Roots Of Socialism In America

America has always been based on capitalist principles; however, slowly a new socialist movement has taken place that threatens the country's capitalist principles. The central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population (What Is Socialism?). A large group of people in this country believes in these socialist principles and believes the country should move towards it. These socialist values are essentially the complete opposite of America's traditional capitalist views and as government programs grow bigger and bigger every year we are closer to a socialist country now more than ever. America’s culture and lifestyle has always been centralized

“The roots of socialism in America can be traced to the arrival of German immigrants in the 1850s when Marxian socialist unions began, such as the National Typographic Union in 1852”(Socialism in America). They soon created a large socialist movement and in the early 1900s, the socialist party was formed with over 100,000 members. A socialist presidential candidate even got %6 of the popular vote. This movement got snuffed out of the United States after World War 2 with the rise of the Soviet Union, but it has been revitalized today under the Democratic Socialist Party. The reviving of socialism in America has happened through the support of a new generation of Millennials who didn’t live in a time of the Soviet Union and don’t know what real socialism can do or even is. This is the new democratic definition of

“153,323,000 total benefit-takers at the end of 2012, said the Census Bureau, equaled 49.5 percent of the population” (Terence P. Jeffrey). Now, more than %50 of Americans are using some sort of government benefit. That is more than the entire population of Russia that is relying, or at least partially relying, on the government for help or money. And %100 of the country is paying for half of its people to be on benefits. The main concept of socialism is that the collective group helps pay for all and that is exactly what’s going on except half of them aren’t even getting anything in return. With the taxes getting higher and higher every year, more government programs are being sponsored giving the government more and more power to control the economy with more regulations on businesses trying to spread the wealth evenly. There are people who do need help in America, but is the government taking it too far? “In fact, social welfare spending per capita in the U.S. rises to nearly twice the European average”(Poverty and the Social Welfare State in the United States and Other Nations). This is because the United States has a greatly broader definition of what “being poor” means distributes wealth to many more people than in Europe. “In the United states, being poor is defined as having an income below 50