Many people in America are buying into socialism. But, what is socialism?

Socialism is a political system where the people pay taxes to the government and the government then distributes equal resources to all the people. Many young adults, especially college students, are beginning to think socialism is a good idea.

Socialism appeals to college students for two main reasons.

The first reason is that socialism offers free college tuitions which would of course appeal to college students. The second reason is that socialism promises to erase student loans and debts. However, socialism can not do either of these things for college students because nothing can be free.

Although socialism promises free college tuition, it cannot actually provide it for “free.”

If college tuition was free, then taxes would rise in order to cover the cost for students. College students might be able to be educated for free, but they would have to pay enormously high tax rates for everyone else’s education the moment they graduate.

Socialism promises to take money from the big banks and the rich. What presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and his supporters don’t understand is that the big banks have your money.

If you invest money into a bank such as Navy Federal, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America, and then the government takes money from the big banks, they are taking money from your investments. Therefore, you are paying for equal benefits.

Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Socialism requires money from the people in order to operate. Without this money, the system could not provide equal benefits for all the people. It comes down to this: would you rather pay to sustain yourself and your family, or pay high taxes to sustain everyone else?

Today in the world there are many socialist governments, and none of them are working. Venezuela is the perfect example.

Venezuela adopted socialism when Hugo Chavez came into power in February 1999. Before 1999, Venezuela was the fifth largest oil producer in the world. However, when the socialist party came into power, it put the oil industry under government control.

When the government took control, Venezuela dropped out of the top 25 oil producers in the world. Now, the country cannot even put food on the shelves for their citizens. Farms have stopped producing, factories have shut down, and their oil industry is failing.

“Other than oil, we produce close to nothing, and even oil production has decreased,” economist Asdrubal Oliveros said to The Guardian. “There is a lack of hard currency, and, in a country that imports everything, this becomes more evident with food scarcity.”

There are other socialist countries that Mr. Sanders often points to as an argument for the socialist system. Such countries are Sweden, Germany, and Norway. This argument may have held up before 2012, but now that argument means nothing due to the influx of immigrants into these countries due to the Syrian Civil War.

Under socialist policies, these countries were forced to give equal benefits to the immigrants fleeing to these countries. There were more than one million immigrants going into these countries, nearly bankrupting Sweden, Germany, and Norway due to their socialist policies, which advocate equal benefits for all citizens.

Mr. Sanders’ brand of socialism is called “democratic socialism.”

The definition of democratic socialism, according to feelthebern.org, is: “A form of socialism which seeks to effectively combine free enterprise with transparent, public programs that maintain a minimum standard of living for everyone.”

This definition is putting lipstick on a pig.

When the definition talks about combining free enterprises, it means to assimilate them into the government and have the government control them. This definition relies on the fact that there is no corruption in the government, and if history has shown us one thing, there is not a single government that has ever been free of corruption and transparent to the people.

The definition also talks about a standard of living for everyone. The societal problem that emerges in a socialist system is that people find out that they can work half as hard as the next guy, and receive an equal outcome in life. When people stop working or become lazy, there is no more productivity and the country self-destructs.

Another example of a socialist system failing is the Canadian socialized health care system. Health care is completely free in Canada, but it is inefficient due to the eight month wait times.

“I had stage one cancer when I made my first appointment,” Billy Jackson, a Canadian citizen, said. “Now I have stage four cancer and have just started treatment.”

The wait times in these socialized health care systems are literally killing people. People have to wait so long that that their cancer becomes terminal.

“My back began to hurt a few weeks back after golfing so I made an appointment with the hospital,” Canadian citizen Clifford Jackson said. “The first available appointment was in December of 2016; this is ridiculous.”

Socialism is destroying countries, and it can not start up here in America. It will destroy a country that many people have given their lives to preserve. America will not become the next Venezuela or Canada.

The United States must remain strong and fight off the socialist beast.