Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
If one needed evidence of the gross ignorance of millennials, and their teachers and college professors, it’s their solid support for socialism and socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. Socialism has produced tragedy wherever it has been implemented. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of nearly 1,000 Americans perishing in a mass suicide/murder in the jungles of Guyana. Just as Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez see socialism as mankind’s salvation, so, too, did Rev. Jim Jones, who told his followers, “God is Socialism, and I am Principle Socialism, and that’s what makes me God.”
Perhaps the most disastrous failing of our educational system and the news media is that people are neither required nor encouraged to test ideas against facts. The promises of socialism sound wonderful and caring, but in reality, wherever it has been tried it has been a true disaster. Let’s examine the history of socialism.
During the first three decades of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the world’s top-10 richest nations. It was ahead of Canada and Australia in total and per capita income. After Juan Peron’s ideas, captured in his economic creed that he called “national socialism,” became a part of Argentina’s life, the country fell into economic chaos. Today it has fallen to 25th in terms of GDP.
Nicolas Maduro, an avowed socialist, has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food. Some people are eating their pets and feeding their children from garbage bins. Socialism has crippled Venezuela’s once-thriving economy. Today, Venezuela is among the world’s most tragically poor countries.
Socialism can be tested by doing a few side-by-side country comparisons. After Germany’s defeat in WWII, it was divided into socialist East Germany and capitalist West Germany. West Germans had far greater income, wealth and human rights protections. In large numbers, East Germans tried to flee to West Germany, so much so that the East German government set up deadly mines and other traps to prevent escape. Few, if any, West Germans tried to flee to East Germany, and the West German government spent no resources preventing its citizens from leaving.
Then there’s North Korea and South Korea. North Korea’s nominal per capita GDP is only 3.6 percent of South Korea’s nominal per capita GDP of $23,838. There are few human rights protections for North Koreans. North Korea, like East Germany, has set up deadly mines and other traps to prevent its citizens from escaping.
The key features of a free market system are private property rights and private ownership of the means of production. By contrast, socialist systems feature severely limited private property rights and government ownership or control of the means of production.
There has never been a purely free market economic system, just as there has never been a purely socialist/communist system. Let’s do an experiment. First, rank countries according to whether they are closer to the free market or the communist end of the economic spectrum. Then, rank countries according to per capita gross domestic product. Finally, rank countries according to Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” report.
Here’s our finding: People who live in countries closer to the free market end of the economic spectrum not only have far greater income and wealth than people who live in countries toward the communist end; they also enjoy far greater human rights protections. Moreover, it’s the socialist nations that have murdered tens of millions of their own citizens such as the case with the former USSR and China.
Sanders and other socialists hold Denmark as their dream, but Prime Minister Lars Lekke Rasmussen said: “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” Scandinavian socialism is a myth.
Walter E. Williams’s Latest Book American Contempt for Liberty is available on Amazon
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“Yes sir, I bleeve in good ol’ ‘Murkan idavijalizm. Ya wurk hard an pay ye billz and sapport Izrul and you’ll be alright. ” Bu you better no touch my fukkin social security or medicare; that’s differt.”
The student debt yoke around the Soys necks is one thing I hope never ends.
Market economy? I would like more info on that. Holland, if a small apartment and a bicycle are all you want in life then that’s your place. And more foreigners than you want. I admit that after putting into social security all my working life, yes I want money back. Otherwise, I could have invested in the stock market long term.
You were stolen from all your working life by pathological liars in our government that pretended that the money would be set aside for your future. In reality they simply handed it at the beginning to folks who had contributed nothing, and then to both non-contributors and contributors alike, then they simply put all the revenue into the general budget and wasted it on pointless wars and buying the votes of millions of other “takers.” Now they are forced to simply take and take and take to try and uphold what millions see as “promises made,” but in reality are just the way the politicians continue to purchase votes from folks they have NO legal obligation to send a check to every month. And yes, I want my money back too.
What people (kids included) like about Sanders is his manner. He says he wants to raise taxes on the rich and put the money into various Things That Would Be Nice To Have. At least that’s more honest than typical politicians who say we need to “raise revenue” and “devote more resources”. If you mean money, call it money. Nobody says “hey Bob, can I borrow some resources from you?”
And while he reportedly came into some money after being a team player for Hillary in 2016, he obviously hasn’t been personal wealth-focused over the last 40 years, during which time his philosophy and positions haven’t changed. As Larry David (playing Sanders) said – “I own two pairs of underwear, and I dry them on the radiator”.
There are winning arguments to be made against taking from people who work and giving to people who don’t, but droning on about “socialism” (with black and white visuals and scare-music) is so 1980’s. Obviously it has no effect on the young, especially when most western countries have socialized medicine and subsidized college education and they’re obviously not 3rd world hell-holes. Venezuela has achieved hellhole status through socialism, but other Latin American countries have achieved it through feudalism, crony capitalism and oligarchy. It might have less to do with the system and more with the people. Plenty of African countries have free markets and they’re not exactly oases of prosperity.
Plus, we kind of have socialism already. We just suck out money from regular people and give it to the Military-Industrial Complex, the health insurance companies and the higher education racket. I’m not saying we should adopt Sanders’ prescriptions, but if we want to avoid them, we better kick out the grifters who run our economy now.
Sanders should have won 2016. Trump is just a buffoon who stands at the border waving in the illegals while spewing bullshit about walls. If we’re going to be invaded, may as well have a democrat to blame.
The flip side being that after a few Bernie years everyone would be looking to leave our country. Including US citizens.
Agree with both of your summations, except that I think if Sanders would have won, we would be in much the same situation we are in right now. The propaganda would just be more socialist friendly than with Trump in.
The facts are that whomever gets the presidency is nothing but a figure head. The actual decisions and agenda are made by the “owners” as Carlin would say. Do you think Sanders would be any more independent than Trump? Do you think that ANY of his campaign promises would be kept any more than Trumps? Nope. Sanders would have been given the rules of conduct when he stepped in the Oval office just as Trump was. Sanders may like the state control more than Trump (maybe), but at the end of the day, the march continues to us having less, them having more – of everything worth anything. Period.
The president is a figure head, nothing more. The actual change agents will never be known, heard from or acknowledged. And you and I sure as hell will have no say or vote in what they do.
One of the scariest verses in the Bible ….
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….. because young Milly socialists will become old Millie socialists, and God help us all when those rat bastards become powerful and unopposed.
Now we know what happened to the sex drugs and rock n roll boomers.
I assure you that they are not unopposed, now or in the future.
You know, some of us (millennials) were actually taught history and reason, and read the Great Books in their entirety before, during, and after high school. Those of us who know how to use our minds are well aware of our foolish brethren, and of how prolific their nonsensical beliefs are. It still stings a bit though when my generation is often spoken of in sweeping generalities that simply do not apply to me or any of my acquaintances.
Just sayin’…
Now you know how some of us Boomers feel.
Empathy, it’s a wonderful human trait.
Yes, a feeling my father expressed to me in great detail; not all boomers were ridiculous hippies and leftist fools. One would hope then that the response should be to acknowledge that every generation contains a slew of fools, hell bent on self gratification and the avoidance of responsibility. Focusing on one generation, one political affiliation, or one religion or another, is short sighted and misses the point: people are inherently foolish and self obsessed. Western culture was about acknowledging and overcoming our deficiencies, and through logic and reasoning, becoming better men, building better worlds than we were born into. Currently of course, Western culture seems more about debasing ourselves and embracing the darkness which Western Philosophy / Culture once sought to extinguish.
I’m rambling…apologies.
I like most of your stuff BTW Stucky, for what it’s worth. You are properly cynical…
Most younguns don’t know what socialism actually is. Marx himself defined socialism as the phase that preceded full communism, a stepping stone to complete totalitarianism. Socialist governments control everything but allow the illusion of ownership. A small businessman may own the bakery but the government regulates who he sells to, where he gets his materials, who he hires, how much he charges and how his building is maintained. He gets to bear the brunt of the costs, cares for the property and shares whatever profits with the government who redistributes said profits first to itself and then to the ‘less fortunate’ aka: deadbeats.
Nailed it. ^
Millennials for Socialism: A Pictorial Guide
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It’s okay… “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
Bernie is a socialistic free give away piece of shit. his latest is to give prisoners the right to vote in jail. Of course they will vote for him and promised freedom. The asshole of communism wants use to share our earned income with the slovenly slobs who do not who do not work.