Socialism, for Lack of a Better Word, Sucks

Socialism is a hot topic these days. Democratic presidential wannabes, including Bernie Sanders, say they’re for it, and recent polls indicate about 40 percent of American young people are too.

Over the last few years, my buddy Ben Powell, who is a professor of economics at Texas Tech, and I toured the world, drank a lot of beer, and saw for ourselves how things are going in former and current socialist nations. It turns out the quality and availability of beer in each of these countries is an accurate, at-a-glance way to assess their political systems.

Our first stop was Sweden, which Bernie Sanders and others extol as an ideal example of socialism. I’ve got news for Bernie and his crew -- Sweden is no more socialist than the United States. Ben and I have been there, and the beer is good and cold, produced by privately owned companies, imported from all over the world, and sold at privately owned bars at unregulated prices. Those prices are high, because of Sweden’s notoriously high taxes, which are about 50% higher than in the U.S., but that’s not socialism.

Socialism is a system of government in which the means of production and the raw materials are controlled by the government. Think of your least-favorite government office -- is it the Post Office? Or maybe the DMV? Then imagine every business in our nation, from Starbucks to Procter & Gamble to car manufacturers, being run the same way.

What does that do to beer? We went to Venezuela and Cuba to find out.