Socialism can work with a market economy, one that is regulated enough to insure that the economy serves the country and its people first and foremost. In proper socialist market economy, by law, vital commodities and services, health care and medicine, would be state controlled because they are vital to the people’s well being. So too defense industries, transportation, infrastructure, and so on. The state would, in regard to private businesses, enforce regulations necessary to insure that these entities provided adequately for workers and that products and services were safe and what they were advertised to be. In many ways, for periods of time in the United States when there existed a more kind and generous governing class, government did exert more control in the name of the health and welfare of the people. The reason that a new injection of socialism is needed is because the government of the people is no longer that but, rather, a government by a few for a few people, the regulatory function of government undermined by the ability of the monied to write law and have it enforced in their favor. That is why we are talking about socialism again, not because it hasn’t been a force in American society, but because the elements of government that serve the common good have been eroded to the point that the harm is being made more noticeable. The push back that should have occurred to right what was going wrong did not happen, this in good part because of a two party system with neither party truly on the side of the common good so that all the majority of people got was a bad deal.