Socialism 101

It's time we set the record straight.

The Political Spectrum

If it’s 40 degrees in Nome Alaska, and you ask one of the locals if it’s cold or warm, they will probably say “it’s warm.” If you ask me, a Californian, when it’s 40 degrees I will say it’s FREEZING. So, our lived experience affects our perception.

This also applies to our place in the political spectrum. Here in the US, we think of ourselves as “normal,” or … in “the center.” The Democrats are LEFT of center, and that the Republicans are RIGHT of center. But when you measure our place objectively compared to other developed countries, that is wildly incorrect.

The preponderance of Democrats is distinctly right of center. Democrats make noises about social change, but they are usually maintaining the status quo, and status quo = conservative.

The status quo, however, is horribly broken, and everyone knows it. Yet that is where the Democrats live. This is why the Democrats cannot win elections, even when the only other option is a bat-shit crazy buffoon. At least the Republicans are promising CHANGE. It’s not a completely illogical choice to go with the devil that’s promising change than to stay with the devil that wants to maintain the current hellscape.

Why is the Status Quo so broken? It’s broken because capitalism has been allowed to go unchecked for too long. When left to itself, Capitalism will devolve into oligarchy, and a handful of extremely wealthy people will basically rule the populace. Sound familiar? That’s late-stage capitalism. The “American Way” is failing us.

While the Democrats are fighting to preserve the failed status quo, the Republicans are goose-stepping into fascism. Sensible voters are paralyzed with two unbearable options. Clearly the non-fascist vote is the right one, but that feels terrible.

What American voters need is another alternative. One that isn’t the failed status quo and isn’t fascism. That would be something just left of center and it’s typically called Democratic Socialism.

The biggest challenge Socialism faces in America is the word itself. Socialism is seen as Unamerican. But what many Americans don’t realize is that there are a myriad of socialist programs in the US that benefit people every day.

We Already Are a Socialist Country

Although Socialism is a bad word in the United States, average Americans benefit from a myriad of socialist programs every day. Here’s a short list:

1. Roads & Highways

2. Bridges

3. Traffic Signals & Streetlights

4. Public Transit

5. Sidewalks & Bike Lanes

6. Airports

7. Rail Infrastructure

8. Ports & Waterways

9. Water Supply Systems

10. Sewage & Wastewater Treatment

11. Stormwater Drainage

12. Electric Grid Infrastructure

13. Public Hospitals and Clinics

14. Emergency Services

15. Police & Public Safety Services

16. Disaster Preparedness Infrastructure

17. Public Schools & School Buses

18. Libraries

19. Public Universities and Colleges

20. Public Parks & Recreation Facilities

21. Community Centers

22. Public Broadband Projects

23. Weather and Emergency Alert Systems

24. Postal Service (USPS)

25. Courthouses and Legal Infrastructure

26. DMVs and Vehicle Registration Offices

27. Public Housing and Urban Development Projects

28. Dams & Levees

29. Energy Research and Grid Modernization Projects

30. Waste Management Facilities

Those are only the services Americans use on a daily basis. There are hundreds more, including our armed forces. For each service, people pooled their money to spend it on something that everyone would benefit from. It came in the form of taxes that were levied by an elected government. Those taxes were then spent to improve the lives of average Americans. For most of American history, it worked. Are those programs always perfect? No, but that is not an argument against them, because government services tend to be cheaper and more reliable than capitalist services. Are your capitalized services perfect? Also no. Who do you call more often with a problem, your local power utility or your internet service provider? Probably your ISP. If you live in a state where your power utility has been privatized, it might be a toss-up. Capitalism’s goal is profit. Socialism’s goal is service.

The current administration is trying to make our country great again by taking as many of those services away as possible. Imagine having to pay a monthly subscription to find out what the weather will be. Imagine paying $20 to get on Public Transportation instead of $2. Imagine having to pay to go to the park so your children can play on the swings. At least you won’t have to pay taxes for it, right? Imagine your neighborhood if there were no stop signs, or stop lights, or traffic enforcement, or parking enforcement. Going to the grocery store is going to be like driving through a war zone.

Our socialist programs make our country a much better place to live. And even though we have a lot of socialized programs, America still falls distinctly “right” of most other developed countries on that political spectrum. To rise to their level, we’d have to socialize many more services.

Socialism 101 - Safety Nets

I’m sure you’ve seen a homeless person. Their clothes were ripped and unwashed. They were possibly ill, and they didn’t look joyful. How many services would they need in order for them to become healthy and safe again?

1. Shelter

2. Clothing

3. Food

4. Water Services

5. Medical Services

6. Internet Services

7. Power

8. Heat

9. Public Transportation

10. An Endpoint device (phone or tablet)

To become a functioning adult, they are going to also need

11. Education.

Now ask yourself, how many bad things would have to happen to you for you to become an unhoused person?

1. Lose your Job suddenly

2. Maybe your significant other dies

3. A major health problem, and now you don’t have insurance

For many of us — that’s all it would take. You would be in serious peril, and you would rely on loved ones for help or become homeless, waterless, foodless, showerless. How statistically unlikely is that? Not unlikely enough.

If that happened to you, would it be your fault? Absolutely not. Yet we tend to look at homeless people and blame them for their situation. It’s a convenient explanation that helps us justify the suffering we are seeing, and alleviates us of the responsibility to help them. Many times they have an illness. Or they have an addiction. Or maybe they have made some stupid decisions but no one deserves to be homeless. No one deserves it. If you think they do, you are very different from me.

So here we come to the biggest question faced by every government. What services should be provided by the government at the taxpayers’ expense? Should the government provide safety nets to protect people from misfortune?

Socialism 101 - A Little History

Good news: we’re not the first generation of Americans to see this happen, and we have an excellent historical example of how to fix it.

In the 1920s, capitalists had gotten a stranglehold on American consumers. We are told in history classes that everyone was getting rich in the 1920s but that is not true. The poor were totally struggling, the rich were getting fabulously richer … until 1929, when they suddenly weren’t. But along came Franklin D. Roosevelt, who initiated a thing called the New Deal. He ignored the rich, because he was wise enough to know that America’s economy depended on a healthy working class. The “New Deal” was basically a bunch of socialist programs and economic regulations that benefitted the working class and helped lift the United States out of poverty. Not only did it succeed, but the United States became a global economic juggernaut because of it.

Even though the New Deal was so good for America, the rich vehemently opposed it because they had to pay higher taxes, AND because their sneaky ways of making millions by exploiting the working class were thwarted. Wealthy Americans launched an all-out assault on socialist ideas. They formed alliances with parts of the government, the media, and Christianity to employ a propaganda campaign that framed socialism and unions as threats to American values, when in fact they were just a threat to shareholder value. The campaign worked, because today Americans are properly conditioned to recoil from the word “socialism,” even though socialism totally works to their benefit. Even the Democrats rail against Democratic Socialism; you can tell by their reaction to the rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York. This is evidence that they’re part of the dysfunctional capitalist machine.

America is in a very similar place now as it was a hundred years ago. Even though the economy is booming for the rich, it is failing everyone else. Religion, the media, and governmental influencers are all painting a rosy picture about the American economy, but that is a lie.

The United States should learn from FDR. We should at least socialize the bare minimum of infrastructure services that a person needs to remain a functioning member of society no matter what happens to them.

Remember earlier how only three unlucky events things could put you on the streets, and that it would take eleven things to lift yourself out? The BEST initiatives the government could take would be safety nets that provide all 11 of those services—for free—to anyone who needs them. If those 11 services existed for free, you would never have to fear homelessness. These things are in place in highly advanced countries. You’d think that here in America — the “greatest country in the world”— that our citizens could know their country would protect them from the unluckiest of events.

Let’s talk about the actual solution.

Socialism 101 - Democratic Socialism

Remember this?

Democratic Socialism aims to make your life more affordable, and less fraught with risk. It aims to create social safety nets so that no one has to fear hitting rock-bottom like three quarters of a million Americans have.

Democratic socialism isn’t socialism outright. It’s a blend between what we currently have and complete socialism. Capitalistic practices will still be in place, but the government will run specific sectors. Those sectors would be limited only to the social safety net programs I mentioned earlier.

But Socialism has a long way to go to be accepted into the American psyche.

Socialism 101 - The Reactions

You might be thinking “but fear of pain is what keeps Americans working hard. It’s what makes us successful!” That sentiment is what’s been hardcoded into you by buzzwords and propaganda your whole life. Congratulations on correctly executing your programming. No, your hard work makes your CEO successful. Does he work as hard as you do? I doubt it.

You might be saying “I don’t want to have to pay for other people to get free Wi-Fi.” Congratulations again on correctly executing your programming. Wouldn’t you want free Wi-Fi if you became homeless? Why don’t you want other people to have it? Paying taxes for these services is just like saving for a “rainy day” except it’s everyone saving for anyone’s rainy day. And the results are far more efficient.

Some of you are thinking “yeah, if those services exist, everyone would take advantage of them, and that’s what I don’t want to have to pay for.” Congratulations on correctly executing your programming. You’re saying that you’re unwilling to pay for anyone to get those services, and indeed deprive YOURSELF of those services should you ever need them, because of a few people who might take advantage of them. You’re valuing the prevention of fraud over caring for people. Boo. Hiss.

You might be scared of the word socialism because you’ve been taught that it is extreme. Democratic Socialism is not extreme. America is extreme right now.

Once again, we’re way over there to the right, and fixing the status quo means we need to move closer to the middle. To balance. That is what Democratic Socialism would be. We’d be somewhere near where Great Britain or Germany fall on that scale. We need to spend less of our budget on subsidies for the rich, less money for weapons, and spend more money on protecting the people.

So how are we going to fund it? Rich people, that’s how.

Socialism 101 - Noblesse Oblige?

Remember the term “Noblesse Oblige”? That principle implied that the rich were obligated to take care of the rest of us. They used to do things like build libraries or hospitals. But billionaires today are giving less and less of their wealth to charitable causes. Most Forbes 400 members contribute less than 5% of their overall wealth to charity. And 156 of those gave less than 1% of their wealth, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

You might think, at least they’re contributing tax dollars. Nope! In the 1970s the income tax rate for the richest was 70%. But today that has been cut almost in half, to 37%. So they’re not contributing as much, and they’re paying far fewer taxes. Most billionaires find enough loopholes to pay ridiculously low tax rates. In 2023, Jeff Bezos paid an estimated 3.8% of his income in federal income tax. Pretty sweet deal.

So you know what? Fuck those guys. They’re the ones who created this mess, and they did it by exploiting capitalism and exploiting all of us. Tax the rich. Tax them hard. Tax them relentlessly. Noblesse Duress. Use that money to pay for all of us to live healthier lives.

The Government—both Republicans AND Democrats, Corporations, and Religions have all teamed up to prevent that exact outcome. Those institutions have been conditioned to protect the rich and have gotten rich because of it. So, we’re going to have to fight to get it. The first step is to be educated about Socialism and to stop treating it like it’s a dirty word. It might be the only thing that saves us.