Bernie Sanders is running for president…again. His supporters’ support of “democratic socialism” show that there was clearly an abundance in our generation that needed to learn about the horrific effects of socialism on countries around the world.
When a survey finds that 53% of 18-to-29 year olds support socialism, we’ve got a big problem. I’m sure you’ve come in contact with people who claim to be Bernie Bros or ardently support socialism. What is the most ironic is these people benefit daily from capitalism. Here are eight quick facts you can throw at your peers who keep trying to make socialism happen in the United States.
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Socialism relies on the means of production, distribution, and exchange being controlled by the community as a whole, which usually means that the government is in charge of you and your money. It’s the opposite of individual freedom that we prize here in the United States. It’s about restriction and domination.
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Socialism discourages entrepreneurship and innovation. Why would you want to make more money if the government is just going to take it all away? What is the incentive to start your own business if someone else if going to take part of its profits and tell you how it has to be run?
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Millennials like socialism more than their adult counterparts, 60% of whom have a negative view of socialism. Ever wonder why that is? Our parents and our grandparents all lived in a world where they saw the downfall of countries like the Soviet Union, thanks to socialism and communism. They also saw the rise of many nations, thanks to capitalism. They’ve learned from history. It’s about time we did too.
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Pro-socialism leftists say to look at Sweden for socialism’s success, but ignore the fact that Sweden is a very homogenous country and does not have the diversity of a country like the United States. Also, it’s relatively small, with a total population of 9.85 million people. That’s just a million people more than New York City.
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We can thank socialism for originating IKEA on the world market because the IKEA founder fled Sweden for Switzerland in 1973 when the country tried to confiscate corporate profits to give that money to labor unions. He has only recently moved back to Sweden.
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Redistributing wealth that you rightly earned to people that didn’t earn it is like redistributing your hard-earned GPA to students who spent the night partying while you were in the library. If you earned a 4.0 and they earned a 2.0, do you really both deserve a 3.0?
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Like a Ponzi scheme, socialism can show signs of early advance but will soon collapse under its own weight. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
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If you think socialism can thrive, look at Venezuela. It’s 21st century socialism, started by Hugo Chavez, and it has ruined the country. The economy is horrible. There are food and medicine shortages. People are being tear-gassed. People are starving. There are mass detentions of nay-sayers. There is nothing free about that.
