Kerby Anderson

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal asked a good question the other day. They wondered, “Who’s Afraid of Socialism?” Their argument was that the new progressive agenda looks like government control over the means of production. Isn’t that the textbook definition of socialism? The president has been criticized for saying there are “new calls to adopt socialism in this country.” Democrats in Congress and pundits in the media have protested that the socialist label doesn’t apply to them. So the editors decided to take a look at a few of the items on the agenda. Medicare for All is one example. Senator Bernie Sanders and 16 other senators proposed a program that would replace all private health insurance with a federally administered single-payer health-care program. The government would decide what care you would receive, what to pay doctors and hospital, and even which drugs would be on the formulary. That sounds like socialized medicine. The Green New Deal is also on the progressive agenda. Nearly four-dozen House Democrats and several Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the plan. As I have written about in a previous commentary, it requires the country to be carbon neutral within ten years. This will not happen, but even the attempt would require a massive government intrusion into all of our lives. That really looks like socialism. To pay for these and other progressive agenda items, proponents call for a level of taxation never seen before. Democratic candidates are talking about everything from a new 70% tax rate on higher incomes to a “wealth tax” on assets in this country as well as assets held abroad. This confiscatory tax scheme also looks like socialism. We all know the phrase: “if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a duck.” Politicians and the media can protest that the socialist label doesn’t apply. Most of us know that it does.