Authored by Daniel Lacalle,
Americans are falling into the socialism trap by not realizing that solving big government problems with an even bigger one is dangerous. Many blame capitalism for their affordability problems, when the true cause is statism. Statism is the gradual replacement of civil society, markets, savings, and individual choice by political control, public spending, regulation, taxation, and monetary intervention. The predatory state that I discuss in my book The New Global Economic Order represents the extreme manifestation of statism. It is a system where the political class extracts wealth and freedom from families and businesses to sustain itself, reward dependent clients, and exert control over society.
Big government, high taxes, constant money printing, and cronyism are not free-market capitalism.
Socialism markets itself well because scholars and politicians always judge socialist policies on their headline intentions, not on its disastrous results. As such, socialism is the perfect ideology for elites. It offers moral superiority and compassionate rhetoric while making those it claims to defend poorer, more dependent, and less free. By the time people realize the promise was a trap, the state is already too large, too powerful, and uses repression on the same people it vowed to protect.
Big government, interventionism, money printing, and high taxes have obliterated the economy and demolished the opportunities for middle-class families and small businesses to thrive. More government, taxes, printing, and interventionism will only cripple it further.
If big government, large subsidies, high
