Like the powerful yet cursed object in the traditional story (which has appeared in many forms throughout human history, including in modern horror cinema...socialism promises our heart's desires... but at a terrible and unforeseen price. That price (or, more accurately, an integrated, interconnected matrix of "prices"), however, is always said by the prophets of a "better world" to be either minimal or nonexistent; a figment of our fears, prejudices, ignorance, and lack of political or social will.Ah yes, the “burn our way to a new paradise” ploy. Unfortunately that “new paradise” is more often a hell on earth, with the leaders who made the promises instead turning the lands under their control into an abattoir. We've seen it often enough just in the last 100 years - the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Red China, Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and a whole host of other countries.
The present occupant of the White House, and the party of which he is an iconic if standard feature, was born into and suckled upon the milk of zero-sum economics, perennial class antagonism, class envy, and a neo-feudal status centered mentality of human relations. Like many of his generation and worldview, he is convinced there is a "better world" possible in which humankind can be redeemed and made whole through a moral regeneration imposed by sheer force of will by the state and by the cleansing influence of a purifying ideology. With the dawning of the Obama era, and a renewed animus toward free-market economic relations and the key importance of the individual to a free society, this mentality is in process of arriving at its apogee.
Not all socialist states take it to that extreme, but they do tend to cripple their economies because of beliefs they hold that in no way reflect reality.
One of the most damaging is the so-called “zero sum” paradigm, meaning they believe that wealth is a zero sum game – in order for someone to become wealthy they had to take that wealth from someone else and make them poor. But that isn't how the real world works...except in socialist states that take the wealth from those who earned it and give it to the “poor”...and enrich themselves in the process.
The other one I personally find nonsensical, illogical, and quite annoying is the “no one can have 'X' until everyone can have 'X'” paradigm. The problem is that no one will ever have 'X' because the socialists have made sure it's impossible. Someone has to be first. More often than not it's the wealthy. Those wealthy early adopters pave the way for everyone else, in effect helping the flow of investment capital that spurs further development and less expensive means of making the goods that eventually leads to something that was once only available to the wealthy to be available for just about everyone. Too many socialists seem to think that all of these fine goods that even our poor enjoy just spontaneously appeared at a price that everyone could afford.
Not that the realities that rule economics will sway these folks from changing their beliefs.