Why do people in the US want socialism

Decades of conditioning of young minds. The people wouldn't want socialism if the powers that be didn't want the power and influenced the education system to make people think they want it.

Younger people today have been coddled their whole lives. They value being taken care of over liberty.

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Any ideas on why socialist ideas are becoming more popular that our capitalist origins.

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I think that the idea is that capitalism represents the increase in wage gap and helps the already rich. People have become convinced that capitalism is a zero sum game with an equal number winners and losers. Socialism represents the competing ideology that seeks to help the less fortunate and impoverished. This idea resonates with a lot of people, even if I don't believe any of it is true.

Because they have never actually lived in a socialist society. I would LOVE to talk to them and tell them all about it and its ugly aspects. But ignorance is often bliss!

1) we are more then a generation removed from the cold war ending, so the picture of the failures of a controlled economy are far removed from today's youth
2) our academic institutions are flooded with liberal minded instructors, who have an influence on the next generation
3) media is also populated with a liberal lean, so again more exposure to liberal programming
4) the Everyone's a winner/everyone get a trophy mindset, has ill prepared the next generation to cope with the success and failures of that life deals on a regular basis
5) over abundance of federal loans and surplus of useless degrees has cheapened the value of higher education and left a generation strapped with mountain of debt before starting their career or starting a family

the list could go on, but hopefully failures in places like Venezuela will bring the failures of socialism back to the forefront

When I was growing up in communist Romania there was a joke going around: What is the difference between capitalism and communism? Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and communism is the other way around. Not very funny if you ask any of the people who actually live under communism every day!

People want socialism because they are stupid, and it isn't their fault that they are stupid either. The Millenials have especially been socially engineered and brainwashed by the education system, the media and pop culture to be Marxists. They simply do not know any better.

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They value being taken care of over liberty.

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To take this further, Alexis De Tocqueville had a lot to say about Democracy in America and warned of Democratic Despotism. You would think reading this he was talking about communism, but no, he is commenting on what he saw in American Democracy in the early 1800s.

"It would be like the authority of a
parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for
manhood ; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in per-
petual childhood : it is well content that the people should re-
joice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their
happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to
be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it
provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessi-
ties, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal con-
cerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property,
and subdivides their inheritances — what remains, but to spare
them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man
less useful and less frequent ; it circumscribes the will within a
narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself."

Full Text

An excellent podcast on this

Perceived injustices of the past and frankly, many in our society simply envy those who have more but do not want to work for it. They think it is their right to be given that instead of working for it.

As time goes by the system of capitalism we have shows to be culture rot. It is money above all else. It destroys the country. Maybe if we put the brakes on and stopped the globalist, free trade, open borders version we have it would be tolerable. But it puts the economy into hyperdrive using all resources burning the candle at both ends in search of max profit. Fundamentally the economy is hallowed out. Trump will hopefully stay on his promised path to restore its fundamentals. If you aren't making something real you don't have anything important. Services/financials can be moved to another country in an instant. Protectionist capitalism is not bad.