Socialism, Let's Do it, Please?

Socialism, Let's Do It, Please?
by Lisa Macafee

I have a problem with perspective taking.  It’s an autistic thing.
 
For example.  I assume that everyone who passingly knows me, knows that I have a deep-seated conviction for socialist ideals and social justice.  It’s not like I have it tattooed on my forehead, so many people don’t know this.  
 
You could say that socialism is a special interest of mine.  I cannot fathom how people don’t see this as the objectively superior economic system with which to distribute wealth. 
 
For anyone who doesn’t know how socialism works, it gives to each according to what they need.  40% taxes on most and those who make over $200,00 are taxed almost everything in surplus of that.
 
This pays for free medical care for all, reduced housing costs, free public transportation, free college and university. 
 
There are still wealthy and less wealthy folk, but it’s a difference of one nice house, a timeshare, and three nice cars instead of 16 nice houses and 34 nice cars. 
 
At the point of wealth inequality that the United States experiences, I’m tempted to root for a French Revolution style change!  No one deserves, needs, or should have so much when children go without food or heat in the winter.  No one deserves such excess when children suffer.  Everyone should have a nice place to live, and I have no problem redistributing wealth.  Yes, I would lose some of my wealth.  No, that does not bother me.
 
100% worth it.  Because.  Crime is dramatically reduced when people aren’t struggling to make ends meet and failing.  When people have opportunities to go to school to get a career they enjoy and not be forced into indentured servitude to do so.  When the edge of desperation is removed from people’s lives who choose between dinner and heat tonight.  Things… are better.  Teen pregnancies decrease.  The state pays for rehabilitation instead of prison (which reduced recidivism and increases productivity). 

Poverty. Does. Not. Exist.  
 
I remember my mother being angry and sad that my brother had turned on the air conditioning in summer.  It would cost almost $20, she said, aghast after having worked until 2am the night previous.
 
I remember my father drinking himself into a stupor every night because he couldn’t provide for his family in the way he had been indoctrinated that he should.
 
I remember my mother taking me school shopping for the new year and spending $100 for clothes and I could see how proud she was to be able to do this.
 
I remember my mother teaching us how to collect food from the dumpster in back of Long’s Drugs that wasn’t “bad”, it just wasn’t “best by” anymore.
 
I remember learning to sew so that I could make my own clothes.
 
I remember getting a job at 15 and working full-time at 17 to be less of a burden.
 
I remember when my first friend committed suicide because they couldn’t get a job that made them feel competent.  I remember when the second friend died of a heroin overdose.  The third friend died in a dangerous job accident he had because he was a felon.  The friend who was blinded in a drug-related accident.
 
I remember too much pain and suffering from being poor.
 
I remember thinking that everyone knew all this.  I still think everyone knows all this.  Of course, they didn’t and don’t.  Perspective taking.
 
Then I discovered socialism and that there were countries that didn’t allow their people to live with such pain.  HOW COULD WE NEGLECT OUR OWN?!  I didn’t understand how there could be a way to avert the suffering of children, and we just choose not to do it.
 
Selfish.  Mean.  Cruel.
 
In college, I chose to study abroad in Sweden (paid for with student loans – best choice ever!) so that I could live in a socialist country and see if it really worked.  I fell in love.  If it wasn’t sub-zero for much of the year, I would probably have moved there.  Socialism worked.  I took the free bus everywhere - most people did.  It was clean and safe and no one understood why Americans felt the need to drive their own car places.  I asked people about their taxes and housing costs.  I asked about poverty, to which they wrinkled their noses, as if I’d asked them about public executions (they don’t have poverty like we do). 
 
There is a better way.  We can take care of one another.  Please, let’s do.  Children haven’t done anything to deserve the horrors our society inflicts on them.  Let’s be better and do better. 

​For anyone wondering, it has not always been this way – things have changed dramatically since the 1950s when top US incomes were taxed 75%

​The poorest have less than nothing while the wealthy have more than they anyone could ever need.

​When viewed in fifths, you can see how people below 80% would be largely unaffected by the increased taxation of socialism, and how the last 1% has almost 40% of the nation's wealth.