photo #9266061

I am too old to play games with socialism, and I am too smart to fall for the sales pitch.I am addicted to walking into a grocery store and finding the shelves stacked floor to ceiling. I am addicted to picking up a rotisserie chicken on Tuesday and a ribeye on Friday without planning my week around a ration card. I am addicted to restaurants where the menu actually matches what is in the kitchen.That is not luxury. That is what free people built when government got out of the way.The cartoon nails the joke because the joke is true. Socialism does not deliver abundance. It delivers lines. It delivers empty shelves and brownouts and the dignified pleasure of bartering for shoes.Ask the Venezuelans. They were the richest country in South America before the speeches started. Now their grandmothers boil grass and their middle class fled across the border with whatever fit in a backpack.Capitalism is not perfect, but capitalism is the only system in human history that has dragged the common man out of the dirt and into a working air conditioner.The poorest American household today owns more refrigeration, more communication, and more transportation than a king did in 1776. That is not an accident. That is what private property, voluntary trade, and personal freedom produce when you let them run.Socialism flips the equation. It promises the floor and delivers the basement. Every single time. Cuba. Venezuela. East Germany. The Soviet Union. The receipts are public. The body count is public. The breadlines are public.I will keep my full grocery cart. I will keep my electricity. I will keep my shoes. And I will keep voting against anyone who looks at this abundance and calls it a problem to be managed by a committee.