Immigration welfare high cost families with children.

Fig. 1 Families with children collecting welfare by race.

Bernie Sanders Wants an American Venezuela

by Lewis Loflin

Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro calls Bernie Sanders his "revolutionary friend." He pays his soldiers with toilet paper while citizens do without even basic necessities such as toilet paper. Bernie Sanders declares, "These days the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in such places Ecuador, Venezuela, and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal..."

All three countries are economic basket cases. Even rich in resources Argentina which is 90% white has a lower standard of living than Bulgaria, Mexico, and even Gabon according to an essay in the Financial Times. Even stories in the New York Times tells how even doctors fleeing the socialist hell of Venezuela make more money as cooks in Brazil.

These countries differ from Cuba in an important way - they are not isolated islands that can be turned into prisons to keep their people in. Even the "poor" of Venezuela are fleeing the country - or trying to. Most countries refuse to take them and deal with illegal aliens in ways the United States refuses to do.

I keep asking just how does socialism in practice differ from communism? I get endless excuses. Evidence says it doesn't in the end.

Bradford Richardson in the Washington Times (Nov. 4, 2017) notes that "millennials" would "prefer to live in a socialist, communist, or fascist nation rather than a capitalist one". 44% wanted socialism, another 14% outright communism and fascism. (Fascism is a form of socialism.)

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics defines fascism "as an economic system is socialism with a capitalist veneer." While not outright government ownership, government controls through taxation, regulation, etc. and most important through public-private partnerships. They dictate what one can produce or sell, and dictate the price or set price controls.

The question becomes then, who controls the government? There's no actual agreement on where the economy becomes socialist versus capitalist so they use the vague term "mixed" economy.

This kind of governance by business aligned with government I call corporatism or corporate socialism or just crony capitalism.

The Atlantic (May 25, 2017) says of Bernie's comrade in Venezuela which is true of Latin America in general:

It's hard to pick the Venezuelan president's greatest flaw. Which is more serious: his cruel indifference to the suffering of his people, or his brutal autocratic behavior? Which is more outrageous: his immense ignorance or the fact that he dances on television while his henchmen murder defenseless young protesters in the streets? The list of Nicolas Maduro's failings is long, and Venezuelans know it; over 80 percent of them oppose him. And it's not just Venezuelans. The rest of the world has also discovered-at last!-his despotic, corrupt, and inept character.

And yet ... Maduro doesn't really matter. He is simply a useful idiot, the puppet of those who really control Venezuela: the Cubans, the drug traffickers, and Hugo Chavez's political heirs. Those three groups effectively function as criminal cartels, and have co-opted the armed forces into their service; this is how it is possible that every day we see men in uniform willing to massacre their own people in order to keep Venezuela’s criminal oligarchy in power.

And we are importing this mess into our country and anyone that addresses this culture is attacked as racist. The problem is culture not race.