PSL: Why do young people in the US favor socialism?

[fujiyama]

57. I think socialism can be defined in many ways

and it's never clear to me what a socialist really is. In this country, anyone that seems to favors any restriction or regulation on the issue of commerce and the economy is a "socialist" (at least to conservatives which makes a huge % of the population).

And of course, throughout history nasty regimes the world over have used the term socialist in their official name - the best known being Soviet Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. We see clearly in those cases that having power (whether its economic or political) concentrated in the hands of a few, a majority of the people suffer greatly.

At the same time, a similar effect occurs in a different sense in our own country, where the moneyed elite often times in the private sector in collusion with our elected leadership make all the decisions.

When the government makes nearly every decision to the point that ordinary citizens cannot freely conduct commerce, the standard of living falls. India is an interesting example. They had what was referred to as the "license raj", which basically said the government had to certify nearly everything, basically crippling the ability of ordinary people to start companies and sell and buy goods and services. If you wanted to even get a phone installed it would take years! Few goods from the outside were allowed for trade. And therefore the country got little in the way of foreign investment. Over the last two decades we saw a great push to liberalize the economy and the economy has been growing at much more rapid pace. That's not to say that every part of the population has experienced it equally. A large part has not, but at the same time there is more social mobility now than there was twenty five years ago (part of this is also the lessening importance of things like caste).

The ideal situation is something along the lines of northern Europe, Germany, Australia, and even Canada, which allow people to conduct trade and commerce freely, yet place some restrictions when it's clear that something harms society at large. At the same time, higher personal, capital gains and sales taxes are placed - and the taxes are progressive. Another common element between those countries is that they invest in their population with a robust safety net. It's not a "hand out" when a less fortunate person has access to health care. It's an expansion of rights. What's interesting is that many of these countries score higher on many quality of life indicators but they also have relatively low corporate taxes and fairly high economic freedom scores as well (at least as measured by Heritage - a right leaning think tank, so take that for what it's worth). The difference is they don't spend nearly as much on defense and have a different level of absolute greed in their private sector as well.

What we have in this country is crony capitalism and concentrated power by those at the very top, which includes most elected officials. Some people at the top of certain industries thrive in such an environment (at least those at the top of defense, health care, education, and energy). The laws are made for them and only them to prosper. People on all sides of the political spectrum should be concerned, because this is very bad for capitalism. It's not fair. And it's not free either. Opportunity dies. The standard of living falls. And ultimately violent rage erupts. The end result though, may or may not be what progressives want either - and does not by any means guarantee a progressive victory. It could be the opposite...