Some of you that have read other opinions I have written may think I have gone completely crazy at this point. Let me assure you I have not, at least not yet. Maybe I should finish the thought. Socialism is a good thing for America in family units. I know I grew up in a socialist family unit. One of the early tenants of the socialist movement was the slogan:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Think about it in terms of an individual family.
From each according to his ability
In the family unit, mom or dad or both have the ability and need to make money to support the family unit. Growing up in my family, both my parents worked to make a better life for us. After work, Mom would make dinner for us while Dad worked on things outside. We lived on a small farm so there was always something that needed to be worked on.
When we were old enough to walk well, we started learning that before going to bed we needed to pick up any toys we had been playing with that night. We made our first contribution to the family unit. As we grew up, the level of our chores increased based on our abilities. I think we were all helping wash dishes by the time we could reach our hands into the sink. As I got older, my chores moved to the outside where I was required to make sure the grass was cut or weeds were removed from the garden or helping take care of any livestock we had at the time.
There were more pleasurable aspects of contributing to the family unit that included hunting and fishing. I can't remember ever being too young to fish, although I am sure at some point I was. By the time I was 10 or so, I learned to shoot a 22 rifle and was hunting rabbit and squirrels by the time I was 12. We didn't hunt and fish just for the fun of it, we ate what we were able to bring home.
So my parents lead us into adulthood by increasing our responsibility to the family unit as our abilities increased. As a result, the lawn was always cut, the garden didn't have too many weeds in it, the house was clean, and the freezer was normally full of food we had gotten from the garden along with the hunting and fishing trips.
To each according to his needs.
All of our needs were met growing up as well as many of the things that we wanted. There was always a house for us to live in, we had food on the table and clothes on our backs. Like any socialist environment, the money only goes so far. There was no way to fulfill all our wants and assure that our future needs would be taken care of.
As we grew, our needs included an education. I think a lot of the need for an education was as much Mom and Dad's need as ours since they never received a high school education, but they made sure we did. In high school we all had extra curricular activities that were seen as needs to help round us out as young adults. But again, too many extra curricular activities drained the money in our socialist family unit so we all had to be careful.
To help meet many of our wants and a few of our needs, we received an allowance for our efforts at the chores we had been given. As we aged and our ability to provide more complex chores increased, our allowance also increased. But it was always clear that if we didn't do our chores, we didn't get our allowance. Much like going to work later in life. Looking back at not getting paid if we didn't do our chores with a slant to the socialist viewpoint, the good socialist gets rewarded. For socialism to ever work on a large scale everyone in the socialist society has to buy in to socialism and make contributions to the socialist society. Obviously those that do not have the ability to contribute will still be taken care of, but those who can contribute but don't, can't be tolerated. As a result, good socialists are rewarded and bad socialists are punished in one form or another.
My impression of young families raising children today is that many have left these socialistic patterns. Many young parents seem to try to give their children anything they want while having no expectations on the children. I do think socialism has a place in America, now you know where.