Whenever confronted with socialism’s uninterrupted history of failure, its stubborn defenders often deny that it has ever been tried.  

Even accepting that purist denial for the sake of argument, however, another real-world reality remains just as inescapable.  

Namely, the further a nation moves toward socialism on the ideological continuum, the more dismal its economic performance.  

If that misery arrives with each additional step toward socialism, what suggests that reaching a pure form of socialism would somehow produce sudden prosperity?  

In any event, a front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal this week offers just the latest confirmation:  “The Welfare State Is Crushing Britain.”  

As Americans approach our own pivotal election next month, Democratic candidates across the nation either openly embrace socialism or adopt its tenets without publicly acknowledging it.  Radical Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, for example, advocates the same government-centered healthcare model underlying Britain's fiscal predicament, proposing “Medicare for All” here in America.  

As Britain’s example shows once again, however, misery awaits if Americans join that ride.  

According to the Journal, approximately seven million Britons now receive disability benefits, exceeding 10% of the nation's population.  Among working-age recipients, that number has surged from 2.9 million in 2019 to 4.7 million, an otherwise inexplicable increase in just six years.  

Did Britain suddenly experience an unprecedented epidemic of physical incapacity?  Manifestly not.  Its government simply reconfirmed the elementary economic principle that when you subsidize something, you inevitably get more of it.  

Naturally, the nation’s budgetary consequences have in turn become alarming and unsustainable.  Its annual disability benefits bill now exceeds £100 billion, one-third more than once-mighty Britain spends on national defense, with projections approaching £130 billion in coming years.  

Thus, a nation that once possessed the world's most formidable navy, and on whose empire the sun famously never set, finds itself financially overwhelmed by its own welfare bureaucracy.  Winston Churchill, the 20th century’s greatest statesman who oversaw its finest hour standing alone against the Nazi menace, wouldn’t recognize it but would lament it.  

Beyond those crippling costs, however, it also creates a depressing dependency culture.  

Illustrating that decay, the Journal highlights the case of a woman named Catherine Wieland, who claimed that anxiety and emotional trauma somehow prevented her from leaving home or performing basic daily activities.  

Contrary to her claims, however, those debilitating conditions miraculously improved when she headed out for restaurant visits, amusement parks, hair salon appointments, purchasing a subsidized BMW and vacation to Mexico that also included ziplining and quad biking.  

Although Ms. Wieland was ultimately convicted of fraud, it demands an extraordinary naivete to suggest that hers is an isolated case.  

Beyond individual fraud, moreover, Britain’s socialist state makes inactivity more financially rewarding than productive employment.  

Specifically, a British claimant receiving disability, housing and other benefits can collect approximately £27,400 annually, tax-free.  A minimum-wage worker, in contrast, must earn more than £33,000 before taxes to achieve comparable take-home income.  

That's not compassion or social justice, it's economic and societal self-destruction masquerading as compassion.  

Government dependency gradually displaces the virtues of work, independence, personal responsibility and economic aspiration that enable societal health and prosperity.  Margaret Thatcher famously observed that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money, and her native Britain offers just the latest confirmation.  

Britain's cautionary tale isn't entirely foreign to American experience, however.  

Here stateside, higher inflation and living costs are disproportionately concentrated in America's politically “blue” states, where expansive government regulation, taxation and spending are more prevalent.  Unemployment figures offer a similarly revealing contrast, with more big-government states won by Kamala Harris in 2024 at 4.3%, compared to just 3.5% among states won by Donald Trump.  

Accordingly, whereas Britain offers the latest international warning on the costs of more socialized government intervention, America's own state-by-state economic differences provide a more localized and proximate illustration.  

Across Latin America, meanwhile, voters who have learned socialism's lessons the hard way are moving in a very different direction.  As even Brazil stands poised to elect a right-leaning new leader, the political map from Argentina to Guatemala has swung markedly toward the right.  

Accordingly, while Britain and socialist Europe struggle beneath the accumulating weight of government dependency, Latin American electorates increasingly reject the collectivist policies that previously impoverished them.  

American voters should pay attention, because those who refuse to learn from both history and current reality remain doomed to repeat it.  

Americans can’t claim we haven't warned.  Britain is warning us again right now.