Dragonlady
Designing Woman
You're the one who's only examples of socialism are Venezuela and Greece. Greece's problems aren't related to socialism, they're related to a rampant cash economy where no one pays taxes, and no one pays taxes, because the IMF imposed an austerity program on the Greek government which was too opressive. Greece isn't a mess because of left wing policy, but rather right wing monetary policies imposed on their government by right wing outsiders.
You deliberately ignore all of the very successful mixed social democracies which respect the rights of private ownership and prosperity, while regulating capitalism to provide for the best interests of its people. That's the difference between the US and other every other social democracy: The US has a "supply side economy". Everything benefits those who owns the means of production. There is no "supply and demand" which is what you find in mixed economies.
Trump isn't putting "America first!", unless you define "America" as US based corporations and the people who own them, because your laws, your tax structures as defined by Ronald Reagan and the premises of which have been left intact by succeeding Republican and Democratic Presidents, are all designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the working and middle classes. Instead of raising the minimum wage, giving workers raises and ensuring employees of all classes a reasonable share of the costs of providing goods and services, Republicans insisted that the burden for the increasing social safefy net which made up for the lack of meaningful raises for 40 years for the poorest Americans, be paid by the middle class, not the corporations, and not the wealthy who benefitted most from these income supplements.
Americans are constantly told that the country "can't afford" to provide universal health care for its citizens, or better programs for veterans, yet you can afford 20 billion on a monument to hate and xenophobia. You can't afford clean water for Flint Michigan, but you can afford a "Space Force". You can't afford free or lower college tuition but you can afford 17 years of wars on multiple fronts.
You can't afford to retrain coal miners for 21st century jobs, but you can afford to fly the President, his staff and the secret service to his golf club every weekend so he can sell influence and access to the Presidency at a cost $1 million per weekend.
Governments can find the money for what really matters to them. If everyday Americans haven't got the message that Trump and the GOP don't give a rat's ass about them, they haven't been paying attention.
