Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

Americans are increasingly embracing socialism, and this is particularly true for young adults under the age of 30. As you will see below, four out of every ten Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism, and if current trends continue it is just a matter of time before those that prefer socialism are in the majority. Of course our society has already been very heavily socialized. We have been trained to believe that if a problem exists, then it is the job of government to fix it, and over time government on all levels of our system has just gotten bigger and bigger. But what most Americans don’t realize is that the United States never would have become an economic powerhouse without free market capitalism, and the further that we drift away from our roots the deeper that our economic problems will become. We need leaders that are willing to stand up and proudly declare that free market capitalism works incredibly well when the shackles are taken off, and that is precisely what I intend to do.

Not too long ago, a survey of U.S. adults was conducted by the American Culture and Faith Institute, and the most disturbing thing that was discovered was that 40 percent of all Americans now “prefer socialism to capitalism”…

“The most alarming result, according to [George] Barna, was that four out of every ten adults say they prefer socialism to capitalism,” the ACFI noted in its commentary on the poll. “That is a large minority,” Barna said, “and it includes a majority of the liberals — who will be pushing for a completely different economic model to dominate our nation. That is the stuff of civil wars. It ought to set off alarm bells among more traditionally-oriented leaders across the nation.’” That 40 percent of Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism could spell major change to the policies advanced by legislators and political leaders and to the interpretations of judges ruling on the application of new and pre-existing laws.

So what happens when that figure rises above 50 percent?

Are we going to go down the exact same road that Europe has gone?

And support for socialism is particularly high among our young people. A Gallup poll conducted in 2016 found that an astounding 55 percent of Americans under the age of 30 “have a positive view of socialism”. Also, a Harvard University study that was reported on by the Washington Post discovered that 51 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 “do not support capitalism”.

These numbers help to explain why politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have such high levels of support among Millennials. These young people were raised in schools that taught them that we have a “free market system” in America today, even though that is not really true at all. And as economic conditions deteriorate, millions of these young people are becoming disillusioned. The following comes from an extraordinary piece that was published by Business Insider…

Wages are stagnant or falling. The costs of health care, child care, and tuition continue to rise exponentially. Full-time jobs turn into contract positions while benefits are slashed. Middle-class jobs are replaced with low-paying service work. The expectations of American life your parents had when you were born — that a “long boom” will bring about unparalleled prosperity — crumble away. Baby boomers tell you there is a way out: a college education has always been the key to a good job. But that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. The college graduates you know are drowning in student debt, working for minimum wage, or toiling in unpaid internships. Prestigious jobs are increasingly clustered in cities where rent has tripled or quadrupled in a decade’s time. You cannot afford to move, and you cannot afford to stay. Outside these cities, newly abandoned malls join long abandoned factories. You inhabit a landscape of ruin. There is nothing left for you.

Years upon years of “training” in our failing system of public education has convinced large numbers of our young people that the solution to our economic ills is to move more toward socialism.

But of course that is about the last thing that we need. What we really need to do is to rediscover the principles that made our economy great in the first place, but there are very few national leaders that are standing up for those principles any longer.

Socialism simply does not work.

If we continue our steady march down the road toward socialism, we will ultimately end up like all of the other failed socialist experiments throughout history…

Let us look at the socialist alternative favored by Sanders and Warren. The miseries, deprivations, and backwardness it has inflicted on populations wherever and whenever it has been tried are boundless. They amount to the biggest empirical data set of political and economic failure in the history of humankind. In Venezuela, to take only the latest unfortunate experiment, it has meant the world’s largest oil reserves being wasted and stolen while children starve on the streets. The historical legacy of Soviet socialism, National Socialism, and Maoist Communism, to cite the most egregious versions of this poisonous left-wing political ideology, is so well known that it does not need to be rehearsed here. Even those countries that experienced the more gentle “democratic socialism,” such as modern South Africa and Brazil, socialism has allowed corrupt politicians to pilfer state industries while the poor live and die young in slums. Even in the socialized utopias of Europe, it has meant destructive youth unemployment rates, a dearth of innovation, and death panels in hospitals.

Our nation is in deep, deep trouble, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Now is the time to stand up and fight for the future of our nation, because if we don’t we may wake up one day and discover that the country we all loved so much is gone for good.