TikTok is spreading deadly lies about socialisms success and gullible young Americans are buying it

Socialism is popular!A Pew study reports that more than a third of American adults view it positively. How is this possible?Little has brought more misery — first in the Soviet Union, then in China, Cuba, Nicaragua, now Venezuela.One reason young people support socialism is because their social media feeds show videos made by popular but economically illiterate people.TikTok star Madeline Pendleton has 1.6 million subscribers.She tells them: “Socialism is working better than capitalism 93% of the time!”Where does she get 93%?From a study published in 1986 by self-described Marxists in the Journal of Health Services.The authors conveniently ignore the United States and other wealthy countries and compare socialist economies to “capitalist” countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Somalia, some of which were at war.It’s so stupid.

But based on that, Pendleton tells her followers, “We have all the data showing that socialism does work.”She also celebrates communism because of its “increased life expectancy.”That’s nonsense, too.People live longest in capitalist countries like Japan (85 years) and South Korea (84 years).Even in the United States (79 years), where more of us die young because we drive more (car accidents), eat more, shoot each other more often and try more dangerous drugs, we still live longer than people in China (78 years).Socialism is also superior, says Pendleton, because of “the 90% to 100% home-ownership rates.”“One hundred percent,” of course, is just dumb, but China (if you believe the party’s statistics) does have 90% homeownership.But not under socialism! They achieved that only after privatizing urban housing.Before 1998, when Chinese housing was still socialist, just 20% of Chinese people owned homes.Several social media stars rave about China.“Socialism worked in China!” says TikToker Dante Munoz.

“They lifted over 800 million people from poverty.”Again, it’s true that in the last 50 years, China’s GDP...