The government would like to discuss your allowance



Abdul El-Sayed did Americans a favor when he sat down with Jesse Watters on Fox News this week. The Michigan U.S. Senate candidate gave us a remarkably clear lesson in the philosophy behind America’s growing democratic socialist movement. The real question is simple: Who owns your property — you or the government?

The most revealing moment was not about Sharia law, transgender medicine, or even socialized health care. It came when Watters pressed El-Sayed about his proposal to tax the wealth of Americans with more than $100 million.

Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

El-Sayed has made the argument before. Billionaires, he says, can surrender a substantial portion of their wealth and still remain billionaires. Their children and grandchildren will still be rich.

Notice the premise. This is not merely an argument that government needs revenue for legitimate functions, nor a dispute over whether the top marginal income-tax rate should be 35% or 39%. The argument is that you possess more than you need — and government gets to decide how much that is.

That is the part Americans need to understand.

Suppose you build a company. You work for decades. You save, invest, and take risks. The company becomes enormously valuable. Under the traditional American understanding, the presumption is that the property is yours. Government may tax under constitutional authority, but it does not acquire an unlimited moral claim on your property because politicians decide you have too much of it.

El-Sayed reverses that presumption. What are you going to do with all that money? Whatever your answer, the socialist argument says it is too much because you have more than you need.

The proper question is not what you intend to do with your property. The proper question is: By what right does the government take it?

That distinction takes us back to 1776. The founders understood that government is necessary to protect life, liberty, property, contracts, and the peaceful exercise of rights.

But precisely because government possesses coercive power, it must be limited. The founders built a constitutional order around the insight that human beings abuse power, so power must be divided, checked, and restrained.

Read the Declaration of Independence. The complaint against George III is repeatedly that political power has exceeded its proper bounds. The king interferes with colonial legislatures, imposes taxes without consent, and seeks to subject Americans to “absolute Despotism.”

The central political problem was not how government could solve every problem. It was how citizens could prevent government from becoming one.

RELATED: The data center mob wants your property rights too

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Compare that instinct with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s declaration that there is “no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” That is nearly the photographic negative of the American constitutional tradition.

The founders asked: What powers have we actually given government, and how do we limit them? The new socialists ask: What problem is left for government to solve?

El-Sayed’s wealth-tax argument reveals why. Once we abandon the presumption that your property is genuinely yours, the limiting principle becomes hard to locate. If $100 million is too much, why not $50 million? Why not $10 million? If politicians may determine how much wealth you need, why stop with billionaires?

The issue is not whether anyone should feel sorry for billionaires. The issue is who owns the property.

Redistribution is politically easiest when it begins with somebody almost nobody identifies with. He has plenty. You do not. Why shouldn’t government take some?

Because a government powerful enough to decide how much property another person needs has been given a power that does not become harmless merely because its first target is richer than you.

Then there is the comic assumption beneath the argument: Government will spend the money more wisely.

El-Sayed’s home state offers a useful caution. The state auditor found Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency ineffective during the COVID pandemic. Fraud controls were weakened, billions in improper or fraudulent payments went out, and later audits found serious failures in recovering them.

These are the institutions that will reliably improve on the decisions of people who built billion-dollar companies?

Government has legitimate but limited purposes, and legitimate taxation follows from those purposes. But legitimate taxation does not establish a standing claim to whatever share of your wealth politicians decide you do not need.

This debate is especially important because socialism has found a receptive audience among younger Americans. Harvard’s 2025 Youth Poll found support for capitalism among young Americans at only 39%, while nearly half of young Democrats expressed support for socialism.

That is, in part, a failure of education.

We have spent enormous energy teaching young Americans to critique power and too little teaching them why constitutional government was designed to limit it. Much of contemporary oppression theory condemns authorities who presume to know how others should live, then demands political power to impose its own answers.

The next generation needs a different lesson.

RELATED: The DSA’s history lesson has one big omission

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Your life is your responsibility. Your neighbor’s property belongs to your neighbor. Wealth does not become public property when it crosses an arbitrary number selected by a politician. Government exists to protect rights, not to decide how much prosperity citizens are permitted to enjoy.

Freedom includes choices politicians consider foolish or wasteful. Save your money, give it away, invest it, build a business, leave it to your children, support your church, fund a charity, or buy something ridiculous. Within the law, those decisions belong to you.

That is what limited government protects.

The socialist temptation is perennial because it begins with an attractive promise: Give us more power, and we will use it to make life fairer.

The American answer is older and wiser: Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

James Talarico shamelessly politicizes Amazon worker's tragic death to attack capitalism



The Democrat candidate for one of two U.S. Senate seats for Texas was seemingly caught spreading misinformation about an emergency incident at an Amazon warehouse.

James Talarico was campaigning at a church when he referred to an incident at an Amazon warehouse in which an employee died.

'Lying isn’t very Christian. And that’s what you’re doing here because that’s not what happened.'

He posted a video of his comments to social media on Sunday to spread the message against corporate greed.

"An Amazon worker died in one of Amazon's warehouses. And as he lay dying, management told the other workers: 'Turn around. Don't look. Get back to work.' Get back to work? That was a human being. That was a child of God," Talarico claimed.

"Sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed," he added.

An Amazon employee did die after collapsing at an Oregon facility in April in Troutdale, Oregon, and that story has been used by Democrats and other activists to attack capitalism, though Amazon has specifically denied allegations about it.

Amazon responded to a Blaze News request for comment by directing to a previous statement about the incident, denying the "misinformation" being spread online.

"Sadly, one of our teammates collapsed during his shift from what we now understand as a pre-existing medical issue. When our onsite team was notified, three CPR certified team members, including two from our on-site safety team, provided CPR and deployed an automated defibrillator until emergency medical services (EMS) arrived shortly after."

The statement went on to say that the area was cordoned off while the company's safety teams and EMS cared for the worker. Unfortunately, the employee passed away.

And in contrast to criticism casting Amazon as cold and heartless in its response, the company outlined steps taken to protect the man's privacy and to care for the other workers at the warehouse.

"Shortly after this event occurred, employees were sent home with pay for the rest of the day," they added. "When we resumed operations the following day, any employee who requested time off was given that time, and onsite grief counselors were provided to anybody who chose to come to work and needed them."

Many online found Talarico's politicization of the man's death to be inappropriate and crass, especially as the Democrat regularly cites Christianity in his campaign.

"Lying isn’t very Christian. And that’s what you’re doing here because that’s not what happened," said one critic.

RELATED: James Talarico shamelessly panders on Karmelo Anthony verdict — on NY-based radio show

"Total LIE about the actual events. Do you EVER tell the truth??" said another.

"You don’t turn someone’s distress into a sideshow Talarico," responded one detractor. "You allow medical personnel and others qualified to handle the situation and ask everyone else to leave the scene. And it’s also exactly what the first responders tell you too. And another reason you are unfit to serve in our senate."

Amazon has been hounded by critics pointing out that its workers are twice as likely to be injured as non-Amazon workers. Another report found that Amazon warehouses had 30% more injuries than the industry average in 2023.

The company responded to the criticism by noting Amazon had invested $2.5 billion in increased safety standards.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Socialism’s favorite bait-and-switch



The Democratic Socialists of America are no longer hiding the ball.

In July, the organization published a manifesto calling on the United States to "establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

That is not a proposal for higher taxes, tighter regulation, or a larger welfare state. It is a demand to replace private ownership of America’s largest companies with government ownership.

The language is designed to sound appealing. Why should a handful of billionaires control enormous corporations while everyone else gets left behind? Why shouldn’t “the people” own those companies instead?

No more greedy executives collecting fortunes while workers earn far less. No need to nationalize every business — only the “essential” industries deemed too important to operate for profit or remain in private hands.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds as though power would finally be taken from wealthy corporations and returned to society.

But that is nearly how Fidel Castro sold communism to the Cuban people.

History shows that “ownership by the people” usually means control by the government. The public does not acquire power. Politicians and bureaucrats do.

Castro did not introduce himself as a communist promising state control over every part of Cuba’s economy. He said he was fighting corruption, inequality, and concentrated wealth. Private property and capitalism became the villains. The solution was to place the country’s most important industries under the control of “the people.”

The rhetoric sounded fair and humane. Wealthy owners would lose power, and ordinary Cubans would gain it.

The first part happened. The second did not.

RELATED: From helping hand to five-finger discount

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Power was taken from private owners, but it never reached ordinary Cubans. It accumulated in the hands of the state. Today, Cubans live under political repression, chronic scarcity, and widespread poverty.

“Nothing belongs to you. It all belongs to the government,” Rosa Garcia, a survivor of Castro’s Cuba, recalled in an interview with Young Americans Against Socialism.

Garcia watched the transformation firsthand. She remembers Castro assuring Cubans that his revolution was not communist. Many believed him. Some hung signs on their doors reading, “This house is yours, Fidel.”

As government control expanded, private property rights disappeared. So did the ability to obtain goods, build wealth, or make basic economic choices without permission from the state.

When Garcia’s family later applied to leave Cuba, government officials came to their home and inventoried everything they owned to ensure they took nothing with them. Utensils, clothing, and household possessions all belonged to the government.

That is the reality behind the dreamy language of collective ownership. What supposedly belongs to everyone is controlled by the people who run the state.

Public ownership also carries enormous economic costs.

Private property gives people a reason to create, invest, innovate, and serve customers. Every smartphone, laptop, lifesaving medicine, digital platform, and other product we rely on exists because someone had the freedom to take a risk and the opportunity to profit from success.

Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s more prosperous countries. Today, it is one of the region’s poorest, with nearly 90% of its population living in severe poverty.

Take away private ownership, and you do more than redistribute wealth. You weaken the incentive to build businesses, develop technology, create jobs, and produce the prosperity those activities generate.

Supporters of democratic socialism will reasonably object that modern America is not revolutionary Cuba. The United States has stronger institutions, a different political culture, and constitutional protections Cuba did not preserve. Public ownership of one enterprise does not automatically produce a one-party communist state.

That distinction does not eliminate the underlying danger.

Nationalization begins with the easiest targets: highly profitable companies, billionaires accused of earning too much, and industries politicians label too important to remain privately owned.

RELATED: Who wants to eat a trillionaire?

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Once society accepts the principle that government may replace private ownership whenever politicians decide an owner is too rich or a company is too important, no clear limiting principle remains.

Why stop with the largest corporations?

Every industry placed under public ownership gives government officials more authority to decide how resources are used, which services are available, and who receives them.

Cuba’s history shows how quickly control of a few “key industries” can become a broad assault on private property. America would be foolish to assume the same principle could be embraced here without the same temptation to expand it.

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

‘That’s not capitalism!’ Trump attacks Exxon and Chevron over ‘too much money’



President Donald Trump is known for taking on whoever he wants, but his latest target has even some conservatives raising eyebrows — and wondering if the government is abandoning the free market principles America thrives on.

"Based on a shortage, they're making too much money," Trump told reporters about Exxon Mobile and Chevron. “I don’t like it.”

“When we’re finished with Iran, you’re going to see the prices drop through the floor. But they made too much money. Too much money. Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobile, too much. Too much money,” he continued.

“You're surprised? I'm saying it. I'll say it loud and clear," the president added.


“This is concerning,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.

“That’s not capitalism,” he adds.

“Just to look ahead, Mr. President,” Jeff Fisher chimes in, “when the prices do drop through the floor, they’ll have had this money to maybe survive on a little while.”

Executive producer Keith Malinak points out that on February 27, Chevron closed at $189 a share.

“Today, they’re all the way to $193 a share,” he says.

Meanwhile, Exxon is up $6 a share.

“So very modest stock gains at least for those two companies in the last six months. It’s not like how drug companies did with your vaccine,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The socialists are coming for the Senate



As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Americans are rightly reflecting on the enduring genius of the Constitution. For two and a half centuries, separated powers, federalism, and institutional checks have protected liberty against the concentration of power.

That system has survived civil war, depressions, and foreign totalitarian threats. Yet as the nation celebrates this milestone, a radical faction at home has published a manifesto aimed at dismantling the constitutional structure that made those achievements possible.

The platform calls for the ‘public ownership and democratic control’ of major corporations, energy grids, and transportation infrastructure.

The Democratic Socialists of America just released a national platform titled “Workers Deserve More.” The populist title conceals an agenda far more radical than another increase in the minimum wage or an expansion of organized labor’s influence.

This is not a conventional progressive wish list. It is a blueprint for remaking the American republic and weakening the constitutional limits that stand between citizens and concentrated political power.

The platform begins by demanding the abolition of the United States Senate. The DSA would replace the bicameral Congress with a single legislative chamber, concentrating federal lawmaking power in a radically expanded House of Representatives.

That proposal attacks one of the central compromises of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Senate protects smaller states from domination by a handful of heavily populated metropolitan regions and forces national majorities to build broader coalitions.

A single chamber based solely on proportional representation would move the country toward unchecked majority rule — precisely the danger James Madison warned against in Federalist 62.

RELATED: ‘Need a cop? Thank socialism’ is dumb - but dangerously effective

kali9/iStock/Getty Images

The assault does not stop with Congress. The DSA platform also calls for severe restrictions on judicial review, placing the Supreme Court under congressional control and preventing it from striking down unconstitutional laws enacted by the proposed single chamber.

The platform would also replace the independently elected presidency with a centralized “premier” chosen by the legislature.

Consider the structure as a whole: one dominant legislative chamber, a premier answerable to that chamber, and a Supreme Court stripped of its ability to enforce constitutional limits.

That is not democratic reform. It is the consolidation of federal power in a single political institution, with few meaningful safeguards for individual liberty or dissenting minorities.

The economic program is equally sweeping. “Workers Deserve More” calls for the “public ownership” and “democratic control” of major corporations, energy systems, and transportation infrastructure. In plain English, it proposes state control of large sectors of the private economy.

History offers no shortage of warnings about such nationalization. From Eastern Europe to Venezuela, government seizure of private industry has produced shortages, economic decay, corruption, and diminished personal freedom.

The DSA pairs this centralization of political and economic power with a direct assault on national sovereignty. Its platform treats borders and citizenship not as foundations of self-government but as obstacles to be removed.

RELATED: The Democrat civil war is real — and it is happening in Wisconsin

Yutthana Gaetgeaw/iStock/Getty Images

Its immigration plank demands unrestricted “freedom of movement,” abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an end to deportations, and federal voting rights for noncitizens.

Combined with proposals to eliminate cash bail, demilitarize law enforcement, and dismantle the carceral system, the agenda would weaken the government’s ability to protect law-abiding citizens while expanding its control over nearly every other part of life.

The timing is supremely ironic. This summer, as Americans celebrate 250 years under a system designed to limit government power, the DSA is offering a system designed to maximize it.

The organization claims to speak for workers. Its platform would instead make ordinary Americans increasingly dependent on a centralized state that controls political institutions, major industries, public safety, and access to citizenship itself.

The country should call this platform what it is: an anti-constitutional program dressed in democratic language. America’s strength lies in the limits placed on government, not in the power surrendered to it.

The DSA platform is a reminder that the struggle to preserve the republic did not end with its founding. On America’s 250th anniversary, citizens should defend the constitutional guardrails that have kept power divided and Americans free.

10 Hacks For Launching A Start-Up And Keeping It Afloat

AI makes the future of smaller start-ups daunting, but these time-tested tips will help increase your chance of survival.

Glenn Beck sounds alarm as democratic socialists gain ground: ‘Every single socialist experiment fails’



Socialism is no longer knocking at the door of American politics — it’s winning elections.

And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is leading the charge.

“We raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers instead of taking more from those with the least. Throughout this process, I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists,’” he said in a recent speech.

“If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles,” he added.


Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck can’t believe how far their movement has come, pointing out that while “every single socialist experiment fails,” democratic socialists like Melat Kiros — who just won the primary in Colorado — continue to gain ground.

“She says, ‘We’re taking our system back, and we’re taking our country back,’” he says. “What do you mean you’re taking your country back?”

“When you’re talking about getting rid of capitalism, you’re not taking it back,” he continues. “So, the question is, is this just the edges of the party, or ... is this a death knell for the next election?”

And while those who want to shrink the government’s power over American citizens are the ones being called extremists, democratic socialists want to expand it.

“And here’s something else that nobody seems to notice,” Glenn says. “Every successful socialist movement in history claimed to represent the workers. ... Where are the workers today? Where are they?”

“Today’s movement represents the graduates. Look where all the energy comes from. The elite universities, the prestigious media, the nonprofits, the government bureaucracy, the professional advocates, the activists, the commanding height of culture,” he continues.

“Karl Marx predicted the revolution would come from the factory floor. Instead, it seems to be coming from the faculty lounge,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Mamdani Is Telling A Brazen Lie About ‘Capitalist Mismanagement’ Of New York

It's pretty clear that all of New York's big fiscal problems can be traced back to socialism.

Glenn Beck’s pencil test: The simple object that exposes why socialism always fails



If you’re not familiar with the power of a simple yellow pencil and what it can teach about economics, freedom, and the limit of government power — then Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is here to help.

“I’m holding a pencil. Yellow, six sides, little pink eraser at the top. And we’ve used these our whole life,” Glenn begins.

“The cedar comes off a mountain in the Pacific Northwest. It’s cut by a steel saw. That steel came from an iron ore in Minnesota, smelted with coal hauled by the rails by people who are long dead,” he says.

“The graphite comes out of the ground in Sri Lanka, and it’s mixed with clay from Mississippi. The little band up at the top, that used to be copper from Chile, zinc from Canada. The yellow paint, the rubber that never once met a rubber tree in its life,” he continues.


“All of these things, thousands of people on five continents that don’t speak the same language, who never met, who’d probably cross the street to avoid each other ... these people couldn’t agree on lunch, and they built the pencil,” he adds.

The point, Glenn says, is that “no one was in charge.”

“There’s no department of pencils in a marble building deciding how much graphite Sri Lanka needs to mine this year. Nobody on the planet wakes up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold sweat thinking, ‘Dear God, does Ohio have enough erasers?' Nobody does,” he says.

“So here’s how you explain capitalism and socialism. If no one is smart enough to plan a pencil, nobody ... it just happens. Who exactly do we figure is smart enough to plan an entire economy?” he asks, before citing the economist Friedrich Hayek.

Glenn notes that Hayek “spent his life on this one idea,” which was that “the knowledge that it takes to run an economy doesn’t live in any one place.”

“It’s scattered across millions and billions of heads. It’s the welder who can feel a batch of steel running brittle. It’s the grocer who notices that young families are starting to move in, and they got all these kids, so I better stock up on more diapers. It’s the farmer that can read the sky,” he says.

“None of them could write down what they know. They couldn’t fill it out in a form. They’d lose the form. But they act on it every single day,” he adds.

However, when you introduce a central planner, Glenn explains, even the ones with the most sincere hearts will fail.

“And that’s when the bread line happens. Bread lines are real, and it happens the same way every single time,” he says.

“It’s like a band that only knows one song. That’s what socialism is,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Big Tech’s Plan To Make Work ‘Optional’ Is Evil

While innovations in robotic automation may create new and exciting economic opportunities, a world without work is something none of us should desire.