NJlonghorn
2,500+ Posts
They see corporate fat cats making colossal amounts of money and getting bailed out when things go badly, which shows that our game is rigged.
It might be the biggest factor. It's tough to defend capitalism when you only practice it selectively.
You are right that it is hard to defend capitalism when you are practicing it selectively. But that isn't the core of the issue. Even if we stopped bailing out corporate fat cats when things go poorly, young people would not be fans of capitalism as conceived by the far right.
Young people (and many not-so-young people) think that the income flowing to the corporate fat cats is unfair and economically irrational. In theory, management answers to the board of directors, and the board answers to shareholders. In reality, though, management essentially gets to decide how much it wants to make and shareholders have little to no say. Senior managers make huge salaries and bonuses that are unconnected with performance (and then, as a slap in the fact, they complain about the taxes they have to pay).
In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was concerned that joint-stock companies (the predecessor to modern corporations) separate ownership from management, which inherently corrupts market forces and leads to profusion. Smith could not possibly have foreseen the extent to which ownership and management would be separated by the 21st century, and the amount of profusion that would result.
I don't know what the answer is, but it has to address the escalating concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. On the other hand, it has to leave profit motive in place as the primary driver of the economy. Nothing that is close to either extreme (pure capitalism or pure socialism) is tenable.