For anyone who still has an open mind about these things, the fact is that hardly any Democrat wants socialism. Government control of our lives and the resulting loss of personal freedoms is certainly not what the Democrats have in mind. They are American patriots after all.
The idea that the Democrats would take over the Senate and Presidency on January 20, 2021 and that within a short period of time this country would become a socialist nation like Venezuela or even Sweden is both ridiculous and hysterical. So many laws would have to be passed, so many lawsuits would have to be argued and won, so much civil disobedience would have to be overcome – it just isn’t going to happen. No matter what is being claimed to the contrary, support for true socialism is most assuredly not found within the Democratic Party, except for a few outliers.
However, our current economic system is not doing so well. You can see it in the number of homeless people and the mentally ill, the number of unemployed and underemployed, our widespread drug addiction problem, our declining standard of living, our loss of life satisfaction, rises in obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the increase in left-wing and right-wing hate groups, the rejection of common good in favor of individual anarchy, a willingness to believe the worst about each other. All of this stems from our economic system that generates more wealth than any other but is so willing to abandon so many Americans to lives of desperation and insecurity. There is a sense of foreboding and frustration and anger that so many of us feel. From the abandoned rural areas of the country to the abandoned urban areas of the country, people know that something is wrong.
This is what the progressive Democrats are trying to talk about, but they just can’t seem to find the right words to explain themselves without going down rabbit holes and alienating, frightening and angering many people that would otherwise support the cause.
We don’t need socialism, we need social democracy. This is the idea that society’s interests should be taken into consideration as a moderating influence to capitalism’s profit motive. It does not mean eliminating the profit motive entirely in favor of some theoretical kumbaya-based Marxist system that no one except a few extreme ideologues really want. Hard work, entrepreneurship, relative value of labor, and creativity still need to be recognized and rewarded for any economic system to be acceptable. We just need our economic system to be brought back into balance.
Social democracy is not a radically new idea. As a historical simplification, society’s interests were part of business and political decision-making from the end of World War I until the early 1970’s, encompassing both Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society. The income tax was instituted early on during this time to address gross disparities in wealth that had developed from monopolies in oil, steel, and railroad transportation. This worked well for most, but then the ideas of the economist Milton Friedman and the theory of Reagan’s trickle-down economics gained favor in the 1970’s. Profit for shareholders and upper management became the overriding business consideration, employees became overhead instead of assets, and politicians became dependent on political contributions from business interests to stay in power instead of from the support of their constituents.
The 1970’s is when everything changed for most of us, meaning the working class and the small business owners that make up 99% of all Americans – those who make less than $450,000 per year, more or less. The 1970’s meant no more gold watches, no more pensions, no more unions. Tax cuts and tax breaks only for the rich and well-connected. The rise of the millionaires and then the rise of the billionaires.
A recent report by the Rand Corporation suggests that if we had simply stayed on course with social democracy, the average family’s annual income would be $95,000 instead of the $50,000 that it is today. What a difference this would have made to us both individually and to the country as a whole.
The last 50 years has seen an incredible transfer of our collective wealth from 99% of Americans to the upper 1%. It has even become necessary to create a new 0.1% category to describe the uber-wealthy. While many people object to the idea of income redistribution from the wealthy to the working class as being unfair to the wealthy, very few take into account the extreme income redistribution that has already occurred and has resulted in this current concentration of wealth.
It is a testament to the seductive persuasion of the rich and powerful how so many Americans in the 99% have been convinced to vote against their self-interest time and time again, and it certainly appears that this is going to happen again in this election as well. After 50 years of stagnated economic gains for nearly all of us, it would be reasonable to assume that we are all tired of the status quo and want our country’s economic wealth to start being shared fairly. Unfortunately, many people have been convinced that change will only make things worse, not better, and they will make their decisions out of fear and not from logic and faith.
Taking it to the extreme, according to Forbes magazine, the top 10 wealthiest Americans are now worth nearly 800 billion dollars. This is more or less the equivalent of the skinny bill that the Republicans in the Senate have been trying to pass as Covid-19 relief for the entire country.
How unbalanced is the current distribution of wealth? Consider –
The top 2 wealthiest American individuals are worth more than all of the Black households combined.
The top 3 wealthiest American individuals are worth more than all of the Latino households combined.
How can this be justified by anyone?
This current concentration of wealth has lead to a situation where, if you are young and black or Latino (not to mention Native American), there is a strong likelihood that you will never achieve the American dream. Even if you are young and white or Asian, there are insufficient opportunities to go around. So much talent and creativity and vitality is being wasted by our current economic system. So much economic hopelessness is being created instead.
This is why extreme income inequality has to be addressed before it really gets out of hand and further destabilizes and divides our country. This is why social democracy should be welcomed and supported by the 99% of us who have been paying the economic price for decades. America will never be a socialist country, but it can certainly be a more equitable one.