(This is my subjective, personal, and probably poorly-educated take) It feels like the US has shot itself in the foot by demonizing socialism and communism. No

(This is my subjective, personal, and probably poorly-educated take) It feels like the US has shot itself in the foot by demonizing socialism and communism. Not because those ideologies would have fixed this issue, but because so many US residents have translated "socialism is bad" into "all government spending is bad". In my town, there's a vocal group of older people who rant against using their taxes to pay for schools. Their argument is that they don't use those services, their children are older or nonexistent. They reject the "rising tide lifts all boats" argument, and reject that an educated populace improves their quality of life. They only see the short term bill of property tax. I think that attitude is present in a lot of people, encouraged by the argument against government spending and collective action. I'm not sure what the end state of this attitude will be. The selfishness that exists in our culture doesn't seem to be slowing, if anything it feels like it is accelerating. I think there's going to be a lot more bridge collapses, people stuck in snow drifts on interstates for 36 hours, a lot more disaster and suffering before anything changes. (I also don't have any solutions for this. I don't wish for disaster and doom, and human suffering is utterly awful especially in what is supposed to be an enlightened future. But I wonder if things will have to get a lot worse before society changes its course)