I’m moving what I had posted on the Reaction to Abrams’s Speech topic to here because it deserves discussion outside that immediate context.
Recognize that true “socialism" is a quite different approach to governance than the market-based, socially-minded, representative democracy ("social democracy" for short) that Stacy and the Nordic countries represent. Markets have to be controlled when they go askew (e.g.:
(1) recessions require government stimulus,
(2) inflation require monetary control from the Fed,
(3) too high of income inequality (> about 1:100) requires taxes on the rich and/or setting min/max wages,
(4) price collusions among producers require anti-trust action,
(5) soak the desperate (e.g. over priced drugs way over legitimate production/development/testng costs) need price controls,
(6) needed programs that are simply too big/risky for private industries need government led / multiple private business contracted projects (e.g, DoD, the Interstate System under Eisenhower, the Internet (DARPA funded) ...),
(X) maybe more.
But the free market of businesses identifying products, producing them, distributing them is the baseline until (1)- (X) becomes apparent (and there will usually be one or more factors out of control). No responsible economist /politician I’ve heard of denies that government must step in frequently. Like any control system, the economy must be “managed” when it ends up going off the rails; but the underlying force is still free market driven.
True economic “socialism" is where the state dictates (by show of force) the means and sequence of all production from a central body - throwing away the baseline market based competition and democratic elections/legislations. That was tried in the USSR, early Castro’s Cuba, and Maduro in Venezuela. That central body has never been successful in providing food and goods in adequate numbers and availability for their citizenry.
The market-based, socially-minded, representative democracy like in the Nordic countries is working and working well with a far fairer distribution of wages to the populace than we have in the USA today. They are the happiest countries in the world. The 6 rating factors of overall well-being: income (GDP per capita), healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust (absence of corruption) and generosity. USA was number 18 (not bad, but could be better).
Trump tried in the SOTU to conflate “socialism” with "social democracy” (yet curiously gave a small voice to universe health care and an infrastructure program). Do not be fooled and do not listen to Trump or the RW pundits that are funded by those currently receiving high income and have accumulated much wealth (the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 90% of Americans). And they want to keep it.
The current crop of so-called left wing Democratic Presidential candidates are of the "social democrat" sort.
Financial transaction taxes (e.g 0.1%), one-time wealth tax (maybe 5%), greater income taxes on the rich (>50% on income over $1m/year), repatriation taxes (say 2/3 of what they should have been paying) can easily provide the revenue and reduce annual deficits. I’ll be looking for candidates that talk the revenue side of things that will fund the social programs they propose and will reduce the deficit. Bernie did that.
I may in time discuss other things I learn at this class.