Democrats have been viewing socialism favorably to an increasing extent in recent decades – and for the first time on record, they’re officially now a party of socialist ideologues.
As we’ve reported on previously when the Pew Research Center tracked the ideology of the average Republican and Democrat over the past two decades, the Democrats moved far-left across the board, while Republicans only became slightly more conservative. Pew’s rankings were more based on social issues than economic ones – but it’s not just social issues that the Left has moved into loony-land on.
Gallup has been tracking favorability towards capitalism and socialism for years by political affiliation, and for the first time on record, capitalism is a minority position among Dems. As Gallup reported: “Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year.”
This certainly explains the surge in socialist candidates running this year – though they’re “cute” enough to put “democratic” in front of it nowadays. The DNC’s chairman, Tom Perez, calls New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the “future of the Democratic Party,” which is ironic.
Under Perez’s leadership, the DNC is millions in debt, and fundraising less than half of what the GOP is. Clearly, whatever political judgment Perez has reflects the opposite of reality.
While a candidate like Cortez was able to score a victory in a far-left district against a corrupt incumbent, the other Dem-socialists like Perez has backed haven’t done as well. Dem-socialist Abdul El-Sayed lost his special election in Michigan last week, as did Brent Welder in Kansas. And literally, every candidate that Cortez personally endorsed lost.
While the individual “Santa Claus” programs that socialists propose may poll popularly, they become considerably less popular when you realize how much they cost. If Bernie Sanders were granted every socialist program he wanted, according to Vox, “The 30-year projected tab for these programs is even more staggering: new proposals costing $218 trillion, on top of an $84 trillion baseline deficit driven by Social Security, Medicare, and the resulting interest costs.”
There’s a reason that socialists like Bernie or Alexandria Cortez try to pretend we could pay for their social programs if only we taxed the rich a little more, or cut the defense budget, and that’s because they know that no Americans would be on board if they knew the true cost.
While Bernie loves to point to countries like Denmark and Sweden as those we should model America after, he seldom mentions their confiscatory levels of taxation. The top tax bracket in Denmark is 60%, and unlike America where our top bracket only applies to the well-off, someone earning over $60,000 is subjected to that 60% tax rate in Denmark.
And on top of that, there’s a 25% national sales tax in both Sweden and Denmark. So $100 of income becomes $40 thanks to the income tax – and that remaining $40 can only purchase $32 worth of goods due to the sales tax. And all that’s excluding other local taxes.
Is that something you’d like in America? It’s certainly what the majority of most Democrats want.
Luckily for Republicans running for office, it’s not what the majority of Americans want.
