Make A Better Argument

One may be shocked at how open socialists are able to run and get elected in the US. You may be shocked that such persons are in all areas of US society. You shouldn't be. Firstly because it's been a long time coming. Secondly; we have a generation of people who do not understand true poverty and despotism and have only seen the failures of the system under which they live. To people who have seen and lived through the 2008 meltdown and have massive student debt and fear retirement the following sounds very appealing:

Now lets take this piece by piece:

To someone who cannot find a job, or has low job security, how does this sound like a bad thing? To someone who thinks they are being discriminated against in terms of wages?

Again, if you are "poor" and cannot afford to take a vacation because you either don't get vacation days or use your vacation to work a second job, how does this sound bad? You live in the "richest country in the world". Why should the rich be the only people who can afford to go off on vacation and play in clubs and not have to worry about their income?

Once again, who wants to worry about being sick? If you cannot afford to save/invest for retirement why should you worry about old age?

We already have state paid for (via taxes)compulsory primary education. So what's so bad about "free" higher education?

Now that linked video apparently doesn't contain his entire rant so I cannot say whether he addressed those items but if you are honest you cannot say that the examples above are not extremely appealing. You aren't going to convince someone otherwise by simply saying that this is "the Russian dream" or that Stalin said it. That's not an argument. You have to make an argument that is more compelling.

China is a communist country (with an interesting brand of capitalism). China has risen rapidly in the world. Yet it is not a "freedom loving" country. So it shows that a country doesn't have to be "democratic" in order to do well. It also shows that people will accept restrictions on their freedom if they can "see" a certain level of benefits.

The main argument made against socialism/communism is that the money eventually runs out for all the state-run programs. Unfortunately, much of the US population is woefully deficient in knowledge of financial matters. Tax the rich sounds good to them because someone having a billion dollar net worth is unfathomable. Many people think 100,000 is a lot of money until they realize that rent alone in any major city would eat that entire amount up in less than 10 years.

Simply put, there aren't enough rich people, and they don't have enough money to pay for all the programs that people think they want. The "rich" already pay most of the taxes. The top 1% paid $538,257 million in taxes. The top 10% paid $1,240,010 million. The bottom 50% paid $43,863 million. So the whole "the rich don't pay [enough] taxes" really doesn't hold up. Oh and that's income taxes. If "the rich" decide to up and relocate, well there goes most of the taxes. How exactly will these plans be paid for then?

Of course if you tax the rich to the point where they don't make any income, they won't be rich for long (bills don't go away because income has) and you're back to "how do you pay for it". Essentially the state cannot pay for all these programs without the taxes it collects. If it just prints money you get Venezuela where the money is useless. If the money is useless then none of the programs discussed above can be maintained.

I mentioned the 2008 crash. A lot of people were left with a sour taste in their mouths when the banks got bailed out. Personally, I'm in the camp of "let 'em go down and let the chips fall where they may". But another look at this is that a large percent of the population has it's retirement savings in those same banks. Could you look your parents in the eye and say that their 401k should be obliterated in order to stand on principle? Would you crash your own 401K "on principle"? Real question. Indeed there are some very bad things going on in the FIRE segments which should be addressed. But they need addressing. No amount of "Russian dream" and "Stalin said this" is going to convince someone who's been cut by the jagged edges of the American economy that "The Socialists are bad". I'm not going to spend time writing what the "better argument" is because it would take too long. But the argument will need to be made. Freedom doesn't sound all that appealing when one is in deep debt, feels they've been taken advantage of and discriminated against.