Posted on 01/06/2020 12:15:51 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The closer we get to the 2020 election, Democratic presidential candidates support more socialist proposals, and the more that we Venezuelan immigrants experience déjà vu.
We’re all-too-familiar with the rhetoric Democrats have delivered over the course of their campaigns. All candidates endorse a transition to Medicare-for-All in one form or another, higher taxes on Americans, and a fresh wave of regulations and government-guaranteed “rights.” And just recently, Elizabeth Warren seemed to endorse government-provided housing. These are the kinds of measures they hope will bring about a paradise similar to the Left’s beloved Nordic countries. Even so, for Americans used to a liberal government, it can be hard to envision what a democratic-socialist America would really look like.
But I can. I’ve lived it.
I saw my home country go from prosperity to starvation in less than two decades. All because the people were tricked into voting for a candidate who sought to punish the rich and give everything away for free. Sound familiar?
If America buys into the ideas of the Sanders and Warrens of the world, things will go downhill just as quickly.
Imagine: It’s January 20, 2021. The Democratic base showed up in droves for the 2020 election, and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or one of their socialist cohorts has snagged the key to the Oval Office. Within the next four years, they pass their trademark proposals.
Democrats kick everyone off their private insurance and cover them under Medicare. But Medicare-for-all turns out to be Medicare-for-none — older Americans suffer from increased wait times for surgeries and emergency room visits as more people flood the system. The lack of copayments means the number of people who go to the doctor and emergency room without a serious reason skyrocket, crowding out the truly needy. Moreover, Medicare-for-All cuts payments to hospitals by about 40 percent, relative to private insurance. Like in Venezuela, price controls like these force businesses to close. In America’s case, many hospitals in rural and low-income areas can’t make a profit under the new system, so they either go bankrupt or stop accepting Medicare, forcing folks to pay out of pocket or travel to a hospital that does.
The Democrats have to pay for this program somehow, so they increase payroll and income taxes for all workers. Americans suddenly lose, on average, over $5,600 of income per year. And the millennial voters who were so eager to elect a socialist now suffer the most from this. After all, millennials represent the bulk of the workforce, so they bear the brunt of additional taxation while using healthcare less than any other group.
The corporate tax rate that Trump had cut is brought back to life, and there’s a new wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires. China, Mexico, and the Europeans will rejoice as hundreds of thousands of American jobs disappear or move offshore to avoid the higher corporate tax. Businesses borrow more from China since wealthy Chinese investors — many of them tied to China’s brutal regime — aren’t subject to the wealth tax American investors must pay.
Under the new $15 per hour minimum wage, small businesses close shop, and millions of jobs dissipate. Youth and minority unemployment, which reached record-lows during Trump’s presidency, rise dramatically. Venezuela used a similar tactic with a similar, sorry end. After countless minimum wage increases of this kind in Venezuela, they have fewer jobs and more inflation.
High taxes, the minimum wage, and regulations hit the youth especially hard. Despite getting their student debt “forgiven” and going to college tuition-free, once they graduate, young people find out that their college degrees are worthless. Similar to the job market in Southern Europe, more than 1 in 3millennials are now unemployed.
After all of this, America’s economy predictably plunges into a deep recession. Do the Democrats turn back now? No. They pass the Green New Deal and start an expensive transition to renewable energy.
By this point, America boasts an unsustainable budget deficit of many trillions of dollars per year — on top of the trillions of debt, it’s buried under now. In 2024, Americans have learned that “free” things come at a high price, and this massive expansion of government doesn’t end well.
Given full power, Democratic-Socialists would thrust America into an economic nightmare from which it might never escape — not into some Nordic paradise. Venezuelans learned this the hard way. In 2020, Americans can avoid our fate by remembering that free markets, not socialism, lead to prosperity.
Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) is a Young Voices Contributor, Economist, and Venezuelan freedom advocate based in Indianapolis, Indiana.
California’s getting there very quickly.
Don’t they all look alike the world over after 20 or 30 years?
I dunno, my city now looks worse than anything I’ve seen elsewhere in the world, except Cambodia.
Red China and Vietnam are in much better shape.
Remember, in Cambodia they basically killed almost everyone who’s over 35 years of age.
As I read the title, it struck me, somebody had a sale on “would”. :)
Bankruptcy / Insolvency would be a beautiful thing to watch (from a distance, of course) for the likes of IL, CA and NJ. Like the Soviet Union, collapse is the only thing which will change their monolithic government/social bureaucracies and one-party politics.
Would it would look like using "would" would look redundantly would?
You can vote your way into socialism...but you have to shoot your way out.
SOCIALISM: Vote your way in,
shoot your way out.
Like minds!
Politicians wiping their azzes with the Bill of Rights & Constitution ALERT!
And from the others...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEppFUWLfc
It all starts with a lie and escalates from there. Amazing that we made it this far. These charlatans should have been dismissed a long time ago. Political power and propaganda is quite a force.
Well, I’ll let Karl Marx explain it...
BOURGEOIS SOCIALISTS -Even the commies hated them.- Communist Manifesto p.49
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may site Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misere as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements.
Work harder slaves. Socialism is Legal Plunder - Bastiat “The Law”
Our overlords, our BOURGEOIS SOCIALISTS live large, don’t they?
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements.
Builders vs. Looters/destroyers ALERT!
“...Silence like a cancer grows...”
Look at the Green New Deal. This is the Democrat Fascist Party utopia.
We peon are to live in urban tenements, taking mass transit to our government approved job, working at our government directed tasks, eating our government directed diet using our government directed amount of electricity produced by our government run unities
My daughter in law is from Venezuela. PhD teaching at Wake Forest. Father is a surgeon in Orlando. Another son a doctor in Phoenix. They all left that $hithole their country became.
And so many idiots here want America to become Socialist.
Democratic socialism would do far more than bring economic collapse, it will also bring an authoritarian government. Controls over the airwaves and now increasingly over social media will quickly stifle free speech. Look to Virginia to see how the Second Amendment will be attacked. True freedom of religion and conscience will be attacked with “hate speech” laws. I could see a social credit system like is being implemented in China used to ration government services only to those with correct attitudes. Elections could be limited only to preselected candidates.
We need AmerExit. The American states need to sever from the liberal bastions. There’s no other way.
Is the name of the town Pripyat?
Individual state bankruptcies are not going to happen.
If 2008 taught me anything it was that if you show up in the United States Congress with a sufficiently butt-puckering Chicken Little tale of impending doom, you WILL get a bailout.
No, my FRiend, the whole enchilada will have to go down before such a reset, and you and I won’t be around to see it.
Obesity would be cured!
How much would would a wouldchuck chuck if a wouldchuck could chuck would?
Would I? Would I?
Hair lip. hair lip.
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