Why is socialism becoming increasingly popular in the United States?

Some of the students would agree with you, too.

This is from my favorite student group in America:



Ask a student on a college campus who Karl Marx is, and they will most likely recognize the name. They probably even know he is a central figure to the ideas of communism. Ask a student who Ludwig von Mises is, who F.A. Hayek is, or even who Adam Smith is, and they will look at you in confusion. It is clear that the ideas of free markets is not reaching students in the levels that it needs to be.

https://studentsforliberty.org/group-network-kits/

https://studentsforliberty.org

 

Can't remember where I got this from.

You "never got help from anybody."
Nothing was "handed to you."
All right.
Let's say you scratched and you clawed and climbed the ladder of success. You never took a welfare check or charity, you worked three jobs to get through college. And at the end of it you look back on your labors and feel justified in saying, "I never got help from anybody."
So ... you were never a child? From birth, you were hunting and gathering your own food? You never had a mother to "hand" you milk?
You're completely self-educated? At age 4, you sought out your own knowledge, and paid teachers out of your own pocket?
I don't think you did. I'd have seen something about it on the news.
I think your parents poured untold resources into your hungry mouth. I think you had a roof over your head that was paid for by other people, I think you went to schools that were built and staffed and paid for by other people, I think you felt safe because the streets were patrolled by other people, I think you drove to your three jobs on roads paved by other people, in a car built by other people and burning oil that was drilled by other people in a nation whose borders were defended by other people.
Look, I understand why "I ain't asking for help from nobody!" individualism works as an attitude, or a philosophy. No, you shouldn't wait for help to come along. I'll even agree that we don't impress that message hard enough on kids when they're growing up. Kids, if you're reading this, and you ****ing shouldn't be, but if you are, let me tell you now:
The world doesn't give a **** about you, and you'll have to wrestle it for every good thing you get. Hell, I've written an entire article about how grown-ups don't tell us how freaking hard everything is, and how the shock of unexpected effort trips us up.
But, for the rich, this somehow gets extended to the absolutely delusional idea that they exist on a purely self-sufficient island, in an ocean full of shiftless layabouts always asking to borrow their stuff.

 

If you are unable or unhappy paying off your own debt, look in the mirror to see the cause. Your irresponsibility is not my responsibility.

 

Your comments are properly directed at the person to whom I was replying. I agree with you.

 

Irony ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

State schools and community colleges are not really expensive if you account for student aid, scholarships, etc. PRIVATE Universities are expensive, which sucks, but no one has to go there. That's a privilege if you can afford it or EARNED it. Even wealthy average kids can't BUY their way into a University anymore. You need REAL wealth, like donating 1/2 million or more under the table type of wealth and that's the extreme minority. Doesn't impact you in the slightest.

It's not Boomer advice. Its hard work advice coming from a GenXer. It took 8 yrs for me to pay my loans off and I worked a little in school too.

 

The colleges are unnecessarily expensive as it is, one textbook alone can be $200, after college debt is never told to students and inflation is rampant, but sure we’re the thieves.

okay chief

 

What do you mean when you say "after college debt is never told to students"?

Did you not sign the loan documents? Did you think it was going to pay itself?

 

Not me specifically but lots of people are never told they need to take out loans.

 

LOL - There's definitely a pattern. Have you ever noticed how most of the "great" socialist ideologues throughout history eschewed hard work and dirty jobs themselves? Most of them were affluent intellectuals who viewed the working class as ignorant pawns to be pushed around their personal and ideological chess boards. Look at bourgeois intellectual Karl Marx - one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pseudo-intellectual hypocrites and frauds of all time.

 

Im okay with this

 

The phrase "Dictatorship of the proletariat" seemed vague on the surface, but if the effete socialists had really met the working people would be in charge, they would have said, "Dictatorship by the proletariat."

 

The country is breaking up into blue and red. I'll stay with the responsible, red folks. Socialism isn't gaining any ground here.

 

What does this even mean? Never told they had to take out loans? People that need loans know damned well they do not have money to pay the tuition without a loan. If they don't understand this, college is perhaps not the right place for them. The world needs ditch diggers too.

What are you trying to convey here?

 

In a very simple and general but accurate way the appeal of socialism is natural. You tell the people they will have good paying jobs, there won't be a massive income differential, they will have housing, clothing and the food they need, the government will produce everything else the public needs, the government, not greedy capitalists, will run things, and individual freedom and elections will be preserved, the vast majority will say that sounds terrific. The average citizen is pretty stupid (and, as George Carlin says, 50% are dumber than that) and welcome and support such professions. It is pretty much the natural progression of societies and economies.

It is not until it is evident that there cannot be a socialist economy without a totalitarian government (as aptly explained by Hayek) that takes away a ton liberty of the people, even if the originators and founders honestly abhorred totalitarianism, and they see they are not getting as much as they wanted or thought, that they start having second thoughts. Even then, as Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence, people will take a lot of suffering and grief before they are willing to try to change it and it will survive a long time. However, by the time they realize socialism is not really what they thought it was and do not want it any more, the totalitarian government's grip is so tight any effort to change the system back will be quickly snuffed out.

This is why capitalism and free private enterprise, like freedom, requires eternal vigilance (so said Reagan, Goldwater, and others).

 

That is really weird. I can't comprehend it. Do these people also not understand how a credit card works? They just pay for stuff with a card but no money changes hands? Its all free? I don't get it. They signed these loans. They saw the loan amount. They saw what the payments would be, and could see estimations how long it takes to pay it back if you pay THIS number or THAT number. I truly can't fathom people signed all those papers without a CLUE how it worked. That is mind boggling!!!

 

Lucky you, paying off your loans in 8 years. Not all of us are as lucky or whatever as you are nor are we living in the same time from when you went to college.

 

Credit card debt =/= college student loans

 

If you want to know why Socialism will never work on a large scale then just watch the netflix movie THE PLATFORM. The whole thing is actually supposed to be an anti-capitalism metaphor but IMO it shows that you will never have all people on board to contribute their fair share

 

Simple, students are told a lot of things when going to college but not all of them, or not told the full details. Or weren’t privy to unforeseen events like say, a recession.

 

I love all that philosophical psychobabble, but I like to keep it simple. Working hard is hard. Getting free stuff is easy. People, like electricity and water, take the path of least resistance. Most of them have no problem having a mommy for life.

 

Are you trying to say that a person that does not have money to pay tuition does not know they therefore need to take out a loan if they still want to go?

This is utterly absurd.

 

Because it's the better socio-economic system.
I mean real socialism, not "commie" socialism.
Socialism is about cooperation, not power grabbing.

 

Where is the data showing that socialism is becoming increasingly popular in the US?

At least in Europe, it seems that far right populism is on the rise, whereas the left wing is in slow decline.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/populism-science-people-marine-le-pen/


My guess is that this is similar in the US. As I've said in another thread, finding the MAGA flag waving types is easy. Finding a communist or socialist on the other hand? I haven't met a communist in my whole life. However, the commie fear will never go away.