"Of all the people here, you will be least troubled by the author's socialist assumptions. "
This line is distracting me. I think I'm more troubled by socialism than the average person.

The world's major religions have some socialist teachings that go back to these times, when socialism might possibly have made more sense because means of production were limited.

Technology is creating increased return on investment and decreasing or stagnant prices of ordinary labor. It's also lowered barriers of entry to create new wealth, but if you ignore than and look at higher investment returns and lower wages, it looks like "the rich get richer because the economic system is rigged for the wealthy." That leads to President Obama promising hope and change. Next you get people going beyond "change" and voting for the weirdest clown on the stage. They want to go back to a post-WWII era with lower income inequality. The next clown may be more effective than President Trump and may be an ideological socialist like Bernie Sanders rather than just an attention-seeking clown. I'm not worried about "civil war" between supporters of Trump and supporters of Sanders. I'm worried about Trump's and Sander's supporters figuring out they're not that different and then actually electing people who can execute a plan to wield really gov't power against their scapegoat groups to put things right in the economy for good hardworking Americans.

That scenario probably won't happen. My point is I think I'm more concerned about socialism than people who come up with simplistic good vs evil narratives and then come up with childish names for the bad guys and pat themselves on the back for being one of the good guys.

But I understand why you said it: I think gov't helping to the poor is a good idea, which someone could reasonably argue is "socialistic".

Sorry I got side tracked by the socialist comment. I will check out Citizen Tom Paine.