Socialism Pros and Cons List
Nowadays people are being confronted with an economic crisis which is leading mindsets to lose faith in capitalism and to look elsewhere for answers. This constant look for other types of answers is making socialism more and more powerful, without people truly being informed about it. Even though it can look like heaven for a lot of people, it doesn’t really work like that and, to be informed, people need to look at the advantages and disadvantages of socialism itself.
It is true that capitalism widened the gap that existed between rich and poor people, but it does have some advantages as well. Socialism, however, is the “quick fix” people see to close this gap as soon as possible, aiming to provide equal rights and opportunities for everyone.
List of Pros of Socialism
1. A Fair System
Socialism aims to distribute the wealth of a national equally between everyone in it. Not only that, but it also aims to provide people equal opportunities taking away privileges people in capitalism get when they are financially gifted. Socialism really means that everyone gets equality, regardless of color, origin, religion or economic status.
2. Lower Disparity
Socialism, as said, aims to close the gap between rich and poor. As such, it tends to take ownership of productions units owned by the rich, and present them to the poor and the workers, giving everyone a chance to earn a piece of the pie. This will easily improve the economic health of a nation.
3. Higher Mortality
With an effort to make everyone equal, regardless of origin, socialism improves morality within the nation. While in capitalism some people end up being completely crushed for financial profit, this doesn’t happen in socialism, since money isn’t the priority of the society.
4. Cares for Everyone
Socialism doesn’t leave anyone behind and cares for everyone, providing them with equal opportunities and proper health and wealth distribution. As such, social evils such as the lack of proper health facilities due to low profitability are eliminated.
5. Improves Living Standards
Since everyone gets a little piece of the pie when it comes to money, people have equal opportunities financially. As such, instead of having a society where a person gets paid a lot of money while others just make “average” paydays, everyone gets good amounts of money, allowing financial freedom to be easier to obtain.
6. Unity
People work for a common cause, and there isn’t one person above the other. As such, people in a socialist society end up sharing problems and solutions equally. When a factory isn’t making a lot of money, the problem falls on everyone, and not just on the manager. Since color, religion and other types of discrimination are destroyed by socialism, harmony reigns over society.
List of Cons of Socialism
1. Unreal Theory
Socialism was thought of by Karl Marx and other socialists, but the idea itself was never more than something they imagined and wrote done on their great works. Unfortunately, the theory was never truly implemented in the real world, and when it was implemented it wasn’t the form designed by its creators, but an altered one. Today, the original form of socialism isn’t practiced.
2. Poor Implementation
Countries that use a socialist system nowadays don’t use it correctly. A small amount of bureaucrats control the power of the state, and regulate and redistribute the wealth thanks to the amount of power they have, deciding on the taxes people get. As such, this completely violates the true concept of socialism, taking away the power that people should have over wealth in the nation.
3. Stops Economic Growth
Socialism isn’t the perfect society model for economic growth. Since socialism taxes wealthy entrepreneurs, they aren’t able to generate large amounts of wealth and as such, they aren’t able to make large investments. These taxes will make the money flow, but won’t help raise the economy as much as proper investment in other areas.
4. Poverty is Maintained
Even though the wealth is distributed to every worker, poverty isn’t irradiated from socialism at all. Economic growth is damaged and as such, there is actually less wealth to distribute meaning that either society prospers and everyone has a lot of money, or it doesn’t and everyone has low amounts of money.
5. Living Standards Might Not Increase
If there isn’t a lot of wealth in the nation to be distributed to everyone, the rich members of society end up losing their quality of life to distribute it to the poorer members. Since there isn’t a lot of wealth, everyone will be sinking together instead off prospering.
6. Boosts Laziness
Socialism provides the poor with higher amounts of income even though they don’t work any harder for it. Social security payments end up arriving at their mailboxes even though they don’t improve their effort or step up their game. As such, hardworking people see their efforts aren’t getting rewarded and end up giving up on their ambitions and start to slack off as well. Since they can see that lazy people get paid as much as they do, they will also be lazy. In a nation where everyone is lazy, production goes down to risky levels, and the economy is the one that ends up being damaged greatly, reflecting this damage on the amount of wealth everyone inside the socialist society has, and leading into a never ending cycle.