GUEST COLUMN: The easy way to talk to your young adults about socialism | Community

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Cuba is currently facing its biggest protests against communism in its country. Thousands of Cubans have launched a popular campaign calling for a free market economy and less state intervention.

But what about our children? When you talk to our young people about socialism, they usually say: “you are scary. we want Swedish socialism, not Venezuelan socialism. How could you respond? In two stages.

Step 1 is first to explain concretely why socialism is bad. It is important to remember that most Americans never learn the complete failures of socialism in school. Don’t just say that socialism has failed or that socialism restricts personal freedom, use these concrete numbers below.

Since 1900, socialism has been judged and rejected in Angola, Austria, Armenia, Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bulgaria, Burma, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Cambodia, Congo, China, Czech Republic, Egypt , Ethiopia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, East Germany, Grenada, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Korea, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Madagascar, Mongolia, Macedonia, Mozambique, Moldova, Nicaragua , North Korea, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Venezuela, Sudan, Syria, Sweden, Somalia, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe.

It should be noted that it also failed in the UK and Sweden (1950s-1970s) when both governments experimented with high levels of taxation, ownership and regulation of the means of production.

“In the conviction of our pursuit of freedom, socialism and democracy to achieve a society of sufficiency, justice and equality”, – Preamble to the Constitution of Sudan (1973)

An internet search will show that all of these countries had something similar to this quote in their constitutions at the start of their socialist experiments. Socialism always sounds good, but it never ends well in reality. They failed regardless of time, culture, technology or continent.

Sometimes he even fails on an incredibly bloody scale. Here are the deaths since 1900 associated with the worst socialist delinquents:

USSR: 20 million dead

China: 65 million dead

Cambodia: 1 million dead

North Korea: 2 million dead

Eastern Europe: 1 million dead

Africa: 1.7 million dead

Afghanistan: 1.5 million dead.

This approaches nearly 100 million people killed since 1900 by socialist governments. These conservative estimates are taken from the Black Book of Communism (1999). For comparison, the Nazis killed around 11-20 million people.

Once you have made the failures of socialism a reality by giving your young people the correct number of killed, take the next step.

Step 2 is to explain that every idea that is currently popular with the left in our country is of the failed socialism genre, not the Swedish “socialism” genre.

On the $ 15 minimum wage: Sweden has no minimum wage

On open borders: “If migration levels are so high that integration is no longer successful, we risk other problems,” said Swedish Prime Minister Löfven (2020)

On the 1% tax: Sweden does not tax the rich, it taxes everyone. Sweden’s highest tax bracket, above 50%, starts for people earning $ 70,000 per year. The highest tax bracket in the United States, just under 40%, starts for people earning $ 400,000 a year.

Green New Deal: Sweden ranks first (75.2) in the World Economic Freedom Index. This places them in the top 10% of all countries in the world. This means that their government generally focuses on playing the arbiter of the free market of their private industry instead of picking winners and losers as the Green New Deal proposes.

Public schools: Sweden has a full choice of schools. All parents receive vouchers which can be used to send their children to the school of their choice.

Medicare4All: Medicare4All proposes that the federal government pay for all health services in the country. You would use the doctor or hospital of your choice, and the federal government would foot the bill using the highest tax rates. Sweden, on the other hand, uses choice in its health care system. Their health care system is primarily managed and funded by the county and municipal governments as they see fit. Private health care and insurance are available for those who wish.

Wealth tax: Sweden does not have one.

Universal basic income: Sweden does not have one.

The bottom line is that socialism, in theory and in practice, still looks good on the surface but crumbles on closer inspection. And that will always be the key to arguing against socialism. Discuss the details.

All of the above information can easily be found published in several books or by simple internet searches. Use this article as a starting point to get your young adult to think and research. I encourage you to share this article with all the young adults in your life so that you can educate and encourage the younger generation to move beyond liberal vs. conservative fights and find out the truth.

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