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Article Review: Millenials for Socialism

Walter E. Williams is the author of the article titled “Millenials for Socialism” published in TownHall magazine on the tenth of April 2019. He is a holds a doctorate in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles. The article is a criticism of the implementation of socialist policies in the country. The author highlights examples of socialist countries that have faced economic turmoil because of socialism. He uses these examples to warn against the increasing support of socialism by millenials.

The author does not mince his words in the opening statement, remarking that “If one needed evidence of the gross ignorance of millennials, and their teachers and college professors, it’s their solid support for socialism and socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.” (Williams) he suggests that these people base their judgments on mere speeches rather than relying on facts. Socialism may sound good in theory, but resulted in disaster in countries such as Argentina which fell from being one of the the welathist country to ranking 25th in terms of GDP (Williams). Venezuela is one of the poorest countries after adopting a socialist approach in its economy. Germany and Korea had two parts of ach country, one socialist and the other capitalist. The capitalist sides had more wealth and income as well as protection of human rights.

The main characteristic of a free market economy is the private ownership of property and means of production. Socialism on the other hand features almost absolute government control of property and means of production. Socialist republic face challenges such as low income and gross violation of human rights (Williams). There is no pure free market economy system, and neither is there a pure communist system. Countries are judged based on which spectrum they lie closet to. From research, countries closer to a free market economy perform far better than their socialist counterparts based on GDP and ‘Freedom in the World’ report. Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are touted by US leaders such as Sanders as models of socialism but these assumptions were refuted by the Prime Minister of Denmark.

The fact that the author holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in economics lends credence to his argument. It is assumed that he understands his subject matter intimately. The challenge is that he does not back up his claims with facts and figures. For example, the reader may ask, is socialism entirely to blame for Venezuela’s economic downfall? Might there be other factors such as bad leadership involved? It is difficult to identify if the author’s claim is justified. The author also uses unnecessarily strong language in his frits sentence, referring to milennials and their professor as grossly ignorant. This statement is obviously untrue, students and their professors are not ignorant; it might have been better to explain that their ideas are unfounded and misguided. Reading this article, a reader cannot fully rely on the author’s claims as true due to the absence of evidence and facts to support his theory that socialism is harmful for any country.

Works Cited

Wiliams, E.Walter. “Millenials for Socialism.” Townhall 10 April 2019. Retrieved from https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/04/10/millennials-for-socialism-n2544432 Accessed on 15 April 2019