Capitalism Is Not to Blame for Our National Debt; Socialists Are

Their biggest enemy is capitalism, an economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other. Their hatred of it makes sense when you remember, for all their bloviating about helping the poor, the Left has a vested interest in not only keeping people poor but increasing the ranks of the impoverished in order to help them hang on to power and control. After all, your lucrative gig at the Los Angeles homeless nonprofit would go away — and along with it your swanky life in Hawaii — if your organization actually solved homelessness. 

In order to destroy capitalism, the Left not only has to undermine it with socialist policies (more on that in a second) but lie about capitalism, too. Like this from Melanie D’Arrigo, the Executive Director of the New York Health Campaign.

The U.S. is $40 trillion in debt with capitalism. https://t.co/GSLDQ5f80Q

— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) October 14, 2026

We have not had a purely capitalist system in years. The vast majority of government spending is on entitlement programs like Social Security, SNAP, and Medicare, which outweigh spending on the military. I would argue that the duty of government is to protect a nation from threats both foreign and domestic. Thus, justifying military spending.

It should not be the role of the government to house, feed, and provide for your medical care.

Astonishing.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) October 14, 2026

Astonishing, and yet completely on brand.

Add into the massive welfare spending the billions in fraud we’ve discovered in Minnesota alone, and I’m not sure how D’Arrigo managed to write that post without her pants being set on fire.

Capitalism doesn’t require massive amounts of government spending; socialist programs, on the other hand, do. As I have mentioned in the past, the Soviet Union was relying on Western capitalism by 1927 to keep its communist economy afloat. Throughout the history of socialism and communism, people died in droves, economies collapsed, and entire nations experienced what is kindly described as malaise.

Look at Cuba. Even though the Left will blame longtime U.S. embargoes for the plight of the communist nation, such arguments give away the game: a communist nation shouldn’t be damaged by embargoes. Communism was supposed to bring prosperity wherever it was tried, free from the bourgeois bonds of capitalism. Then, of course, they always pivot to, well, real socialism and communism have never been tried.

Yes, it has been. Every communist regime from Castro to Mao to Stalin was trying real communism. The problem is communism always fails, and trying to rebrand it doesn’t change the historic or economic realities of that.

Imagine if we lived in a country where there was a purely capitalist economy. We would not only not have $40 trillion in debt but we would likely have far more prosperous communities, better funded schools, affordable healthcare, drivable roads, and more. Under the system we have now, the government makes everything more expensive while delivering little.

Where I live, I pay a wheel tax to the county to “fix the roads.” Residents in the city of Milwaukee pay an additional wheel tax to, once again, “fix the roads.” A cursory drive around the city shows the roads are not fixed. But much like Social Security, those funds are raided for other pet causes.

Oh, and the fraud. I’m willing to bet a significant portion of our national debt is thanks to fraud in those socialist welfare programs — fraud Democrats have no intention of addressing. So please, if you’re going to blame our national debt on something, blame it on the government. Not capitalism.