The story of Thunder Bay’s socialist Finnish restaurant (2018)
This reminds me of when my great grandfather would talk about socialism.  I believe in the 1950s the terminology got corrupted, or maybe he was always using some off shoot version of the terminology.  What the socialism he and many protested for back in the day was for unions.  The idea was to give control to the workers, so that living standards could increase.  And you know what?  It worked.  From this the US saw its best years.  When workers get paid more, they buy more.  It boosts the economy, strengthens it, and from that we all end up with a better life.<p>Today 44% of US workers are low wage ($18,000 or less).  Of this group the majority can not afford more than food, shelter, transportation, and clothing.   This is not what a healthy economy looks like.  Part of the challenge of paying people a living wage is land lords can and do up rent to match their income slowly over time.  The free market is great when there is competition, but time and time again we see in markets where there is limited competition or limited resources, the market starts to fall down.  So while socialism (ie unions and social services) at first seems to benefits us all, it does not benefit low income workers.<p>Without some sort of regulation on the housing market, blindly upping minimum wage will lead to a slow increase in living expenses.  Unionizing has shown to work and work well for middle class jobs, but if the job is a near minimum wage job, while unions do help, it&#x27;s unfortunately a complex problem.  Without some sort of regulation there will always be some group of people struggling to make ends meet.