Let's Talk Socialism

In talking about socialism, it’s important to understand a couple of things. First of all, socialism is the perfect solution for a perfect world. However, since we don’t live in a perfect world, it’s pretty much the worst solution. Second of all, socialism is an excellent short-term solution. The Soviet Union saw a time of tremendous growth within the first few years of their socialist system. However, those few years of wealth were followed by incredible poverty that persists to this day. This is why anyone who has ever studied Russian history should be terrified by the words “wealth redistribution,” “government social programs,” and “nationalized healthcare.” Anyone who knows about Russia’s stint with socialism and still voted a Democratic ticket in the last election might as well be saying that two plus two equal fish.

So how does socialism take away our freedom? That’s easy. It’s all about the American dream. People have been coming to America for years with the plan of making a better life for themselves. These people have always known that America is supposed to be a place where they can get a job and keep most of the money they earn. They can save this money and eventually have enough to have a decent life. Of course no economy is as simple as work, earn, save, be financially secure, but people at least get the chance. That is, under a free-market economy. When socialism comes into play, no one gets the chance. Socialism assumes that our money doesn’t really belong to us, but the government, thus making us all slaves to the government.

One might argue that this money comes back to us in public service, which proves that the government is still serving us. This may be true, but it still doesn’t give us the chance to use our money the way we want to. For instance, everyone pays taxes that go to support public schools. But what if you don’t want to send your kids to public school? What if you would rather send your kids to a private school with much higher academic standards and teachers who don’t try to indoctrinate their kids with their liberal ideas? Well that’s just too bad. You have to pay for public schooling anyway. It’s your loss. The nationalized healthcare program in England works the same way. Only the wealthy in England can afford to pay for privatized healthcare because they are also paying taxes for public healthcare. And as we all know, public healthcare in England is quite poor, nowhere near the standards of healthcare in America. By the way, the British dream is to someday achieve straight teeth.

So let’s bring some libertarianism into it. Why do we have government in the first place? Well, here in America it was originally to ensure that we would have our basic human freedoms. It was never meant to control our finances or decide how we get to live. But that is what socialism does.