While I was watching the news about a month ago, I thought I saw during coverage of the DSA Convention a sign that said, “Try Socialism.” Now those of us who have taken time to review the history of socialism (and its brother, communism), know that it doesn’t usually end well and includes the deaths of millions over the years.
But given the rise of false promises and those who unfortunately believe in the same, I began to ask myself: Does our side need to adjust our tactics and find something that on the surface has similar features, but with a capitalistic backbone?
In other words, could “faux socialism” save capitalism?
In a day when younger people are being lured away by the siren of “free stuff” and class warfare, I do wonder where we are headed both as a state and as a country.
As I was visiting with someone, somehow we got into the discussion of people with means and this person said, “No one needs millions of dollars to live, that extra money should be given to the poor.”
So I decided to test his theory. “Ok then,” I said, “Let’s say your father makes a million dollars with his business, should that be taken from him by the government and given to the poor?”
He immediately said, “But that’s his money. They shouldn’t take his money.” And I saw the light go off in his head as I just made him realize how ridiculous the earlier statement becomes when it affects you personally.
There would be few to argue that no taxes are needed to run a government, but the argument breaks down when it comes to how big a government should be and who should pay for it.
When I was in the KY House of Representatives, we used to joke that most people would say, “Don’t tax him, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.”
But if we fail to acknowledge that the siren of “free stuff” is very alluring, especially to those who are young and those who struggle to make ends meet, then we definitely will stumble as a country going forward.
So, can “faux socialism” minimize the problem? Perhaps. Different people define “faux socialism” differently, but I would define it as something that on the surface looks as if it is a socialistic program, but when done correctly, embeds capitalistic incentives to help people eventually free themselves from the entanglements of government-run benefits.
One example was when I wrote about an optional Medicare buy-in at 15% of income above poverty. One of my daughters said she looked at Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan and said they were similar, except that he had the buy-in at 8% and his wasn’t optional.
That makes sense. When I was testing my plan with AI, it kept wanting me to use 8% to 10%, but that was because it wanted people to stay on it forever, whereas mine wanted to eventually transition them back to private or employer insurance.
A second example would be a new proposal from Vice President J.D. Vance to shift some funds that are currently used to assist working parents with childcare to direct payments to one parent in a two-parent household when one parent works at least 35 hours a week and falls within certain income guidelines. Estimates would be up to $9,000 a year per person.
Years ago, I read an article that when a wife goes to work, by the time you calculate all the additional expenses, the family generally only brought home about 11% more than if she did not work at all. So, I could see this proposal as a possible way to strengthen the family unit.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there are already many social programs that I believe were initially intended for good, but have only served to entrap people and make them even more dependent on the government.
There are some of these programs that have already been set up to have individuals at least partially fund benefits like Medicare for seniors and Social Security, both of which people pay into during the course of their life. Had those been better managed by government, we might not see problems on the horizon.
But for programs like Medicaid, SNAP (Food stamps), government housing, etc., that are based on “need” and not necessarily on previous payments into the system, we must take a hard look at how to free people. If we work to put capitalistic incentives into these programs that allow for an offramp instead of a cliff, the better off this country will be and the better we can blunt the siren of “free stuff.”
Because if you think things are expensive now, just wait until they are “free.”
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