I know I know, you're thinking that I'm going to try and brainwash you. Typical liberal Kyle, always thinking he knows what's best. Always trying to tell people how to better their lives. What does he know? What could he possibly teach me?

Honestly, my intention here really isn't to teach you anything. I'm going to try and skip the preaching ideas of "greed isn't good" and "money isn't everything in life". While I do strongly believe in both of those ideas, the truth is that in our country, our children pledge allegiance every school day to the almighty dollar. A common goal of the so called "American Dream" is to achieve a certain level of financial security in life, so I think we're way beyond trying to tell people only live within their means.

Think about it. Who did you look up to when you were a kid? Athletes? Musicians? Movie stars? Why did they appeal to you? Was it because the could run fast, sing well, or look good? Or could it be that deep down, you really wanted to be able to buy whatever you wanted. Go wherever you pleased. Do whatever you wished. In all fairness, these dreams are quite common among our youth, and that's been the case for a long time, so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you shouldn't dream of being rich one day. That's the ultimate exercise in futility. But I will ask you a simple question...is it really so much to ask the rich to pay their "fair share"? Must we live in a society where the have's are constantly idolized and the have not's are always ridiculed?

I really don't want to bore you with details in this piece. Complex economic terms aren't my specialty anyway, so I'd rather not get too technical. I'll state my opinion simply: we can easily create a country built around the advantages that both socialism and capitalism provide. Lets first go into what each is basically about.

THIS CHART HELPS A LITTLE:

You'll never hear me say that Capitalism doesn't have its merits. Having a free market allows consumers to choose what products are best, which allows business growth to be fair and simple. The ability to use credit as a means to buy a house, a car, or start a business allows ordinary citizens a path to a stable and self sufficient future. These are just some of the basic pillars that a Capitalistic economy is built on...

...but Capitalism has a downside. If the system of power continually rewards the rich and doesn't provide the poor with an equal opportunity for success, a division along social classes is created. A society whose main goal is to make money will always be creating new citizens with selfish desires, never inspiring people to help those without the ability to help themselves. And perhaps worst of all, free market economies are known for their volatile cycles: a decade of prosperous growth could be undone simply by one year of financial mismanagement...

...Socialism also has plenty of problems too. Taking all the wealth from companies and equally distributing it to everyone can give a society no incentive for entrepreneurs, who provide an essential function for stimulating economic growth. If governments mismanage their control over private industry, the entire society feels the effects. If lazy workers are compensated the same amount as hard workers, why would someone ever do their best in an attempt to stand out to their employer...

Now we get to my favorite part, the benefits of Socialism. It forces the ultra-rich to help low income people with certain societal needs. The government can afford to provide its citizens with an easily seen and supportive system for assistance. And perhaps my favorite part, it eliminates the need for class warfare, seeing as the wealthy aren't thumbing their noses at us from their ivory towers...

If it isn't obvious to you by now, I consider myself to be a socialist. But I'm not a socialist with my eyes closed. I know that governments and politicians can be corrupt, but I also see that businesses can be the same way. I see the arguments against rewarding people who give no effort in the workplace, but I also question what motivation a 20 year old kid has who can't afford college and works a minimum wage job. It's easy to see both sides of this argument, and by no means do I plan on solving it here and now. But I would like to come forth with a very basic solution, one that's been said by people much smarter than me already: why can't we combine socialism and capitalism? In the United States, we've been doing that already with programs like Medicaid and Social Security. But why is it that our society thinks we must have one or the other? I'd like to point out some very basic things now:

1) Socialism is NOT Communism

I understand that most of my reading audience (small as it may be) are millennials, so you may not connect to this idea, but ask your parents: for decades, the United States has been at war with Communism. From the Soviet Union, to the People's Republic of China, even the tiny little countries of Cuba and Vietnam...for years our country told us that Capitalism was good and the spread of Communism around the world was evil. Of course I'm not saying that some of those instances weren't justified, but people still equate Communism to Socialism. They're different leaves plucked from the same tree. I like to call Communism "Socialism On Steroids". Socialism can work hand-in-hand with democracy, but Communist governments tend to be dictatorships dominated by one party. In communist countries EVERYTHING is owned by the government, while in Socialism private property (like your house) is still provided. They're alike in that the means and modes of production are both state-run, but vastly different in their ideological goals. So it's safe to say that Socialism should not be thought of like the boogeyman that Communism once was.

2) Higher taxes isn't the end of the world

One of the basic principals of Socialism is that taxes are higher, so that the government can afford to pay for its entitlement programs. This includes a much higher tax rate for the wealthy, but it can also increase taxes on the middle class. When Bernie Sanders was running for President back in the summer of 2016, he put forth a potential tax plan that said middle class workers could see a slight increase. Everyone promptly ran away from him (even Democrats), citing this as the beginning of the end, a downward spiral into a dark and dreary socialist nightmare. What many failed to realize is that increase in your taxes would pay for itself with how much his plan would save you: getting rid of health insurance companies and their out of control premiums would result in (shocker) you saving more money. Many people look at their paychecks and wonder "where's all my money going?". Well, imagine it's going into a well funded pension that will take care of you in your elder years, or it's going into a Social Security program that does the same. Imagine it's going to provide for better roads, better schools, better police and fire departments with faster response times, better hospitals that are cleaner and better maintained, better standards of living for the millions of people who desperately need it. If more people realized that taxes could pay for the basic things you need in every day life, more people wouldn't mind paying them.

3) People living on government programs DO have incentive

This is one of the more common criticisms of government programs like food stamps, welfare, and unemployment. Why should the society pay for people who just want to sit around and not contribute in it? And most of all, what incentive do these people have to get off these programs? If we're providing them with the basic necessary functions to survive, why should they ever aspire to something more? These ideas really bother me. I've always felt that these criticisms are based in some form of racism, since the lower class Americans who need these programs are stereotyped as minorities. Do people honestly think that if better education, health care, and living conditions where available to these people, they wouldn't use them? And trust me, it's not like these programs provide a life of luxury...I lived off of unemployment for 6 months, and let me tell you, spending money was a decision I did not take lightly. Humans can get used to their surroundings so much that it becomes normal, but I can't even imagine how many of those same people are just hoping and praying for a way to escape to a better life. So honestly the idea that these people will always leech of the government for ever is nonsense. If the government can provide them with a path to a better job, a better home, and a better life, it makes all the sense in the world that they'd take it. Of course there will be some who don't, who'd rather just make nothing of themselves and contribute nothing to society. Lets say that 9 out of 10 people are leeches (which is definitely a high number)...if 1, just 1 of those 10 people is someone who wants a better life for themselves, but just needs a little help to get there, I'm more than happy to pay for all of them.

I really could keep going on and on with this stuff, so instead of writing a book here, I'll move to my closing arguments.

What would a United States look like with a more socialized economy, while keeping fundamental capitalistic ideas?... (these are very basic ideas, no need to point out their simplicity)

1) Privately own businesses, with higher taxes on them

In 2015, 11% of our total revenue was from corporate income taxes, around $313 billion. Let's just say we double that number (with higher income corporations, especially Wall Street banks, paying a higher rate than lower income ones), and there's a ton more money our government is receiving.

2) Higher individual tax rates for millionaires

In 2015, the highest income tax bracket was for people who earned around $400,000 a year. These people paid a tax rate 39.6%. Let's say we made people earning around $1 million a year pay a rate of 43%, people who earned around $5 million a year pay 45%, and anyone making over $10 million a year pays 50%. Really not that drastic of a change (I know I know, it is if you make that kind of money), but once again a ton more money our government is receiving.

3) Double the estate tax for those receiving over $1 million

Ah yes, my favorite of all taxes. Commonly called the "Death Tax" by Conservatives, the estate tax is simply this: if your parent dies and leaves you money or property, or if someone leaves you money/property in their last will and testament, if the amount exceeds a certain dollar figure, you owe the government a piece of it. One of the biggest problems we have in our country is inherited wealth, and how it rewards people for simply being born into the right family. This goes against capitalistic ideals, as generations of people continue to be rich for doing nothing, and no new wealth is created by them. Double the estate tax for them, and there's a ton more money the government is receiving.

4) Slash the military spending budget by 25%

This one is just too easy. In 2015 16% of our national spending went to Defense, amounting to $536 billion. We've been spending more money than any country in the world on defense for decades, we're not in some far reaching war that requires a constant military buildup, I'm just asking for a small cut of 25%, now totaling around $402 billion. We'd still be spending more than any other country, but still saving tons more money to spend on other things. We have to lose this whole "military industrial complex idea". It's not WWII folks, how many more tanks to we need. (I do understand that these cuts will result in a loss of jobs, meaning higher unemployment, but that's a necessary part of this plan. Those people need to be educated and retrained into a field that can better suit our societal needs. Besides, future wars will be fought with robots. Duh).

5) Take all this new revenue and invest it in our own country

Gee I hate to quote The Donald, but let's really "Make American Great Again":

Let's take these new found trillions and invest in our crumbling infrastructure. New roads, new bridges, new low cost housing...let's build houses for the homeless...let's make public transportation more efficient and available, built from clean and renewable energy sources (Maglev trains anyone?).

Let's be the international leader in new green energy jobs. Let's put real money behind wind and solar technology. If the government can help move these technologies forward, and these energy companies really take off, you'll see jobs and factories come back to our country, and thus giving a new generation of young people a high paying and cutting edge field to work in.

Let's make public college more affordable (private colleges can still be ridiculously high in cost, thus still attracting the best and brightest from all over the world to them), oh and let's make community colleges free. Let's also make going to college debt free, so that a generation of young people aren't burdened with the after effects of crippling interest rates. Let's provide more governmental work programs that will pay for your college upon completion (volunteer work, teachers, community outreach, did I say TEACHERS?)

Let's make health care more affordable. I'm not even saying make it completely free (see there's a compromise). Well, actually let's make it free for all children. If you're under 18, your health is taken care of. That idea seems almost too simple, it's a wonder why no one has done it yet (programs like CHIP don't cover every child, there's a gap that some children fall in, and I refuse to live in a society where a child dies because their parent either isn't rich enough or isn't poor enough for coverage). For adults, let's make the idea of medical coverage simpler. There's no mandate, so you're free to die on your own without coverage if you want. If you want to stay with your private insurance provider and your current physician, of course you can. But let's make government run health care competitive with private insurance. Recruit better doctors to work in the government sector, paying them a competitive wage. Let's open new government run clinics and hospitals and pharmacies that can out perform privately owned ones. This is capitalism at its finest: if the government can do the job better, the natural selection of the free market can do its job. This is the epitome of socialism and capitalism running hand-in-hand.

See, no real big changes...our country wouldn't look that different. We would have more nice things, and the ultra-rich would pay for it. What's so un-American about that? We'd still have a Free Market, big corporations would still be free to do business (they'd be regulated more of course), but there'd still be a sense that America is still ruled by money. You could still walk around Times Square and see huge billboards of Coca-Cola or Apple. There'd still be a McDonald's in every town. Millionaires and billionaires would still be lining their pockets with the money of American consumers.They only real difference is that their pockets would be a litter smaller.

I could easily keep going on with these ideas, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about. And trust me, I know I haven't given the perfect plan for how to fund all these socialistic programs. But I just believe that if any country can pay for these kinds of things, it's ours, the richest country in the world. The best parts of capitalism and the best parts of socialism can work together to cancel out most of the potential downsides. There will definitely be some hiccups along the way: we would need a better run government, that does away with lobbying and inefficient spending methods. We would need better informed citizens willing to sacrifice more for the greater good of their society. But most of all, we would need to do away with these feelings of pessimism and neglect towards politics. After the 2016 election, America is still trying to heal from a divisive and trauma filled change of power. If we want to move forward and become a competitive nation in the eyes of the world once again, we must come together as one and show that if our elected representatives can't solve our problems, then we as people can. That's the fundamental code in democracy: those guys and girls in Washington work for us. It's time they started acting like it. So call your employees from time to time, and tell them to shape up. Because if America was a business, we'd have filed for bankruptcy many times. Huh, no wonder we elected Trump.