SOCIALISTS & COMMUNISTS CAN’T ADD

The definition of insanity, often credited to Albert Einstein, possibly the smartest man of our age, is, “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results!” which reminds me of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America. They propose the billionaire tax, abolishing the US Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, closing jails, abolishing ICE and Border Enforcement, granting amnesty for all undocumented immigrants, defunding the Pentagon and the Department of Defense, transferring ownership of major industries to public ownership (taken from the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx).

The USSR was created after World War II. It was ceded to Stalin by Roosevelt and Churchill  and included Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Estonia; additionally, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, although not included in the USSR were under the control of Russia.  All these countries had a socialist-style government with central control and ownership of the means of production. They all failed when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991. Other socialist countries that gave up socialist governments were Britain, Israel, Cambodia, Venezuela, and India. China, North Korea, and Cuba are still communist but cannot be counted among the successful countries. While China has introduced many capitalist concepts, like allowing people to participate in ownership of companies, how many times must we watch a country be destroyed by socialism/communism before we figure out that a system of government like that does not work?  Albert Einstein was right. The DSA should take heed if they don’t want to be considered insane. The reasons for failure were several. Economics is complicated, and the central control of government cannot figure out the cost of products, nor can they distribute them effectively to where these products are needed. They eventually fail. That is why the government grocery stores in Moscow were constantly short of supplies. Socialism also fails to provide the incentives that capitalism naturally creates. The competitive free market automatically rewards the better provider of goods and services. While socialism lags behind and does not know how to price products. Socialism is guilty of a fatal conceit: It believes its system can make better decisions for the people than they can for themselves. 

Just running the numbers demonstrates that it is not possible to provide the financing to provide free public transportation, free groceries, free housing, free education, and free medical care that the socialists promise. The estimates are that the cost of this Utopia is from 71 trillion at the low estimates to 212 trillion at the high estimates over a ten-year period, according to the Cato Institute .

• Universal Health Care: $39.9 trillion to $75.4 trillion
• Federal Jobs Guarantee: $4.4 trillion to $60.4 trillion
• Reparations: $13.5 trillion to $28.0 trillion
• Housing for All: $3.4 trillion to $16.6 trillion
• Infrastructure & Transit: $3.4 trillion to $12.2 trillion
• Green Energy Investments: $3.2 trillion to $7.3 trillion
• Publicly Funded Retirement: $2.0 trillion to $4.6 trillion
• Paid Family Leave: $0.7 trillion to $1.9 trillion
• Free College: $0.6 trillion to $5.1 trillion

• Total Revenue  $5.23 trillion (2025)
• Total Spending: $7.01 trillion (2025)
• Budget Deficit: $1.78 trillion (2025)

This does not include defense, public safety (police, jails), or the legal system costs.

Taking the mean, it would be $141.5 billion over 10 years or $14.2 trillion per year.

We collect 5.23 trillion in revenue but spend 7.01 trillion.

14 trillion plus what we now spend, 7 trillion, would total 21 trillion. We would have to triple our taxes. It is clear we cannot afford the price tag of socialist ideas for their utopian society. Even if we confiscated all the assets of our 1000 billionaires, that would only yield one trillion, 5% of the total needed, not even paying for one month.  An additional factor that has been demonstrated in New York. The wealthy have mobility; they can move to a lower-tax jurisdiction. Corporations do too; JP Morgan moved a large portion of its business to Dallas, Texas, as did Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Apollo Global, which moved to Florida. In England, under a socialist government, wealthy people like Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones moved to France to avoid the 90% tax on earned income. Sean Connery, moved to the Bahamas. Michael Caine relocated to the US under the Labor government but returned to England under Margaret Thatcher. Ringo Starr went to Monte Carlo, Cat Stevens to Brazil, and Sting moved to Ireland, where musician royalty earnings were exempt from taxes. California has lost 102,600 millionaires and a few billionaires, including Steven Spielberg, ahead of the billionaire tax. They are called tax exiles.

 So you see the numbers don’t add up.  As I said before, Socialists and Communists can’t add!