How will we be dependent upon the government for our food, if there are farms everywhere?
Socialism has consequences.. it is called Communism.
The best world news this year is the further liberalization of the Cuban economy.
Communism went away in Russia, is going away in China, and looks to be receding even in places like Cuba.
The goal posts have been moved on both ends of the economic spectrum. Yes it's bad news that we are moving further and further away from the possibility of reattaining the moderately regulated free market economy we once had. But it is good news that we are moving further and further away from a communist dictatorship. People are finally wising up to the fact that the Communist model is a failed one.
Unfortunately conservatives have been labeling everything left of ideologically pure libertarianism as socialism. So now everyone calls what they have in Western Europe as socialist when in fact it is just an over-regulated and over-taxed controlled capitalist economy.
That's certainly a bad thing, but at least it's not textbook socialism which no one but a few professors at Harvard are stupid enough to think would actually work in the real world.
Our choices going forward are various forms of capitalism that are regulated, taxed, and rigged by whoever happens to have sufficient money to bribe the right public officials.
It is more regulated, more taxed, and more rigged than we would like, but it isn't socialism and barring some horrible disaster will never be communism.
That is something to be at least moderately happy about.