Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

To the editor:

The college crowd, locally and across the country, seems almost giddy at the prospect of all the free stuff associated with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ vision of a democratic socialist utopia.

College tuition increases, not anchored by the economy, have crushed the middle-class parent’s dream of funding their child’s education. They have maxed-out the student’s ability to fund their education with loans and they are pushing the envelope in terms of how much wealthy international students can be soaked for their education.

Subsequently, while academia’s high state of arousal at the prospect of more direct and unfettered access to the federal treasury (read that “free” education) is understandable. Less clear is why those members of the college community who devote their lives to the study of economics, history and political science do not moderate their colleague’s joy by pointing out that capitalism is the most successful large-scale economic system that has thus far existed.

You can bet they also know that the small Nordic social democracies, upon which Bernie’s vision is based, are not doing well  and  that virtually all the larger experiments in socialism have failed — or are failing — miserably, generally with tragic consequences. Socialism continuously expropriates private capital until all the industry in the country has been nationalized or until the country’s economy has been run into the ground, whichever comes first.

As Margaret Thatcher so eloquently put it, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”