What I Learned In HS About Socialism.

We covered the differences between the economic systems in high school. I already knew about communism and thought it didn't work. I still think that. But we also heard of a middle ground between the two extremes, capitalism and communism. Democratic socialism.

Communism is good at redistributing the wealth and ensuring economic equality. But it doesn't produce too much wealth to begin with. Capitalism produces much more wealth. And you know, those rich people do carry a lot of money with them. But the problem is getting them to share it. In capitalists countries, we learned, they usually help the poor and less fortunate with something called the welfare state. And corporations are heavily taxed. Not an unfair uniform poll tax, but one based on how much money you have. (The UK and US were said to have a welfare state around this time. Until, they say, President Clinton ended welfare as we know it.)

But between these two extremes, as I said, is democratic socialism. At first it tended have a lot marxist tendencies. And people living in those countries often suffered in poverty, even if they technically lived in a democracy. But, we learned, there is a more moderate form of democratic socialism. People who follow that are called social democrats, I recall. And most of the democracies of the world use this economic system. It works. There are very few purely capitalistic nations in the world. And, our text book pointed out, many of these countries follow a mixed system anyways. They may say they are not socialist. But often the government does own or subsidize much of industry. (In the US critics often call this corporate welfare.)