Always good to see minorities making progress to increase their population numbers.
No need to be racist because young people have observed that capitalism has failed (fertility rates for all races in the US are converging at historic lows because childbearing decisions are memetically influenced. they are shaped by the decisions peers make and the examples they see around them in everyday life [per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230576 post contents], but let us save that for another thread, cut a new one if you'd like and we can cover that ground there).
A bit of cognitive dissonance imho that wealthy people and capitalism supporters thought the capital aggregation machine could run forever based on decomposing the existing system state when a majority of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their incomes and the only thing that would fix that would be their income going up. Support for unions is also at record highs, for obvious reasons.
Olds will keep aging out (~2M/year 55+ cohort), young people will keep supporting socialism as long as capitalism in its current form keeps squeezing them for profits with nothing left to show for it (~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities). Lots of wealth comes from systemic economic exploitation, and progress is being made to reduce that economic exploitation. If it destroys wealth, that's fine, wealth is not the target, quality of life is. Wealth is undemocratic power and control beyond a threshold.
Most notably, positive ratings of capitalism and free enterprise are higher among older than younger age groups, while positive views of socialism are lower. Adults aged 18 to 34 view socialism more positively than capitalism (57% vs. 43%, respectively), while those aged 55 and older view capitalism more positively than socialism by an even larger margin (65% vs. 34%). Adults aged 35 to 54 rate the two systems about the same.
Older folks got lucky with asset appreciation and good cashflow opportunities (needed to acquire assets that appreciated) over the last 50 years, and so they're happy with the dysfunction because it worked out for them. They will support capitalism through their rigid mental model and their votes (and therefore, political influence) until they age out and are replaced through electorate turnover with younger people who were not so lucky and so have different socioeconomic views based on the current macro and the forward trajectory versus history.
(think in systems, almost the same system as religious folks rapidly aging out in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 ; capitalism is just another religion and belief system aging out)
In my view, it's not that socialism with a lowercase s as defined by worker ownership of the means of production has gotten way more popular, it's that "Socialist" has shifted to mean New Deal Democrat as the Democratic party has shifted towards being the party of business interests.
If you look at what Mamdani, arguably the face of American Socialism, is doing in NYC, it's basically deciding to hold businesses accountable for breaking laws and noticing where markets have failed to provide core needs in the city.
That is a perfectly workable definition of socialism. Literally textbook. I would expect any red-blooded Leftist to agree with the statement "The means of production belong in the hands of the proletariat", or they're just fucking posers.
Please, Mister or Missues Vanguard of Leftist Vocabulary, enlighten us on what "Socialism" really means.
I think you fell for the typical right wing propaganda trope where socialism=marxism=communism. You presented the textbook definition of that propaganda and of communism.
This is the “propaganda” sponsored by most leftists, though?
Except not equality - stepping stones. Socialism is supposed to lead to communism, per Marx. That’s not a right wing take, unless you consider Karl Marx a conservative.
Communists call leftists "reformists", that think you can reform capitalism into a stable state (like i do). If you rest there, you are not a communist but a socialist, so its not a stepping stone.
I mean, those of us with Marxian biases define it that way -- not right wingers -- and see "social democrats" in the 21st century as being the people who successively turned the term to mean instead anything-where-government-does-stuff. That's effectively what it came to mean in the US.
Notably, the definition given by Marx and other 19th century socialists (worker controlled production) is doesn't even have to involve government or the state at all. It just came to mean that once proximity to power came into play. The "soviet" word merely meant local worker councils, not a state form, for example. But once the Bolsheviks took state power, the power of the actual soviets was successively demolished in favour of a centralized one party state.
So, notably: Self-called "Marxist-Leninists" in the USSR, and Social Democrats (or "democratic socialists" in the US), and Right-wingers all far prefer the term to mean "government controls things." The latter because they can then point fingers and call things authoritarian (but somehow exempt corporate power from critique).
But it is not at all clear that 19th century socialists .. from Proudhon through Marx etc -- who coined the term -- meant this at all.
Also this hard line between "communism" and "socialism" is fictitious and very schematic. All communists call themselves socialists, and almost none of them agree on what that means.
Social democrats trying desperately to sound respectable clearly want a nice hard line there. But they also have no intention of bringing about socialism.
These are overloaded terms at this point which is part of the reason so few actually comprehend.
Even Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism can mean different things depending on the context and interpretation which is another part of the collective confusion.
If we had clear definitions, it *might* irradicate the confusion, but I don't see that happening in the forseeable future.
There's too much at stake for every involved party to clear things up.
These are overloaded terms at this point which is part of the reason so few actually comprehend.
this is perhaps the smallest of all possible reasons that "few actually comprehend" :) yes, the left is good at eating itself, but that self-destruction is not without a lot of external assistance!
Cooperatives are a capitalist mimicry of communism but not quite identical, but thats irrelevant.
Socialism is a broad collection of ideas around wealth distribution with alot of degrees of freedom, which leaves enough room to confuse ot with communism, i guess.
I jist checked the "bare definition" of socialism and a shiver went down my back when i saw the first eng wiki paragraph
characterized by social ownership of the means of production
... incorrect propaganda on the wikipedia.
In the german article, its more accurate "there is not clear definition".
Its a familiy of ideas around wealth distribution with many degrees of freedom. Its not incompatible to capitalism, like communism is. I gues the eng wiki article is meant trigger stereotypes with "means of production".
I already gave one, inheritance tax, since its not tied to economic activity.
When you think the "survival of the fittest" nature analogy of capitalism further, then there should be no inheritance. All value that you have accumulated over your life (nutrition) is redistributed on your death into the environment, so in that analogy, capitalism shouldnt allow inheritance at all.
There are many more options of wealth distribution, which effect more wealthy people than the working class and in small-ish quantitiea, all of them are compatible with capitalism. Again, the devil is in the details.
The Dems have never called themselves leftist. They are quite eager to point out that they are the Neoliberal party: “We’re capitalist, and that’s just the way it is,” - Nancy Pelosi.
Unfortunately, when you've got 2 choices, one being "Let's round up the pinkos" and the other being "Nothing will fundamentally change", the actual Leftists have to choose the lesser of two evils.
As an European I always found your left very conservative.
In the most recent years I feel the same about our lefts.
But imho left/right don't make any sense any more and have very little connection to their historical roots.
Look at how the conservative party went into ballooning the debt and spending, something they have been historically very against. Or how European rights are more financially supportive of the poorest parts of the society than the lefts.
Policies and trends are changing.
Yet we're stuck in this nonsense bipolarism when every other adult has many thoughts on many topics that don't really overlap with either of the two poles.
That's because we don't really have a left, not since Ronald Reagan. Clinton was more conservative than Nixon, and Obama was more conservative than Clinton.
I'm sure we will. And, like with mutations, the default assumption for a random change isn't very good. In this case, the historical record points to worse-than-random outcomes.
In Sweden we often think of our selves as socialist. I suspect it means something very different across the pond. Anyone care to elaborate on the differences?
The word “socialist” was strongly associated with the USSR in the Cold War era United States. Anyone advocating for socialism was dismissed as a red pinko commie spy.
See Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.
Very true. I’ve started talking to older generations about their Socialism Security checks. “That’s different! The government taxes me and then… uses it… to support me when I’m not making money… Oh.”
Lots of people detest socialism until you show them how they’re already benefitting from it. I’m not even really pro-socialism, except in the simplified case where you have a number line with “capitalism” on one end, “communism” on the other, and “socialism” as the range in the middle. I definitely wouldn’t want to live on either end of that spectrum, and a mixed economy where private enterprise handles wants with a government handling needs for those who can’t do it on their own — i.e. socialism — is a reasonable alternative.
Social Security is a really bad example though. It doesn’t support a living wage, and everybody depending on it would have been better off if they could have invested those taxes instead.
The Ruling Class in the US has long been effective at influencing public opinion and behavior with boogeymen: communism, socialism, woke-ism, and so on. Mention publicly funded healthcare to 1000 random Americans, and the response from 950 of them is gonna be "Socialized medicine is bad!", and nothing else.
Socialism in the US is currently a slur that you use to discredit your opponents, it’s not interrogated to mean anything useful. You are expected to be violently opposed to socialism while being completely dependent upon social programs. The point is to make the contradiction seem normal.
Socialism means different things depending on where you are, even within Europe. For some socialism is the same as communism, for others socialism simply means social-democracy.
In a lot of American discourse, it honestly seems like the baggage surrounding the term is more of an issue than the policies being debated that are labelled "Socialist".
Since political threads don't last long on HN, I'll add for the anecdote that I was first puzzled the difference in meaning by the lyrics of a Slayer song, "Consumed democracy returns to socialist regime" [1], certainly because at that time the government in my country was "socialist".
USA is approximately the only developed country in which people consistently vote against their interest.
For what it's worth, apart from the migrant scare, PiS, the far-right friends of Trump, made a comeback in Poland in 2016 by promising and delivering 500+ which was an unconditional payout for parents.
And what Trump did give Americans? Half-assed tariffs which destroyed many businesses and individuals, and which were overturned anyway. Destruction of many jobs in the federal sector. Expensive fuel. And so on.
USA is approximately the only developed country in which people consistently vote against their interest.
Nobody does that. If it seems to you like they are, then that tells you that those people see their interests differently than you do. And it should be a sign that perhaps you don't understand their interests as well as you think you do, because odds are that people understand what's in their best interest better than outsiders.
The diverging life expectancy says otherwise. The point is, in other countries where far-right fucks up in a way that materially affects their voter base, it gets voted out in no time. But somehow, in USA, that's not the case.
Redistribution that enhances production rather than stifling it. Which provides justice rather than creating injustice. A great idea to bury under dust for centuries.
Don't cry---run for office and do as great a job as Mamdani is doing, or find a Georgist who can and support them. Its pretty clear that people are open to giving alternatives a chance to show they can do better.
But. Mamdani just had a good PR campaign. The bar majority of the "good" work he has done was actually some by someone else, the state, former administration.
But. Mamdani just had a good PR campaign. The bar majority of the "good" work he has done was actually some by someone else, the state, former administration.
PR and communications is a necessary component to demonstrate the value being delivered to your constituents, but the work must still be done. Mamdani is using his position and tenure to prove that Democratic Socialism can and does work, in one of the largest cities in the world, for other potential candidates, and for the voters who might support them. He froze the rent for over 2 million renters, and has recovered in ~$130M in wage theft for delivery workers from DoorDash alone. He's implemented universal childcare for 2-year-olds. He has established enforcement against deceptive and abusive landlord practices, hidden junk fees and misleading charges, and illegal auto-renewals and subscriptions.
"Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast." This will be the case study for every mayoral election over the next decade, and who to vote for. The masterclass continues.
(as of this comment, Mamdani polls at ~69% for favorability)
Georgism and social credit (canadian, not chinese) are two ideas that the elites better start considering unless they want france 1789 vibes again.
As I say to my left-leaning friends: hey, you know what we should socialize? The money supply. (My right-leaning friends aren't ready for that conversation yet.)
well... georgism is sort of orthogonal to capitalism and socialism. You could have a georgist tax regime in both capitalist and socialist utopia.
But... yes... it would be great if enough people knew about Henry George and Georgism that the Gallup people thought it was worthwhile to put it on a survey.
And allow me to bemoan the current state of affairs where the definitions of capitalism and socialism used by most Americans are defined by tribal communities whose (sub)social order depends on the in-crowd toeing a particular party line with respect to whom is allowed to extract rent, set prices, rent and tax rates. Which is to say, if you're comfortably making seven figures on your constellation of payday loan offices, you probably a fan of the status quo.
For my right-wing nut-job friends, remember, there are "socialist" countries like Sweden, Denmark and (arguably) Canada which are perfectly pleasant. Venezuela and Cuba's problems aren't due to their "socialist" nature, but to wide-spread corruption and oligarchy. Keynes (and even Marx) had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.
For my left-wing pinko friends, remember, not all "capitalism" is regressive. Even places like Sweden, Denmark and Canada have a form of capitalism despite being mildly constrained by collective action. Hayak had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.
It's worth a read. I wish there was a single volume "MMT for Dummies," but to get the full read on it, you currently have to read a bunch of different texts. I like the Wikipedia article because they include some of the critiques as well as the supporting arguments.
My take on economics is there are few theories that are universally applicable. Keynes is applicable to some situations as is Hayak and even E. F. Schumacher. The hard part is figuring out which theory is good for which situation (and how to tell if your assumption about applicability was wrong.)
What I find surprising about modern Americans is they really want to elect someone who has all the answers. FDR was somewhat famous for f*king up a couple times and changing course when the data didn't match the theory. We're so tribal these days we refuse to admit that even good leaders can get it wrong once and again and having an honest discussion about why the error occurred and how they're going to fix it might lead to better outcomes.
I am reminded of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs' quote "Act like a dumbsh*t and they'll treat you like an equal." Perhaps I should run for office on the platform of "I'm probably as dumb as you are, which makes me smarter than my opponents."
In the US, we hate socialism for everyone else, but love it for ourselves. I've talked to many pro-Trump, MAGA folks who ranted about 'welfare queens', yet they're collecting SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance - aka, money from the government). "That's different!"
I find the farmers to be the funniest. Like without their stimmy cheques and subsidies they'll all be homeless. For some reason not many farmers call this socialism.
There's a quote attributed to Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
79 percent of U.S. adults said Social Security benefits shouldn’t be reduced in any way according to Pew. 87 percent of Americans agree that Social Security should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits, according to NIRS.
66 percent believe the government should be responsible for ensuring Americans have health coverage (90 percent for Democrats and left-leaners), according to Pew.
A decade or so ago CNBC did a survey asking people if they oppose or support ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act.
The result is what you would expect. Here's the article from the AEI, which I'm surprised waded into the mess as they're partially responsible for the confusion. Maybe they're gloating?
Plenty of democracy -> social democracy models to work from in last 60 years. This isn't feudal peasant -> babies first populous governance transition.
Some of rich eating may happen, but blood of landlord refresh tree f socialism etc etc... sometimes you just slap the reset button when accumulation out of control
I don't want to eat the rich. Every rich person I've seen looks like they taste awful. Like how long would you have to cook Musk just to get the stink out of the meat?
When you have monsters like these, being as terrormongering as they are about socialism: how acn it not be popular? The attempt to make this a boogeyman by all the world's worst people, the most tormentuous demons is maybe not it's strongest recommendation, but certainly quite the visible one! A giant beacon in this dark night they themselves cast.
In these demon's blanket national insecurity, this is their chief enemy? Their chief rallying cry, what they put themselves in opposition to? The only politics they talk? Must be something there!
"Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? (Small business, Free enterprise, Capitalism, Socialism, Big business)"
So these terms are left as self-explanatory. In the US, "socialism" covers a huge amount of ground (from any government program at all, all the way to Soviet style communism.) So who knows what items people were picking.
One thing that is interesting, look at the gender and age splits in the above link for "socialism" and "capitalism" - 15-20 point divide between genders overall, and I bet the split is even more stark among young people.
Always good to see minorities making progress to increase their population numbers.
No need to be racist because young people have observed that capitalism has failed (fertility rates for all races in the US are converging at historic lows because childbearing decisions are memetically influenced. they are shaped by the decisions peers make and the examples they see around them in everyday life [per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230576 post contents], but let us save that for another thread, cut a new one if you'd like and we can cover that ground there).
A bit of cognitive dissonance imho that wealthy people and capitalism supporters thought the capital aggregation machine could run forever based on decomposing the existing system state when a majority of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their incomes and the only thing that would fix that would be their income going up. Support for unions is also at record highs, for obvious reasons.
Olds will keep aging out (~2M/year 55+ cohort), young people will keep supporting socialism as long as capitalism in its current form keeps squeezing them for profits with nothing left to show for it (~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities). Lots of wealth comes from systemic economic exploitation, and progress is being made to reduce that economic exploitation. If it destroys wealth, that's fine, wealth is not the target, quality of life is. Wealth is undemocratic power and control beyond a threshold.
Older folks got lucky with asset appreciation and good cashflow opportunities (needed to acquire assets that appreciated) over the last 50 years, and so they're happy with the dysfunction because it worked out for them. They will support capitalism through their rigid mental model and their votes (and therefore, political influence) until they age out and are replaced through electorate turnover with younger people who were not so lucky and so have different socioeconomic views based on the current macro and the forward trajectory versus history.
Citations:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xyWs8/gallupchart.png
In 2025, 49 percent of adults under age 30 lived with a parent [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810905 - September 2026
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700907
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357337
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529387
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620
(think in systems, almost the same system as religious folks rapidly aging out in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 ; capitalism is just another religion and belief system aging out)
In my view, it's not that socialism with a lowercase s as defined by worker ownership of the means of production has gotten way more popular, it's that "Socialist" has shifted to mean New Deal Democrat as the Democratic party has shifted towards being the party of business interests.
If you look at what Mamdani, arguably the face of American Socialism, is doing in NYC, it's basically deciding to hold businesses accountable for breaking laws and noticing where markets have failed to provide core needs in the city.
That's not the definition of socialism in any case.
That is a perfectly workable definition of socialism. Literally textbook. I would expect any red-blooded Leftist to agree with the statement "The means of production belong in the hands of the proletariat", or they're just fucking posers.
Please, Mister or Missues Vanguard of Leftist Vocabulary, enlighten us on what "Socialism" really means.
I think you fell for the typical right wing propaganda trope where socialism=marxism=communism. You presented the textbook definition of that propaganda and of communism.
How would you define and distinguish them, then?
This is the “propaganda” sponsored by most leftists, though?
Except not equality - stepping stones. Socialism is supposed to lead to communism, per Marx. That’s not a right wing take, unless you consider Karl Marx a conservative.
Communists call leftists "reformists", that think you can reform capitalism into a stable state (like i do). If you rest there, you are not a communist but a socialist, so its not a stepping stone.
I mean, those of us with Marxian biases define it that way -- not right wingers -- and see "social democrats" in the 21st century as being the people who successively turned the term to mean instead anything-where-government-does-stuff. That's effectively what it came to mean in the US.
Notably, the definition given by Marx and other 19th century socialists (worker controlled production) is doesn't even have to involve government or the state at all. It just came to mean that once proximity to power came into play. The "soviet" word merely meant local worker councils, not a state form, for example. But once the Bolsheviks took state power, the power of the actual soviets was successively demolished in favour of a centralized one party state.
So, notably: Self-called "Marxist-Leninists" in the USSR, and Social Democrats (or "democratic socialists" in the US), and Right-wingers all far prefer the term to mean "government controls things." The latter because they can then point fingers and call things authoritarian (but somehow exempt corporate power from critique).
But it is not at all clear that 19th century socialists .. from Proudhon through Marx etc -- who coined the term -- meant this at all.
Also this hard line between "communism" and "socialism" is fictitious and very schematic. All communists call themselves socialists, and almost none of them agree on what that means.
Social democrats trying desperately to sound respectable clearly want a nice hard line there. But they also have no intention of bringing about socialism.
Finally! Someone that actually understands the nuances and complexities of the terminology.
You are a rare person.
Leninism ≠ Stalinism ≠ Maoism ≠ Socialism ≠ Communism.
These are overloaded terms at this point which is part of the reason so few actually comprehend.
Even Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism can mean different things depending on the context and interpretation which is another part of the collective confusion.
If we had clear definitions, it *might* irradicate the confusion, but I don't see that happening in the forseeable future.
There's too much at stake for every involved party to clear things up.
this is perhaps the smallest of all possible reasons that "few actually comprehend" :) yes, the left is good at eating itself, but that self-destruction is not without a lot of external assistance!
Communism is a statist implementation of socialism.
Not all socialism is communism, but all communism is socialism.
That's not the definition of socialism in any case.
In many cases it very much is the definition of socialism.
What is your definition?
Thats not socialism. It's vaguely a redistribution layer on top of capitalism. The article contrasts S. with C. which is also wrong.
Eg. inheritance tax does not restrict free enterprise, but the devil is in the details.
Please explain what you consider these terms to mean?
Cooperatives are certainly an implementation of socialism.
What makes you think that they aren't?
Cooperatives are a capitalist mimicry of communism but not quite identical, but thats irrelevant.
Socialism is a broad collection of ideas around wealth distribution with alot of degrees of freedom, which leaves enough room to confuse ot with communism, i guess.
That is literally the most bare and core definition of socialism.
I jist checked the "bare definition" of socialism and a shiver went down my back when i saw the first eng wiki paragraph
... incorrect propaganda on the wikipedia.
In the german article, its more accurate "there is not clear definition".
Its a familiy of ideas around wealth distribution with many degrees of freedom. Its not incompatible to capitalism, like communism is. I gues the eng wiki article is meant trigger stereotypes with "means of production".
Please define or explain how socialism is compatible with capitalism
I already gave one, inheritance tax, since its not tied to economic activity.
When you think the "survival of the fittest" nature analogy of capitalism further, then there should be no inheritance. All value that you have accumulated over your life (nutrition) is redistributed on your death into the environment, so in that analogy, capitalism shouldnt allow inheritance at all.
There are many more options of wealth distribution, which effect more wealthy people than the working class and in small-ish quantitiea, all of them are compatible with capitalism. Again, the devil is in the details.
Ah, you are one of those.
Retro socialism: "The public owns everything".
Modern socialism: "You'll own nothing and be happy".
Beats the current state of owning nothing and not being happy.
You're describing capitalism. You can make a lot more money not yielding ownership.
sigh
ugh, capitalists...
You gotta love that only 65% of the """leftist""" party's voters in the US have positive views on Socialism.
The Dems have never called themselves leftist. They are quite eager to point out that they are the Neoliberal party: “We’re capitalist, and that’s just the way it is,” - Nancy Pelosi.
Unfortunately, when you've got 2 choices, one being "Let's round up the pinkos" and the other being "Nothing will fundamentally change", the actual Leftists have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Yes agreed. That's kinda what I wanted to highlight. There is no real political pluralism for people in the US which must suck
That's why we need voting reform: to make it realistic for new parties to form!
The right gets to be as right-wing as it wants and the left is stuck with pandering neoliberalism at best. Yes, it does suck.
As an European I always found your left very conservative.
In the most recent years I feel the same about our lefts.
But imho left/right don't make any sense any more and have very little connection to their historical roots.
Look at how the conservative party went into ballooning the debt and spending, something they have been historically very against. Or how European rights are more financially supportive of the poorest parts of the society than the lefts.
Policies and trends are changing.
Yet we're stuck in this nonsense bipolarism when every other adult has many thoughts on many topics that don't really overlap with either of the two poles.
That's because we don't really have a left, not since Ronald Reagan. Clinton was more conservative than Nixon, and Obama was more conservative than Clinton.
Dems' are a center-right party.
The "left" in the US is center-right anywhere else in the world.
Maybe we will see real change soon.
I'm sure we will. And, like with mutations, the default assumption for a random change isn't very good. In this case, the historical record points to worse-than-random outcomes.
In Sweden we often think of our selves as socialist. I suspect it means something very different across the pond. Anyone care to elaborate on the differences?
The word “socialist” was strongly associated with the USSR in the Cold War era United States. Anyone advocating for socialism was dismissed as a red pinko commie spy.
See Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.
Very true. I’ve started talking to older generations about their Socialism Security checks. “That’s different! The government taxes me and then… uses it… to support me when I’m not making money… Oh.”
Lots of people detest socialism until you show them how they’re already benefitting from it. I’m not even really pro-socialism, except in the simplified case where you have a number line with “capitalism” on one end, “communism” on the other, and “socialism” as the range in the middle. I definitely wouldn’t want to live on either end of that spectrum, and a mixed economy where private enterprise handles wants with a government handling needs for those who can’t do it on their own — i.e. socialism — is a reasonable alternative.
Social Security is a really bad example though. It doesn’t support a living wage, and everybody depending on it would have been better off if they could have invested those taxes instead.
The Ruling Class in the US has long been effective at influencing public opinion and behavior with boogeymen: communism, socialism, woke-ism, and so on. Mention publicly funded healthcare to 1000 random Americans, and the response from 950 of them is gonna be "Socialized medicine is bad!", and nothing else.
One of the great things about America is we have choice. For example, we get to choose our own definition of the word "socialism".
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/243362/meani...
Note, this article is from 2018 and the situation hasn't exactly improved...
Also timely/relevant: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/i-want-you-to-tell-me-what-s...
American socialism is less socialist than European capitalism.
Socialism means that the government owns the means of production.
Sweden is not socialist, it's capitalist. A large portion of the budget goes to welfare programs, just like the USA.
You mean soviet-like socialism. Socialism is older and broader than bolchevism.
Socialism in the US is currently a slur that you use to discredit your opponents, it’s not interrogated to mean anything useful. You are expected to be violently opposed to socialism while being completely dependent upon social programs. The point is to make the contradiction seem normal.
Socialism means different things depending on where you are, even within Europe. For some socialism is the same as communism, for others socialism simply means social-democracy.
In a lot of American discourse, it honestly seems like the baggage surrounding the term is more of an issue than the policies being debated that are labelled "Socialist".
Since political threads don't last long on HN, I'll add for the anecdote that I was first puzzled the difference in meaning by the lyrics of a Slayer song, "Consumed democracy returns to socialist regime" [1], certainly because at that time the government in my country was "socialist".
[1] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slayer/fictionalreality.html
USA is approximately the only developed country in which people consistently vote against their interest.
For what it's worth, apart from the migrant scare, PiS, the far-right friends of Trump, made a comeback in Poland in 2016 by promising and delivering 500+ which was an unconditional payout for parents.
And what Trump did give Americans? Half-assed tariffs which destroyed many businesses and individuals, and which were overturned anyway. Destruction of many jobs in the federal sector. Expensive fuel. And so on.
Nobody does that. If it seems to you like they are, then that tells you that those people see their interests differently than you do. And it should be a sign that perhaps you don't understand their interests as well as you think you do, because odds are that people understand what's in their best interest better than outsiders.
The diverging life expectancy says otherwise. The point is, in other countries where far-right fucks up in a way that materially affects their voter base, it gets voted out in no time. But somehow, in USA, that's not the case.
[citation needed]
/cries-because-georgism-is-the-GOAT-and-its-not-even-on-the-list
Redistribution that enhances production rather than stifling it. Which provides justice rather than creating injustice. A great idea to bury under dust for centuries.
Don't cry---run for office and do as great a job as Mamdani is doing, or find a Georgist who can and support them. Its pretty clear that people are open to giving alternatives a chance to show they can do better.
But. Mamdani just had a good PR campaign. The bar majority of the "good" work he has done was actually some by someone else, the state, former administration.
This comment is not grounded in facts and reality. Accomplishments listed at https://www.mamdanibulletin.com/policy-tracker, cataloged by month, updated monthly. Update your priors.
PR and communications is a necessary component to demonstrate the value being delivered to your constituents, but the work must still be done. Mamdani is using his position and tenure to prove that Democratic Socialism can and does work, in one of the largest cities in the world, for other potential candidates, and for the voters who might support them. He froze the rent for over 2 million renters, and has recovered in ~$130M in wage theft for delivery workers from DoorDash alone. He's implemented universal childcare for 2-year-olds. He has established enforcement against deceptive and abusive landlord practices, hidden junk fees and misleading charges, and illegal auto-renewals and subscriptions.
"Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast." This will be the case study for every mayoral election over the next decade, and who to vote for. The masterclass continues.
(as of this comment, Mamdani polls at ~69% for favorability)
https://sri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/SNY0826-Rel...
Georgism and social credit (canadian, not chinese) are two ideas that the elites better start considering unless they want france 1789 vibes again.
As I say to my left-leaning friends: hey, you know what we should socialize? The money supply. (My right-leaning friends aren't ready for that conversation yet.)
well... georgism is sort of orthogonal to capitalism and socialism. You could have a georgist tax regime in both capitalist and socialist utopia.
But... yes... it would be great if enough people knew about Henry George and Georgism that the Gallup people thought it was worthwhile to put it on a survey.
And allow me to bemoan the current state of affairs where the definitions of capitalism and socialism used by most Americans are defined by tribal communities whose (sub)social order depends on the in-crowd toeing a particular party line with respect to whom is allowed to extract rent, set prices, rent and tax rates. Which is to say, if you're comfortably making seven figures on your constellation of payday loan offices, you probably a fan of the status quo.
For my right-wing nut-job friends, remember, there are "socialist" countries like Sweden, Denmark and (arguably) Canada which are perfectly pleasant. Venezuela and Cuba's problems aren't due to their "socialist" nature, but to wide-spread corruption and oligarchy. Keynes (and even Marx) had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.
For my left-wing pinko friends, remember, not all "capitalism" is regressive. Even places like Sweden, Denmark and Canada have a form of capitalism despite being mildly constrained by collective action. Hayak had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.
Stop me before I mention Modern Monetary Theory.
Au contraire! Please continue!
I can't say too much that Richard Murphy hasn't said already.
Here's his latest video: https://youtu.be/mKWfEQlcDoU
I encourage everyone to read about it if you're a person who absorbs info via text better.
Here's the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
It's worth a read. I wish there was a single volume "MMT for Dummies," but to get the full read on it, you currently have to read a bunch of different texts. I like the Wikipedia article because they include some of the critiques as well as the supporting arguments.
My take on economics is there are few theories that are universally applicable. Keynes is applicable to some situations as is Hayak and even E. F. Schumacher. The hard part is figuring out which theory is good for which situation (and how to tell if your assumption about applicability was wrong.)
What I find surprising about modern Americans is they really want to elect someone who has all the answers. FDR was somewhat famous for f*king up a couple times and changing course when the data didn't match the theory. We're so tribal these days we refuse to admit that even good leaders can get it wrong once and again and having an honest discussion about why the error occurred and how they're going to fix it might lead to better outcomes.
I am reminded of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs' quote "Act like a dumbsh*t and they'll treat you like an equal." Perhaps I should run for office on the platform of "I'm probably as dumb as you are, which makes me smarter than my opponents."
Hayek. Unless you mean somebody else. Or kayak.
lol. yes. H-A-Y-E-K. Though I have been thinking about kayaking lately...
Got my vote!
I live in Canada, where even our right-wing parties are in favour of public education and free health care. I guess that makes us all socialists.
In the US, we hate socialism for everyone else, but love it for ourselves. I've talked to many pro-Trump, MAGA folks who ranted about 'welfare queens', yet they're collecting SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance - aka, money from the government). "That's different!"
I find the farmers to be the funniest. Like without their stimmy cheques and subsidies they'll all be homeless. For some reason not many farmers call this socialism.
There's a quote attributed to Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
And an interesting investigation into the origin of the quote at https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
USDA Survey Shows Most U.S. Farmland Is Owned by Older, Non-Operating Landlords - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815913 - September 2026
- Approximately 2.1 million landlords rented out 348 million acres of farmland.
- 87% of landlords did not farm the land themselves.
- Rental income, farmland values, and debt levels have all increased over the past decade, with rented land and buildings now valued at $1.7 trillion.
- The average principal landlord is 69 years old, and landlords age 75 and older control about 40% of rented acres and rental income.
- Most non-operating landlords acquired their land through inheritance or trusts.
- Operating landlords primarily purchased their farmland.
- Financially, landlords received $34.1 billion in rental income while carrying $50.7 billion in debt.
Federal farm subsidies: What the data says - https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da... - June 23rd, 2025
- Farm subsidies have added an average of $17.6 billion to farm income each year from 1933 to 2024, adjusted for inflation.
We take taxes from the top 40% of Americans, and funnel it to farm landlords to harvest corn to burn in cars as ethanol, broadly speaking.
It's late half of 19th century all over again.
It's Russia 1917 or Cuba 1959 all over again.
But it'll be different this time! Right?!
Define socialism.
79 percent of U.S. adults said Social Security benefits shouldn’t be reduced in any way according to Pew. 87 percent of Americans agree that Social Security should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits, according to NIRS.
66 percent believe the government should be responsible for ensuring Americans have health coverage (90 percent for Democrats and left-leaners), according to Pew.
A decade or so ago CNBC did a survey asking people if they oppose or support ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act.
The result is what you would expect. Here's the article from the AEI, which I'm surprised waded into the mess as they're partially responsible for the confusion. Maybe they're gloating?
https://www.aei.org/commentary/obamacare-vs-affordable-care-...
Plenty of democracy -> social democracy models to work from in last 60 years. This isn't feudal peasant -> babies first populous governance transition.
Some of rich eating may happen, but blood of landlord refresh tree f socialism etc etc... sometimes you just slap the reset button when accumulation out of control
I don't want to eat the rich. Every rich person I've seen looks like they taste awful. Like how long would you have to cook Musk just to get the stink out of the meat?
As David Graeber once said: "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently."
I believe this, which I supposed makes me a Graeberite. Graeberian? Graeberista?
When you have monsters like these, being as terrormongering as they are about socialism: how acn it not be popular? The attempt to make this a boogeyman by all the world's worst people, the most tormentuous demons is maybe not it's strongest recommendation, but certainly quite the visible one! A giant beacon in this dark night they themselves cast.
In these demon's blanket national insecurity, this is their chief enemy? Their chief rallying cry, what they put themselves in opposition to? The only politics they talk? Must be something there!
The survey asked:
"Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? (Small business, Free enterprise, Capitalism, Socialism, Big business)"
So these terms are left as self-explanatory. In the US, "socialism" covers a huge amount of ground (from any government program at all, all the way to Soviet style communism.) So who knows what items people were picking.
One thing that is interesting, look at the gender and age splits in the above link for "socialism" and "capitalism" - 15-20 point divide between genders overall, and I bet the split is even more stark among young people.