koan,
take a vote and 99% of tax paying American parents will vote FOR taxation to improve our educational system, as long as that increase in taxes goes ONLY to education. That is a GREAT example of Democracy and free markets in action. If the people want something and are willing to pay for it, then that is consistent with free markets and elected representatives to carry out the people's wishes.
Now, contrast that with Socialism. In Socialism, a few people in power decide what the people want, usually influenced by some slim majority of unhappy citizens, then they implement those policies against the wishes of close to 50% of the population. Unfortunately, since many people don't want those policies, they have to devise enforcement mechanisms, increasingly more autocratic and brutal police forces that are militarized, increasingly Orwellian spy apparati that are pointed at their own people, and ultimately making examples out of people through incarceration or intimidation. Socialism and Communism in history is most closely associated with the loss of freedom and the destruction of property rights, so that the government can enforce deeply unpopular policies.
Look at Venezuela and Argentina. Socialism leads directly to economic chaos, run away inflation, and it harms the 99% the most, which is the very group that wants Socialism so much, because they believe they will be the recipients of the largesse. It never works that way. The rich and powerful almost always become cronies of the new Socialist administration and benefit the most. Look at Obama. Who has benefitted the most from his failed Keynesian largesse? The 1% and Wall Street. Not one major banker criminal is in jail and most of the bad actors are back to doing the same things that lead to the last crisis.
Meanwhile, the 99% are left with stagnant to declining incomes, because their good jobs are rapidly being replaced with part time, low wage jobs or outright unemployment. The Fed is destroying the value of the dollar, so they have to pay higher prices for food, shelter, health care, and gas, even as the Fed uses propaganda to say there is no inflation, just as the oil companies use propaganda to say there is no impact of oil usage to climate change.
You are right about education. If more people were highly educated and had the independence of thought combined with common sense to understand that there NEVER is a free lunch, then they'd realize that Socialism, Keynesianism, money printing, and Centrally Planned Economies, always fail, because they only engage in Heroin highs, not the productive growth that free market capitalism in an economy with strong property rights, backed by the best Constitution the world has ever seen, has driven for over 200 years. Why must we insist on destroying what made this country great? We need to go back to basics. Our US Constitution is a great place to start. I'd make every child in school memorize it every year as part of their school work. |
