillions and tax dollars and the lives of our brothers and sisters to throw into pointless mass murder campaigns in the Middle East? why our student loan debts, the only form of debt that Congress has legally established follows you even through bankruptcy? And why did older generations including the entire K through 12, public education system push so hard for us? When we were young and impressionable into this system of predatory loans? Congress is poised to raise the debt ceiling, beyond $30 trillion in the near future. They just raised it and they're we're getting to $30 trillion before we know it. If our own government won't pay its debts. Why are those in student loan debts, this form of debt slavery? Why are they expected to pay their debts? millennials look around, and they see that there are double standards that are being that they're expected to follow that older generations who are preaching this to them haven't followed themselves. And I think that with the idea that if this is capitalism, so many, millennials, and including many in Gen Z, say, well, this, if this is capitalism, that I'm not for that I must be for this socialism thing, which has been branded really well over the course of the last 20 years, and by branded really well, I guess, I just mean in comparison to capitalism, because socialism is kind of winning by default, because those claiming to represent capitalism are doing such a poor job of capitalism. But here's something that the millennial generation is doing very well. The millennial generation. And of course, this isn't everyone, but many of the leaders of this particular new phenomenon are people in the millennial generation and younger generations. They're building a parallel financial system through Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, they see more than past generations that we are totally being fleeced. We are being fleeced by the Central Bank, we are being fleeced by the system of debt. And it looks pretty obvious that this system is unsustainable, it's going to collapse. So Millennials are leading the charge, building up parallel financial systems, building up decentralized banking, decentralized currency, cryptocurrency and getting a head start, because we know that this system is going to collapse, and it is going to fall upon the younger generations to pick up the pieces. So why not start building the new better system now? Now, if cryptocurrency is the future, that the millennial generation is building, to replace this old, tired central banking system, which let's be honest, this central banking system call it capitalism all you want, but this central bank is a core plank of the Communist Manifesto. So don't tell me that this new generation that is building a decentralized cryptocurrency system is more socialist than the generations that came before the previous generations adopted socialism piece by piece and called it capitalism. So I don't care if the millennial generation calls it socialism or calls that what whatever, whatever they call it, if they're building a system that is built upon market principles of decentralization, empowering the little guy to take control of their own financial situation and not rely on these big banksters who are screwing us over using the power of government to fleece, the little guy, then you know what? I say that's a pretty capitalist generation. And I don't care what they call themselves. So we're going to have to pick up the pieces. The millennial generation does have to going to have to do it. Generation Z is going to have to do it along with us. When this system collapses, I have confidence. We're going to be ready

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Eric Brakey Profile Photo

Eric Brakey

Senior Spokesperson

Eric Brakey is the senior spokesperson for Young Americans for Liberty. He served two terms in the Maine Senate and as the 2012 Maine State Director for the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign.