First of all, you must understand that the vast majority of educators at all levels do not have a clue as to what it is like working in the real world. Once they acquire tenure, K-12 teachers and higher education professionals have a job for life unless they do something really stupid. In the real world of business, one can be fired at a moment’s notice.

I’m reminded of a teaching colleague (yes, I was an educator) who took a year’s leave-of-absence. He told us, “Now I’m going out to work in the real world.”

It was sort of a put down and quite condescending to the rest of us. A year later, he was back in the classroom.

The facts

With the above being said, let’s take a realistic look at the history of socialism and why it has always, and will always, collapse. In just the past century alone, the following 24-plus countries had socialist regimes: Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Laos, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others–not counting the very short-lived ones. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. It doesn’t take a NASA astronautical engineer to figure that out.

Socialism is a losing economic and political system. (Source: “Socialism: The Failed Idea that Never Dies,” by Rainer Zitelmann.)

Why socialism fails

• Economic centralization just doesn’t work.

Today, the world is highly technical, deeply complex and rapidly shifting. Even if you were the greatest genius on earth in, say, quantum physics or rocket science, that wouldn’t mean you’d have even the most basic understanding of something like farming, brain surgery or social media marketing.

So, when politicians and bureaucrats, who are frequently no smarter than the average person, are asked to make decisions about a wide variety of jobs, resources, policies and regulations, the results are inevitably going to be disastrous.

Capitalism deals with this by leaving as many decisions as possible in the hands of the market, while socialism deals with it by failing over and over again, shifting the blame to non-socialists, businesses and capitalism.

• Socialism creates unsustainable levels of spending.

Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, once pointed out: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Why is this true? Because the answer to every problem under socialism is, “spend more money” and “raise taxes higher” on successful people.

For example, if the government taxed successful people at an 80 percent rate, what would be the point of sacrificing so much of your time? The heavier the tax burden becomes, the less incentive people have to work hard in creating new products and businesses.

It’s easy to say, “So what? Screw those rich guys. What do we need them for?” Well, you need them for jobs. You need them for tax revenue. You need them to supply much needed products.

The government can’t put together a group of bureaucrats who can replace the highly talented employees that entrepreneurs hire. High performance is punished with huge taxes to pay benefits for many of those who are unwilling to contribute to society.

• Socialism rewards laziness and a lack of productivity.

Socialism is all about looting the most productive citizens in a society in order to reward the least productive citizens in a society. If you can do nearly as well not working as working, why work? If the government does everything for you, why bother to do it for yourself? It’s promoting laziness, not positive productivity.

With incentives, workers are highly motivated to serve their fellow citizens by creating products or businesses for the benefit of society. There are no incentives for a person to achieve (or even try to succeed) in a socialistic society because excellence isn’t rewarded.

It’s just common sense. People do things they get rewarded for and stop doing things that produce no rewards. As an exaggerated example of socialism, what if the government said, “Doctors and fast-food workers will now be paid the same?” Almost nobody is going to spend massive amounts of money, go to school for 10 or more years and take on the heavy hours and high pressure of being a doctor when they could make just as much money asking: “Do you want fries with that?” (Source: “Culturcidal” by John Hawkins)

There is one area where I must admit I have a socialistic view: I believe all Americans should be afforded the same health care. As a devout Christian, I care for the physical well-being of all people, no matter their social status.

Capitalism is not perfect. However, it promotes the initiative and motivation to better oneself. And as an educator, I believe that students should be exposed to both sides of a controversial issue, so that they can decide for themselves which cultural path to endorse.

(Welker, who holds a Ph.D. in educaton, is a recipient of the Jasper N. Deahl Alumni Award from West Virginia University for his contributions to education. He is a freelance op/ed columnist who enjoys writing articles on sports, education and any topic that piques his interest. He can be contacted at mattalkwv@hotmail.com)