I\u2019ve always considered myself an eternal optimist. But while I\u2019m very hopeful about our future, today, I would be remiss in not saying I\u2019m concerned about it.<\/p>\n
Why? We are dealing with a resurgent radical left that says we must \u201creinvent American capitalism to create opportunity for all.\u201d Those are just buzzwords \u2014 there is opportunity for all, and the following very real evidence proves it.<\/p>\n
Growing up, I was taught that you get educated, work hard, keep your nose clean, respect authority, have dreams and make them happen. I quit full-time college after two years to help my father in his small mom-and-pop auction business after he became ill and continued my education at night.<\/p>\n
I wanted to become a lawyer, but I was working full-time and living from week to week. Eventually, I scraped together the money to go to night law school \u2014 classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. after a full day\u2019s work. After three years, I graduated, took the Maryland Bar Exam and promptly failed it! But I took it a second time six months later and passed. My Jewish mother\u2019s fondest dream had come true \u2014 I was a lawyer!<\/p>\n
The logic of socialism is that you are entitled to all the good things in life one aspires to without having to do any of the work required to achieve it, which isn\u2019t practical in the real world. Everything I\u2019ve ever done in my life was the result of some ability, but mostly hard work and recognizing and taking advantage of opportunity. Yes, there was a luck part of it, too, but I believe luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and I prepared myself for the opportunities that came my way. That same formula \u2014 hard work, taking advantage of opportunity and a bit of luck is available to everyone.<\/p>\n
So just what is wrong with socialism? Well, for starters, it has failed miserably wherever it has been instituted \u2014 politically, socially and economically. Politically, it has often led to repressive, ruthless, tyrannical governments. Socially, it creates dependency, stifles innovation, destroys initiative and lulls people into a false sense of security.<\/p>\n
Economically, it has always been a disaster. Today\u2019s leading proponents of economic socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and numerous others, often point to the \u201cshining\u201d example of Sweden and other Nordic countries, where supposedly it has fulfilled all its promises.<\/p>\n
But is that really the case? The answer is a resounding no.<\/p>\n
The truth is that Sweden\u2019s experiment with socialism failed years ago, and the realities of that failure are obvious to anyone who might care to look for them. Socialism stopped creating jobs in the private sector. Businesses stopped producing goods and services to be traded in the world markets. Successful companies, Swedish celebrities and entrepreneurs fled to free economies across the world to escape debilitating taxes and regulations. The incentive to innovate, create and grow ceased. These and numerous other contributing factors eventually led to the collapse of Sweden\u2019s economy in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Here in the United States over the past 70 years, the logic of socialism has been implemented in the form of solutions aimed at addressing our social problems, at the cost to taxpayers of trillions of dollars. And what have we gotten for it? Rotting inner cities, terrible crime rates, horrific drug problems, public schools that don\u2019t educate, uninhabitable public housing and a mindset of entitlement. Remember the famous definition of insanity \u2014 doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? If that\u2019s right, then we are all insane.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for society to wake up, see the reality of what the investment of our time, effort, energy and money has wrought and change what we\u2019ve been doing. Unfortunately, what we see happening in the streets of our major cities today \u2014 the horrific destruction, the obvious socialist goals of the extreme left and the pandering to them by extreme, liberal local and state governments \u2014 raises the possibility that it may be too late for us to change our \u201cinsane\u201d ways. The drumbeat from the far left appears to be getting louder and louder, bent on taking us down the road to socialism, and each day it seems we get further down that road.<\/p>\n
We have been traveling down the road to socialism for years, and we are today closer than ever before to going over the edge of the socialist precipice. Will we go over and self-destruct, or will we recognize the warning signs and bright red flashing lights before our eyes? Can we turn away from the precipice and avoid disaster? The answers to these questions will decide our society\u2019s fate and impact generations to come.<\/p>\n
And this, my friends, is what causes my concerns for the future.<\/p>\n
William Z. Fox is an entrepreneur, professional auctioneer and founder of the traditional and online real estate auction firms Fox Residential Auctions and Homesale.plus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve always considered myself an eternal optimist. But while I\u2019m very hopeful about our future, today, I would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9297,9,24,55,54,56,1211,618],"class_list":{"0":"post-105056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-left","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-socialism","15":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}