As this country a lured by the promise of “free” everything few are thinking about how expensive “free” really is. For a very recent answer just ask the good people of Venezuela how their pet dogs and cats taste when they can’t find sufficient food in the local dumpsters.

Free healthcare?

Healthcare in Venezuela resulted in filthy and crumbling facilities where there isn’t enough medication and water shortages are so prevalent that wounds often can’t be washed and surgeons have to wash their hands, when they can, with club soda and no soap. Often surgery and medical procedures have to be performed without gloves.

Obesity in Venezuela isn’t a problem considering that they average citizenry is 20 pounds underweight due to a lack of food. Refrigeration is limited because most people have only a few hours a day electricity.

Over a period of time, forces as far back as 1975 and continuing with Hugo Chavez and now Maduro transformed Venezuela from one of the richest countries in the world, and certainly the richest in South America, to abject poverty and despair.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont once said”

“People are not truly free when they can’t afford health care, prescription drugs, or a place to live. People are not free when they cannot retire with dignity or feed their families.”

Sanders hasn’t noticed that food and medicine, when you can even get them, are completely unaffordable in his world of “Social Democracy” in Venezuela. The people have to keep themselves warm by burning their worthless currency. Under his “Democratic Socialism” in Venezuela inflation is an unbelievable 26,000% (no, that is not a typing error).

Sanders, and his followers including the so-called “Squad,” want “fairness,” but they fail to define what “fair” is and what weapons they will use to achieve this undefined “fairness.”

One has to wonder what it is that keeps attracting people to an economic system that has a steady history of complete failure. A recent Gallup poll shows that 51% of Americans between 18 – 29 have a positive view of socialism. They think that socialism will somehow achieve this nebulous “fairness.” Other polls show similar numbers. There is an assumption that if my neighbor is becoming rich, I must be becoming poor. Somehow it is a zero-sum game. Yet, history is clearly different. Around 1820, 75% of the people lived in extreme poverty. However, as the industrial revolution went into full swing poverty dramatically declined. By 1919 poverty declined to less than 10%. Childhood mortality declined from around 30% to 1%.

One has to wonder how many of these 18 to 29-year olds know what socialism is. How many have studied Mao, Stalin, Castro, or now Venezuela. Once again polls give us the answer. Among that age bracket only 16% could identify the definition of socialism.

One can only hope that once they come out of their parent’s basements and start to earn a living they will discover the dangers of socialism and large government. Once they see what is taken out of their paychecks they will suddenly discover the true cost of “free.”