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The Villages
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Socialism a bad fit for America

Dennis Petrucelli

“In response to an article detailing Venezuela’ financial meltdown a reader’s response to the editor read, “Obviously Venezuela needs a visit from Messrs. Bernie Sanders and Jerry Brown, Ms. Alexandria Cortez, Ms. Kamala Harris, Ms. Julia Salazar and members of the Democratic Socialist of America to sort things out the socialist way,” -Gerald Kratz, Edwards, Colo. 

At about the same time, the New York Times published an Op Ed concerning President Donald Trump with the intent to inflict lasting damage on Mr. Trump and his presidency. The content of Op Ed was alleged to have been related by an anonymous Trump staffer. The Op Ed content was more of the non-nuanced raving hysteria that has been percolating in progressive circles since Mr. Trump was elected.  Ostensibly, if there is an anonymous staffer, it must have escaped this staffer’s attention that he or she was exposing just the thing he or she claimed to be protecting.  

Clearly, there is one claim that the left has never made against Mr. Trump and that is accusing him of being a socialist.  Frankly speaking the fact, alone, that Mr. Trump isn’t a socialist will move me and a majority to vote for him again in 2020.  I believe this to be true because ideas or ideology run the world.  Good ideology creates wealth and opportunity while bad, oppression and poverty, which underscores this view as witnessed by socialism proven failure time and time again.  

Before proceeding should some mistakenly point to Scandinavian countries as excellent examples of socialism allow me to point out that Denmark, Sweden and Norway are not centrally planned nations because they have free market economies and hence technically not socialist nations such as Cuba, Venezuela etc.  And as to Social Security and Medicare I would submit they are not social welfare programs but insurance programs and recipients have  past and present paycheck deductions to prove it. The only people believing they are entitlements are politicians who unabashedly feel entitled to them at their every whim.

Democratic socialism is the platform that the left is running on. So how does one reason with a person buying into the left’s democratic socialism agenda?  Perhaps by beginning to remind them of Venezuela’s history.

In 1912 the discovery of oil was the impetus that brought this country vast wealth. By 1950 Venezuela had become the fourth highest per capita income country in the world. Unfortunately, and predictably socialism requires and is always accompanied by price and exchange controls, higher taxes and restriction of property right.  Essentially this is the type of government interference that ultimately leads to stagnation, a contracting economy, despotism, corruption, mass emigration, etc. To wit Cuba

This nation’s experiment with socialism occurred back as early as the Pilgrims’ first settlement.  The settlers initially agreed that their efforts would be for the common good and each sharing equally in the harvest and hunting.   It didn’t take but the first spring harvest to discover that some felt more entitled and less motivated than others. Hence, they decided that each family would retain their own harvest and game with an agreement that if their neighbors fell on hard times they would provide a temporary hand up.  

If today’s voters were to follow the left’s democratic socialism agenda then they must accept that the present state of our welfare system is incompatible with the social warfare aspects of say Sweden because we are too diverse a population.  In point of fact Sweden is in turmoil owing to the great influx of immigration and along these same lines.  Essentially the government’s power and resources would dramatically increase while Americans become more dependent on the government for food, clothing shelter, education and healthcare as our over-active and pervasive welfare state continues its guarantees of universal base income, free tuition and recipients make demand of more and better benefits. Does the under funding of public union pensions come to mind?

Now this scenario definitely fits well with the safe space ideology of many on the left.  However, is it a valued trade off? Would for instance a Jim Carrey willingly submit to equal sharing of his estimated $150,000,000 estate? Further, under the guise of democratic socialism vast powers and controls would have to be overseen by elected officials, essentially evolving as central planners and destroying free market solutions.  Private property rights would disappear in favor of government ownership and thus give credence to the slogan” you didn’t build that, we did.”

Suppose the left succeeded in their effort to move this nation to accept democratic socialism?  Then, suppose again, given all the adjectives, verbs, expletives describing Mr. Trump, applied to a newly elected president under democratic socialism.  Hmmm.  Now that would be poetic justice.

Dennis Petrucelli is a resident of the Village of Bonnybrook.

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