This was a huge thing for me to get used to when moving to the US from Europe. "Socialism" in the US has a much less specific meaning than in Europe. It just me

This was a huge thing for me to get used to when moving to the US from Europe. "Socialism" in the US has a much less specific meaning than in Europe. It just means that there are done welfare programs in place and as Bernie Sanders keeps saying by that definition we already have socialism in the US. What I used to understand as socialism when living in Germany would probably best expressed as "lower stage communism". At least that's what I get from having had many arguments about this and Wikipedia.