Following Bernie Sanders’ electoral triumphs over the week, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro opined that “despite the math, Bernie Sanders has already won.”

Montanaro based this reasoning on Sanders’ widespread support, which has caused Hillary Clinton to align herself with some of his socialistic positions instead of taking the more moderate stance she would have preferred.

As the Washington Post tells it, Sanders’ surge is largely due to his favor among millennial voters, who base their positive opinions of socialism on the recent trends in Scandinavian countries.

But the Washington Post also offers another bit of telling information. Millennials love socialistic ideas – until it’s their turn to fork out the funds to pay for them:

“The expanded social welfare state Sanders thinks the United States should adopt requires everyday people to pay considerably more in taxes. Yet millennials become averse to social welfare spending if they foot the bill. As they reach the threshold of earning $40,000 to $60,000 a year, the majority of millennials come to oppose income redistribution, including raising taxes to increase financial assistance to the poor.”

Similarly, a Reason-Rupe poll found that while millennials still on their parents’ health-insurance policies supported the idea of paying higher premiums to help cover the uninsured (57 percent), support flipped among millennials paying for their own health insurance with 59 percent opposed to higher premiums.

When tax rates are not explicit, millennials say they’d prefer larger government offering more services (54 percent) to smaller government offering fewer services (43 percent). However when larger government offering more services is described as requiring high taxes, support flips and 57 percent of millennials opt for smaller government with fewer services and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer large government.”

When it comes down to it, millennials love the idea of socialism because it promises equality in every area of life. But in the quest for socialism’s brand of equality, will millennials actually find themselves under more constraint and bondage than they could have imagined?

Image Credit: Socialist Party UK