When "Socialism" destroyed our democracy... Faceborg meme

 Posted by a FB friend:

It seems to us that the vulgar summary dismissal contained in this meme is inappropriate, since it is certainly true that these programs are bankrupting us. 

First, let's define socialism. The classic definition of socialism is the state ownership of  the means of production. There is a three-faced rebuttal offered by the political Left

1. they will deny we have any aspect of socialism because of the classic definition - the government doesn't own the means of production. 
2. they will extoll the virtues of socialism by claiming that socialism is already at work, naming Social Security, the GI Bill, and fire and police departments as expressions of Socialism.
3. while asserting socialism is at work in society, they blame all the economic woes on capitalism. 

We would assert that aspects of socialism are indeed at work in our society, and are in fact the reason we have huge deficits and staggeringly huge economic wealth transfers that have solved nothing. 

Further, government no longer needs to own the means of production to push the socialistic agenda, for controlling the means of production is a defacto ownership. And, there are certain corporations who are happily doing the government's bidding: suppressing speech, censoring debate, and punishing those who don't hold to The Narrative. Thus, government doesn't need to own what it controls.

This goes well beyond the legislative control of the processes of factories and businesses, it includes taxing productivity. Not only does government lay claim to a percentage of a business's income, it does this with each worker as well. This carries an implicit assumption that government has a right to that money. So both a business and a worker's means of production is being taken from them, which as a matter of logic means their money does not belong to them. Therefore, if the result of someone's labor production does not belong to him, the government owns it and simply decides how much it wants to take.

Government has no money of its own, so it must engage in taxation to fund its operations. Those operations which allocate taxed money to beneficiaries (the poor, the retired, the sick) are redistributions, i.e. money taken from one person and given to another. And redistribution is at the heart of socialism.

This means the attributes of socialism can and do manifest in capitalist societies even if the government doesn't own the means of production. We can therefore correctly deem certain features of government activity as socialistic in nature, though the economic and political environment might not be officially socialistic.

Let's look at the results of these socialistic government activities. 

• The current national debt is $28.7 trillion, a substantial portion of which went to provide bailouts, stimuli, and "shovel ready jobs." 
• Social Security as a percentage of the federal budget was 0.29% of the budget in 1940. This has been steadily climbing to 23% in 2019. 
• Various federal health insurance programs, like ACA, Medicare, and Medicaid, account for 25% of the budget. Another 8% goes to various other "safety net" programs, like SNAP (food stamps), school meals, low-income housing assistance, child care assistance, and help meeting home energy bills...

At least 56% of current expenditures are "socialism," i.e., wealth transfers by means of the federal government tax system. This of course does not include state programs. And those numbers continue to grow. Social Security Trust Fund outlays are exceeding income. Medicare will be insolvent in just a few years. 

Further, the assets of the Social Security Trust Fund are comprised of special bonds that can only be purchased from the government by the Trust Fund. This means there is no cash in the Trust Fund, only non-marketable IOUs which the government must pay back. Here's how that works: When money comes into the Trust Fund, the government sells a debt instrument to the Fund and transfers the cash to the general fund, which then gets spent. 

This means there is no money in the Fund. It is additional debt, above the $28.7 trillion. That money has to be paid back, and we can't afford it. The Social Security unfunded liability is projected to be 17.5 trillion dollars.   

So there is the national debt, the Social Security debt, and various other unfunded promises like pensions, which means The total amount of the unfunded liability comes out to just over 100 trillion dollars, or approximately $33,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

It should be clear that the federal government is in serious financial trouble, largely due to socialistic wealth redistribution. A large portion of that trouble is related to uncontrolled spending. Revenue has generally increased at a rate exceeding inflation over the past few decades, so it would be disingenuous to claim that we need to increase taxes. Increasing taxes has never lowered the national debt. The problem is and always has been a spending problem.

These wealth transfer programs are out of control, likely unsolvable, and ought to be phased out as a failed experiment. Socialism has never worked, and will never work.