GARY COSBY JR.: Fearing the socialist Boogeyman

For those concerned about preventing the United States from becoming a socialist country, you are a little late. Socialism in the US began with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. American socialism really picked up speed with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and has been gaining momentum for decades.

Socialism isn’t just rooted in American society, it’s a fully grown tree, and I guarantee you almost no one wants to give up what we have. Before anyone has a stroke, we draw a line between American socialism and the harsh Eastern European socialism of the Cold War, which was actually communism by a different name.

The form of socialism in the Cold War will never exist in the United States. There would be a new American revolution before we ever submitted to it, so let’s put old-school Cold War socialism on the shelf first and take a look at our type of socialism.

Look at the Alabama freeways. It’s pretty good highways and decently maintained, but our population size and very low tax rate would suggest that our roads and infrastructure should be a lot poorer. In the American form of socialism, highway money flows into Alabama through federal taxes levied by all 50 states. The money is made available to us in the form of grants and other federal programs so that we have decent roads and infrastructure.

Think of Alabama without this form of socialism. The Tennessee Valley Authority would not exist; therefore, much of the northern half of the state would not have water navigation along the Tennessee River and its associated power plants, and all of the economic growth and development associated with shipping and energy infrastructure.

Even if these things had come about at some point, it would not have been President Roosevelt’s New Deal, but these things would not have happened in many years and would have left the state far, far behind the rest of the nation. Alabama would have sunk into deep and ubiquitous poverty, so that we would not be able to recruit industry and thus jobs for our state.

How about education? Yes, federal funds, dollars raised from other states go to Alabama and help our education system. We are currently at the bottom of the reading and math scores. As bad as it is, and it’s really bad, without federal money going into the state to prop up teachers’ salaries and school programs, it would be a lot worse.

Then there is the social welfare network with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which takes care of disabled people and ensures at least a basic income and health care after retirement. We don’t even think about them unless they are threatened by cuts in the federal budget.

We are already heavily socialist in ways that we don’t think about; however, the fear of socialism hangs over our heads at every election. One side uses the fear of socialism to motivate voters to support them, while the other side uses the fear of being torn away to motivate voters to support their side. Both sides of the political corridor give us absurdity by the shovel.

I doubt that anyone who opposes the socialist boogeyman is actually against the system we have, a system that ensures that people, especially the elderly and the frail, don’t fall through society.

What we really oppose are the more extreme forms of socialism that are being forced upon us in initiatives like the Green New Deal. Almost anyone with common sense can look around and see that it harms American businesses, negatively impacts jobs for American workers, and puts the burden of modernizing other nations’ pollution infrastructures on American taxpayers.

This form of socialism takes American money and pays it to other governments at a time when we are already drowning in debt and the Biden administration has just proposed a budget that will add another $ 1.5 trillion to the problem.

There is no reason to punish Americans who invest heavily in clean air and water. Especially when other countries, many of which have the resources to support themselves, do not even take police action themselves, let alone set pollution standards and occupational safety standards that are even close to ours.

The real fear in America, and this is where the socialist boogeyman is hiding, is to give politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez more money and more regulatory power. If we look at the much vaunted European social democracies, you will see that taxes there are phenomenally high. Almost no one in this country is willing to pay 50% or more income taxes, as is the case in some of these countries in Europe.

Undoubtedly, socialism is woven into the fabric of American democracy; However, it is a bad idea to keep giving more and more money to the most wastefully inefficient entity in America – our federal government.

Gary Cosby Jr. is the picture editor for The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.