Warning about the rise of communist ideas among young people: “Parents' generation is not at all curious about how the world is not working for their children”

In general, we assume that young people's distrust of capitalism and attraction to the radical left comes from a lack of knowledge about what “communism” really is. If they could make a comparison, things would clear up, we think. Bad idea.

One of my favorite intergenerational sayings I've heard is this. The adult says to the young man: “You have infinite possibilities compared to what I had at my disposal. You can end up anywhere in this world and you will live an enormous amount of experiences. But there is one place you will never end up: the past. We have been there.”

Factual, it's true. To call, it sounds good. As the meaning of life, however, it does not say much. And at the level of society, the response is added to the increase in rents. It's a new reason for justified frustration for the 20-plus generation, which has also started to get involved politically in Romania.

Cities where house prices have doubled

In 10 large cities in Romania, average net salaries have increased by almost 75% in the last six years. But something has risen almost as much: housing prices.

Housing was already almost impossible to acquire for an entire generation of young people. An analysis by Storia, OLX's real estate platform, shows that in 2019-2025 apartment prices in Brașov or Sibiu doubled. In Sibiu County, for example, in just three years housing has become 13% less affordable, taking into account the salary in the area. And in 10 big cities in Romania, real estate inflation was 73%.

Young people in Romania have the lowest median salary

The average salary at the city, county or country level masks part of the problems of young people. First, because the exclusive use of average salary (rather than median salary) is, in itself, misleading. As in butada: if Elon Musk enters a bar, the average salary of those in the bar has multiplied by 100.

While the median salary, i.e. “the salary of half the people who are in the bar”, remains almost the same and if a billionaire comes in they come to town. Regarding young people, there is something else.

When you look at age segments, you notice that the median salary of young people in Romania under 24 is the lowest compared to all the other four age categories that follow them.

A global phenomenon

The victory of “leftist” Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York correlated with the 70% of the city's residents embarrassed by house prices and rents. Of course, in NYC, half of the apartments are asking for more than $3,600 a month. But the problem is everywhere in the world.

The elections in Holland, Ireland and even the rise of SENS in the big cities in Romania, mirrored by Ana Ciceală's good score in Bucharest, indicate a trend. Ciceăla took 6% of the votes, almost half of Cătălin Drula, who invested much more in the campaign. “Housing is the most important political and social issue today, both in Europe and throughout the Western world,” believes United Nations Special Rapporteur Balakrishnan Rajagopal in an interview with El Pais, the world's most widely read Spanish-language publication.

Okay, but in Romania, rents represent “only” 28-30% of the cost of Generation Z, compared to almost double the share in Western Europe, one might say. It's true. But due to the disparity in the amount of salaries, the “available in hand” is also small in our country.

And housing prices are just the tip of the iceberg.

“If you proletarianize the youth, it should not surprise you if they eventually become communists”

Even one of the “Sisters of the Right” and supporter of JD Vance, the billionaire Peter Thiel, believes that the older generations are in vain enjoying the increase in the price of the houses they own, while the weight is weighing on the young.

“When 70% of millennials say they are pro-socialist we need to do more than simply dismiss them as stupid, pretentious or brainwashed; we should try to understand why,” Thiel predicted back in 2020 in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley investors.

Now, he has come up with additions. He admits that “obviously, I'm very biased against socialism. I don't think socialism has solutions to these problems.” “If you proletarianize young people, it shouldn't surprise you if they eventually become communists,” says Peter Thiel.

Is Gen Z attracted to socialism or anti-capitalist?

An investor among other fields in Palantir, one of the successful companies most suspected including by Generation Z of ties to governments and secret services, Thiel recognizes the reticence of young people to succeed in contemporary capitalism.

“I don't know if I would say that young people are pro-socialists,” he says. “I would say they're less pro-capitalist than they used to be. If capitalism is seen as an unfair scam of some sort, you're going to be a lot less pro-capitalist. So in a relative sense, they're more socialist, even though I think it's more: Capitalism doesn't work for me. Or, this thing called capitalism is just an excuse for people to rob you“.

And the future?

About the “socialist revolution”, with figures

“We're in a multi-decade political bull market where politics is getting more and more intense. People are looking to politics to solve problems. We have this relentless intensification of politics,” Thiel believes. But the power of any revolution is blocked by a reality: the small number of young people in relation to the mass. Demographic decline explains this. “We live in a gerontocracy,” he says, adding, “I'd rather people focus more on solving this generational problem.”

You can't grow if “The generation of parents isn't at all curious about how the world isn't working for their kids,” he believes.

With insane expectations of themselves, the “decree” generations in Romania and the baby boomer generations all over the world are projecting expectations onto their children. And they evolve in a world where, perhaps, what we ask of them is completely unrealistic.

Gavroche, portrait at 50 to 60 years old

In Romania, we fear that the hammer and sickle will reappear in the cut-out center of the flag of the former youth revolution of 1989. But it is plausible, for now, that a cholesterol bulletin will appear there.

It is possible that the socialist revolution will not belong to the young, but to the old, says Thiel. And let it come in the form of the healthcare bill, given that the largest generation in Romania's history is turning 60, and our health insurance statistics are themselves terrifyingly unreliable. According to the ASF, only 250,000 Romanians out of 19 million have private health insurance.

Gavroche, the disheveled and determined young revolutionary who impressed a world with his courage, prepares for complicated times shared with his children.