What Is Socialism?

Increasingly it is being said our nation is becoming more socialistic. There is a vast mass of adults who have little or no idea what that means.
Karl Marx gave us a good working definition: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
The government determines your ability and sets your production goals. In doing so they determine your needs as a producer and they take the rest.
Under our free enterprise capitalistic system the owner/producer is free to operate the business, make a profit as desired, pay salaries and taxes, and give to the causes of his or her choice.
Under the communist form of government the government takes your business, runs it, and keeps the profits to distribute as they wish.
Under a socialistic system you continue to own and operate your business, the government determines what your needs are and allows you to keep enough to meet your needs. They take all the profit to distribute as they please.
This takes away the freedom of the free enterprise system and inevitably results in a decrease in initiative. Socialism is an economic system with government having considerable control over the wealth of the nation and property to dole out the profits as they see fit.
This is done under the guise of social justice. The problem is the bureaucratic elite, the government in power, defines what social justice is. They determine what is fair not the people.
Consider this scenario. You own a plant that manufactures widgets. For those of us who have lived our lives under a republic form of government and have worked in a free market it is hard for us to realize socialists consider you owning the factory as being exploitation. Regardless of the pay scale and your benevolence toward the workers and charities it is still considered exploitation and this is what they sell the masses on.
In a socialist state if you decide to build what you consider a new and improved widget you have to get the permission of your unmotivated work force. You must incorporate in the design the innovations government dictates. The government also decides how the profit is to be used for the good of society.
Pause a moment before we go further. Who now would be in control of your business? There are people in government now running our bureaucracy. Are you pleased with the job they have been doing? These are the kinds that will indirectly run your business.
Socialism necessitates a larger government to make the decisions for the businesses and decide on the social good. The power no longer remains in your hands but in the hands of an unelected elite group of unknowns.
As formerly productive people become more and more burdened by the power of the many over the few they become less and less motivated. Businesses become less productive. The pattern through the years has set the stage for government to move from socialism to communism and take your business. Its  a short step.
Now a more formal definition of socialism. “Various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned and/or controlled collectively by a central government that plans and controls the economy.”
Abraham Lincoln said, “If the voters get their hind side too close to the fire they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
In the last few months America has gotten closer to the fire. Some blisters are beginning to show.