Thomas DiLorenzo - The Problem with Socialism

Praise for

THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIALISM

Like in a bad horror movie, once-dead socialism has come back to life in the United States, capturing the attention of many young people with promises of free things. Our public education system fails miserably in teaching students about the millions of graves filled over the past century by the horrors of socialism. Fortunately, we still have writers like Professor Thomas DiLorenzo to shine light on the socialist lie and guide the youth to the real guarantor of happiness and prosperity: a free society. DiLorenzos book is a pleasure to read and should be put in the hands of every young person in this countryand elsewhere!

Former Congressman Ron Paul

With so many universities having been turned into socialist indoctrination academies, it is a worthwhile investment for parents with college-age children to buy two copies of The Problem With Socialismone for their children and one for themselves.

Walter E. Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, George Mason University and nationally syndicated columnist

Utterly faithful to the first principles of von Mises and Hayek, and consistent with his myth-busting works on Lincoln and Hamilton, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo has given us another fearless masterpiece. In The Problem With Socialism, he skillfully dissects the intellectual bankruptcy and false reality that have been the earmarks of the systemic legalized theft that socialism became wherever it was tried. We already know that rather than freedom, prosperity, and hope, socialism brought chains, misery, and despair. Now we have that history clearly documented in this powerful, unassailable, and readable book which should be mandatory reading wherever Economics 101 is taught.

Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News Channel, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Ever wonder what one book you should give a young person to make sure he doesnt fall for leftist propaganda? Youre looking at it. Tom DiLorenzo smashes socialism in theory and in practice, and in all its poverty-inducing forms. Guaranteed those college socialists dont know any of this materialat most American universities, who on earth would have taught it to them? Dance on socialisms grave by reading this book.

Thomas E. Woods Jr., host of The Tom Woods Show, and author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guideto American History

Copyright 2016 by Thomas DiLorenzo

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Regnery is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation

First e-book edition 2016: ISBN 978-1-62157-597-9

Originally published in hardcover, 2016

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Dedicated to all the victims of socialism

past, present, and future

CONTENTS

As Margaret Thatcher famously said,

the problem with socialism and socialists is,

They always run out of other peoples money.

A quarter of a century after the spectacular collapse of socialism in the Soviet empire, a large segment of the millennial generation of young Americans (those born between 1982 and 2004) thinks socialism may be the wave of their future. A 2015 (Who says the public schools are not teaching the kids much these days?)

A 2016 Pew Foundation poll found that 69 percent of voters under the age of thirty expressed a willingness to vote for a socialist president of the United States; and literally millions of millennials voted for self-described democratic socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic Party primaries in 2016. Sanders won majorities of the under-thirty vote in several major state primaries campaigning on a platform of free higher education, free healthcare, and a vastly increased welfare state.

Did America forget what socialist means, asked one pundit in response to this youthful fascination with neo-Marxism. Apparently so. Just as apparent is the fact that many younger Americans believe that there is a Santa Claus after all (stripped of all his religious significance as Saint Nicholas, of course) who canand shouldgive them free education, free healthcare, free whatever they want, because they deserve it. But government is not Santa Claus and nothing is free. Uncle Sam has not been replaced by Uncle Santa. Someone has to pay for all those doctors, nurses, hospitals, medicines, x-ray machines, ambulances, and everything else associated with healthcare. The public schools are not free either; they are paid for with billions of dollars in property taxes and other taxes imposed by federal, state, and local governments. The same goes for free higher education that is occasionally promised by political demagogues like Senator Sanders.

What socialists like Senator Sanders should say if they want to be truthful and straightforward is not that government can offer citizens anything for free, but that they want healthcare (and much else) to become a government-run monopoly financed entirely with taxes. Taxes hide, but do not eliminate, the cost of individual government programs. No one gets an itemized tax bill denoting how much goes for national defense, how much for the Department of Labor, how much for the Environmental Protection Agency, how much for celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month (established by President Obama in June 2009), and all the rest. Consequently, it is indeed difficult to know exactly how much of ones taxes goes for any particular program. But nothing about government is ever free. According to the Tax Foundation, working Americans toil, on average, until the end of April each yearone-third of the yearjust to pay all the taxes owed to federal, state, and local governments. After that they can begin working for themselves and their families.

Does anyone really believe that turning any industry into a tax-financed, Department-of-Motor-Vehicles-style, government-run monopoly (which is what socialism is) will make things cheaper (or free) instead of substantially more expensive? History and all worldly experience would suggest that the latter is true, and that socialism (government-run monopolies for healthcare or anything else) reduces the quality of products and services offered to the public.

WHAT WE MUST FORGET

In order to have a favorable view of socialism one must have either forgotten what the entire world learned about socialism from the late nineteenth century on, or have never learned anything about it in the first place. The latter is obviously true of much of the younger generation.