{"id":54876,"date":"2025-11-28T17:12:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T17:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/54876\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T17:12:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T17:12:21","slug":"lets-give-thanks-for-not-living-under-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/54876\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s give thanks \u2014 for not living under socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

People are turning to socialism.<\/a> Two-thirds of Americans ages 18-29 hold a \u201cfavorable view\u201d of it.<\/p>\n

New York just elected a \u201cproud socialist\u201d mayor. But his ideas would make things worse.<\/p>\n

Of course they would \u2014 socialism has never worked. Anywhere.<\/p>\n

Yet Seattle too just elected a socialist mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s give socialism a chance,\u201d <\/a>said a student writing in The Student Life, a college newspaper.<\/p>\n

Americans should know we already gave socialism a chance. <\/p>\n

The only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food is because the Pilgrims learned (the hard way) that socialism doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

When they came to America, they first tried sharing land. Gov. William Bradford decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much they worked.<\/p>\n

The results were disastrous.<\/p>\n

Few Pilgrims worked hard, claiming \u201cweakness and inability,\u201d wrote Bradford. \u201cMuch was stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same plan in Jamestown led to starvation, the death of half the population, even cannibalism.<\/p>\n

Learning from their mistakes, the Pilgrims tried a different approach: \u201cEvery family was assigned a parcel of land,\u201d wrote Bradford. Then, he noted, Pilgrims \u201cwent willingly into the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s capitalism.<\/p>\n

Soon, there was an abundance of food. So much that the Pilgrims and Natives could celebrate Thanksgiving together.<\/p>\n

This abundance has only grown.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll feast on vast amounts of food this Thanksgiving that, despite media clickbait, is much more affordable than it used to be<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Today Americans spend only 10% of our disposable income on food. When I started working, it was twice that.<\/p>\n

This abundance didn\u2019t come with people in government manipulating supply chains, or comrades dictating prices and quality.<\/p>\n

It comes from millions of people practicing capitalism, making billions of voluntary exchanges.<\/a><\/p>\n

It comes from free people willing to innovate and take risks, in an attempt to make more money by serving customers better than the next guy.<\/p>\n

This process almost always works better than government central planning.<\/p>\n

Without central direction, farmers, truckers and grocers move food across the country with remarkable coordination and efficiency.<\/p>\n

Stores compete so fiercely that they sell turkeys at a loss, just to get you through their doors.<\/p>\n

Global competition drives airlines to lower their fares so it\u2019s cheaper for you to fly home for Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

And despite the media\u2019s alarms about climate change creating food shortages, global agricultural output sets record highs year after year.<\/p>\n

Government didn\u2019t orchestrate any of that. Government can barely manage a DMV line.<\/p>\n

Markets create abundance because they quickly reward people who figure out how to make things cheaper, faster and better.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I\u2019m thankful for this Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

The alternative looks a lot like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea . . .<\/p>\n

While we enjoy the gifts that free enterprise brings, AP reports that in Venezuela, \u201cevery meal is a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

NBC, before going on to write silly stories that practically promote socialism, admits that in Cuba, residents face \u201cdaily blackouts lasting up to 20 hours, mounting piles of uncollected garbage, and severe shortages of food and basic goods.\u201d<\/p>\n

When politicians try to control the economy, the abundance you get . . . is scarcity.<\/p>\n

We live in a country where choices overwhelm us, and shortages are something we read about in the news.<\/p>\n

It should make us grateful. Not just for the food, but for the free-enterprise system that creates it.<\/p>\n

This Thanksgiving take a moment to thank the farmers, truckers, pilots, grocery workers, engineers, entrepreneurs and, most importantly, the economic freedom that makes it all possible.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not let socialist idiots kill it.<\/p>\n

Abundance doesn\u2019t happen by accident. <\/p>\n

It won\u2019t continue if we forget where it came from.<\/p>\n

John Stossel is the author of \u201cGive Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People are turning to socialism. Two-thirds of Americans ages 18-29 hold a \u201cfavorable view\u201d of it. New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30065,12246,9,24,55,54,56,299,1211,6967],"class_list":{"0":"post-54876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-capitalism","9":"tag-communism","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-socialism","17":"tag-thanksgiving"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54876","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=54876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}