I'm a Democrat and not a socialist. n/t

[WSHazel]

81. None of those things are socialist

Socialist grab onto those issues to seem mainstream, but there are plenty in the center and on the Right in favor of covering significant portions of healthcare, and things like Universal Basic Income. Milton Friedman was in favor of cash grants to the poor instead of heavily restricted welfare payments. Capitalism is supposed to be about free and fair markets enabling individuals and groups to decide how they want to interact economically. Socialism and whatever Trumpism should be called ("corporatism"?) are about people surrendering their choices to someone else.

Where Socialism becomes more problematic is overly restricting areas like housing and employment, because that creates shortages by increasing the costs of providing housing or hiring people. There are plenty of free market proposals that would increase wages and reduce income inequality, but Republicans AND Democrats seem to both oppose those policies.

A big percentage of affordable housing developments turn into corruption-ridden dumps because the complexity of the laws around them chase off all but the most corrupt developers. Give people cash for housing and they will solve the housing issue more effectively than the government ever could.

Socialists also lose credibility when they equate capitalism with things like corporatism and artificially low taxes on the rich, which is not what capitalism is at all. The far Left has actually encouraged the Right to hijack the term "capitalism" by describing all of Trump's absurd, anti-free market policies as "capitalist", when they are anything but. Nothing about an economy running huge deficits so the rich can pay low taxes is capitalist.