Socialism today

Hugo Chavez was a socialist who came to power in Venezuela in 1999 and stayed until 2013. He promised to redistribute the wealth by taking over private businesses and using the profits to help the poor. He promised to redistribute land and to provide free health care. Such policies included redistribution of wealth, land reform, and democratization of economic activity via workplace self-management and creation of worker-owned cooperatives. As he increased domestic spending on many programs he built a following, called buying votes by some detractors, but foreign investors became leery of his spending which continued to increase as the price of oil fell and he succumbed to the Margaret Thatcher phase that socialism is great until you run out of other guys money which in this case was oil money. The recent interest in socialism in the US is not based on nationalizing businesses but on using company profits and wealthy taxes to provide domestic benefits such as free health care and free college tuition. The siren call of socialism has been around for many years and has been tried many times. It always sound tempting and this time is no different.