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As I say to my left-leaning friends: hey, you know what we should socialize? The money supply. (My right-leaning friends aren't ready for that conversation yet.)
Some of rich eating may happen, but blood of landlord refresh tree f socialism etc etc... sometimes you just slap the reset button when accumulation out of control
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/243362/meani...
Note, this article is from 2018 and the situation hasn't exactly improved...
Sweden is not socialist, it's capitalist. A large portion of the budget goes to welfare programs, just like the USA.
You mean soviet-like socialism. Socialism is older and broader than bolchevism.
See Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.
Lots of people detest socialism until you show them how they’re already benefitting from it. I’m not even really pro-socialism, except in the simplified case where you have a number line with “capitalism” on one end, “communism” on the other, and “socialism” as the range in the middle. I definitely wouldn’t want to live on either end of that spectrum, and a mixed economy where private enterprise handles wants with a government handling needs for those who can’t do it on their own — i.e. socialism — is a reasonable alternative.
79 percent of U.S. adults said Social Security benefits shouldn’t be reduced in any way according to Pew. 87 percent of Americans agree that Social Security should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits, according to NIRS.
66 percent believe the government should be responsible for ensuring Americans have health coverage (90 percent for Democrats and left-leaners), according to Pew.
In the most recent years I feel the same about our lefts.
But imho left/right don't make any sense any more and have very little connection to their historical roots.
Look at how the conservative party went into ballooning the debt and spending, something they have been historically very against. Or how European rights are more financially supportive of the poorest parts of the society than the lefts.
Policies and trends are changing.
Yet we're stuck in this nonsense bipolarism when every other adult has many thoughts on many topics that don't really overlap with either of the two poles.
Unfortunately, when you've got 2 choices, one being "Let's round up the pinkos" and the other being "Nothing will fundamentally change", the actual Leftists have to choose the lesser of two evils.
If you look at what Mamdani, arguably the face of American Socialism, is doing in NYC, it's basically deciding to hold businesses accountable for breaking laws and noticing where markets have failed to provide core needs in the city.
Thats not socialism. It's vaguely a redistribution layer on top of capitalism. The article contrasts S. with C. which is also wrong.
Eg. inheritance tax does not restrict free enterprise, but the devil is in the details.
>Thats not socialism
That is literally the most bare and core definition of socialism.
What makes you think that they aren't?
That's not the definition of socialism in any case.
Please, Mister or Missues Vanguard of Leftist Vocabulary, enlighten us on what "Socialism" really means.
In many cases it very much is the definition of socialism.
For what it's worth, apart from the migrant scare, PiS, the far-right friends of Trump, made a comeback in Poland in 2016 by promising and delivering 500+ which was an unconditional payout for parents.
And what Trump did give Americans? Half-assed tariffs which destroyed many businesses and individuals, and which were overturned anyway. Destruction of many jobs in the federal sector. Expensive fuel. And so on.
Nobody does that. If it seems to you like they are, then that tells you that those people see their interests differently than you do. And it should be a sign that perhaps you don't understand their interests as well as you think you do, because odds are that people understand what's in their best interest better than outsiders.
Modern socialism: "You'll own nothing and be happy".
No need to be racist because young people have observed that capitalism has failed (fertility rates for all races in the US are converging at historic lows because childbearing decisions are memetically influenced. they are shaped by the decisions peers make and the examples they see around them in everyday life [per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230576 post contents], but let us save that for another thread, cut a new one if you'd like and we can cover that ground there).
A bit of cognitive dissonance imho that wealthy people and capitalism supporters thought the capital aggregation machine could run forever based on decomposing the existing system state when a majority of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their incomes and the only thing that would fix that would be their income going up. Support for unions is also at record highs, for obvious reasons.
Olds will keep aging out (~2M/year 55+ cohort), young people will keep supporting socialism as long as capitalism in its current form keeps squeezing them for profits with nothing left to show for it (~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities). Lots of wealth comes from systemic economic exploitation, and progress is being made to reduce that economic exploitation. If it destroys wealth, that's fine, wealth is not the target, quality of life is. Wealth is undemocratic power and control beyond a threshold.
> Most notably, positive ratings of capitalism and free enterprise are higher among older than younger age groups, while positive views of socialism are lower. Adults aged 18 to 34 view socialism more positively than capitalism (57% vs. 43%, respectively), while those aged 55 and older view capitalism more positively than socialism by an even larger margin (65% vs. 34%). Adults aged 35 to 54 rate the two systems about the same.
Older folks got lucky with asset appreciation and good cashflow opportunities (needed to acquire assets that appreciated) over the last 50 years, and so they're happy with the dysfunction because it worked out for them. They will support capitalism through their rigid mental model and their votes (and therefore, political influence) until they age out and are replaced through electorate turnover with younger people who were not so lucky and so have different socioeconomic views based on the current macro and the forward trajectory versus history.
Citations:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xyWs8/gallupchart.png
In 2025, 49 percent of adults under age 30 lived with a parent [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810905 - September 2026
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700907
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357337
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529387
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620
(think in systems, almost the same system as religious folks rapidly aging out in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 ; capitalism is just another religion and belief system aging out)