A recent study reported on Fox News says: 3 out of 10 young adults age 25-34 now live with their parents. This is the greatest number of people in this age group found to be living with their parents since the 1930s.
Most will reply: “It’s the economy causing this.” That may be true. But there’s no reason why social trends should be going backwards. The fact that America is moving in reverse says something about the policies of our government, about the American people themselves — or maybe both.
In the years leading up to the economic crash of 2008, the federal government did a lot of things to allegedly “make the economy and society better.” Instead, we got the crash. Does government get the blame for even some of this? No way.
Since 2008, Americans have empowered their government to do even more things, more than at any time in our history. Government has completely taken over the practice of medicine, and just about taken over the mortgage and banking industries. Despite these changes, nothing is better, and in many respects things are worse. One real-life, concrete indication of this is that 30 and 35 year old grown ups must live with their parents.
This says something about public schools, as well. The vast majority of American students are taught and trained for life in government-run public schools. Children are taught in large groups and encouraged to conform to a particular norm rather than achieve individual standards of objective excellence. Some manage to excel anyway, but it’s no thanks to the mediocrity and conformity fostered in most of these schools. Since George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy passed “No Child Left Behind,” the overriding obsession with public schools has been scoring high on tests so the schools look good. This may be good for school budgets and teacher job security, but it has nothing at all to do with education. Children are riddled with pseudo-scientific disease labels such as “attention deficit disorder” (at least half of all boys “suffer” from it) and we wonder why they’re so lacking in confidence and initiative that they’re still living with their parents at the age of 30.
There are things in these statistics for both social conservatives and socialist liberals to cheer. More young people living at home means more demand for handouts. These include socialized medicine, ObamaCare, unemployment benefits, and untold multiple trillions in other goodies yet to come. Adults living at home with their parents means they are more dependent. More dependent people means more “need” by government authorities to be needed. Parents who resent having their grown children live with them will demand more government help, as well. Need and dependence are everywhere. The liberal left is in heaven.
There are just as many things for conservatives to cheer. Conservatives, especially ones like Rick Santorum, want “family values” to trump individual values. Twenty-something and thirty-something year old adults who cannot to afford to live on their own must depend on family. This means parents will have more control over their children and grandchildren than would otherwise be the case. New generations of people are not free to improve, challenge or question the beliefs of their elders. And they’re less free to have sex, too. To social conservatives, who seem more obsessed with sex than even the average sex addict, this is all good news.
We wonder why nothing changes. The people we elect to power have no incentive to change things. Neither side has an incentive to liberate the American people from the inhibitions and restraint of government power. Government intervention in the economy has led to a slow-growth/no-growth economy. If you simply listen to what these politicians say about their respective opinions and policies, you will understand that they’re not interested in letting people be free. It’s government they want to set free, to trample on our liberties (economic and personal) even more than they already have.
The deeper question is: Do most Americans want to be free? In the abstract, yes. They want to be “free” of want, hunger, expensive health insurance and they also want to be free of recession. But are they willing to be free in the sense of being self-responsible? Not so much. Too many Americans now define freedom as the elimination of discomfort. This isn’t true of all Americans, but it must be true of most of them. This is why we keep getting the politicians we do. This is why there’s no serious uprising, even at the ballot box, against them. Politicians merely reflect what’s going on in the culture. And they keep doing self-evidently outrageous and irresponsible things, knowing full well nobody is going to stop them.
The bottom line is more and more grown ups are now living with their parents. These numbers are a reflection of what politicians and government are doing to America. They are also a reflection of what Americans are doing to themselves.