I wish we could just simply hand the money over and skip the part where we create the demand for eternal wars and the killing and maiming of millions of people.
Socialism's more about the community owning and managing the means of production, and less about just giving people money. You could make a good case that the F-35 program, with all its bloat and cost overruns and inefficient distribution of funds by congressional district, is typical of a socialist jobs program -- granted, the F-35 also has a layer of capitalist shareholders parasitically skimming off the top, but if that were removed, the political pressures that result in the inefficiencies would remain.
The F-35 program is indeed a lot like socialism. And I think the layer of skim off the top is well represented in centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union. It was taken by well placed government ministers rather than business oligarchs.
My comment was intended to be more tongue-in-cheek. People fear socialism, but capitalism is not the answer to all of the world's problems.
People have basic needs: safety, sustenance, shelter, self-determination. They have higher level needs too, and we aren't living in a post-scarcity society yet, but we have the resources to meet these basic needs for at least 328 million people.
