"The most immediate answer to why socialism is popular could be answered in one word: 2008."

It Turns Out That Socialism is Very Popular in America

"The most immediate answer to why socialism is popular could be answered in one word: 2008. The global crisis that year, engineered by forces of greed, corruption and narcissism in a hyper-charged banking sector and a complacent, if not encouraging, bipartisan political elite, shook the confidence in American capitalism to its very core. 40% of the American median income family’s wealth was destroyed from 2007 to 2010. The unemployment rate soared to nearly 10% in 2008, and it did not fall to its pre-recession 5% until 2015. Even as that number shrank, the number of demoralized Americans dropping out of the workforce completely, and thus not being counted in unemployment statistics, grew dramatically. In 2016, the Brookings Instituteestimated that roughly 12% of men, that’s 7 million Americans, were not working. The once classic ideal of the average middle class American working 9 to 5 is becoming less mainstream and more irrelevant as people retreat to their living rooms or parent’s basement for the comforts of TV, computer screens, Netflix, pornography, marijuana, junk food and video games. In other words, the calamity of 2008 wreaked not only economic pain, but it also frayed American societal fabric."