A very basic lesson in common sense would cure the ‘love-socialism’ crowd.

But, first, as reported at FoxNews…

“New study may shed light on why young voters are flocking to Bernie Sanders”

Citing a TIAA report, the article suggests Millennials largely support the Bernie ‘free-for-all’ Socialism message because of burdensome student-loan debt and healthcare costs.

“The TIAA Institute report noted that one of the key findings is that only “16 percent of millennials qualify as financially literate by correctly answering three basic questions assessing fundamental financial concepts.” Burns said the problem is a lack of education. Basic financial literacy might make young voters think twice before supporting Sanders.” Let that sink in – only 16% of Millennials are financially literate.

Is it any wonder financially illiterate voters will flock to ‘free-everything’ messages? But the real tragedy is they don’t realize NOTHING as promised is really free. Why?

Government makes nothing…it’s existence relies on taking money from elsewhere.

When gov’t takes away from the private sector (through taxation, regulation, fees, etc), that take-away increases business costs, which business offsets…by raising prices.

Food prices, utility prices, gas-pump prices, clothing prices, cell-phone prices…they all go up when the business that provides that good/service is forced to raise their prices.

(Visualize owning a business: your costs increase by taxes, etc…what would you do? Accept increased costs, and resulting loss of profitability, or protect your bottom line?)

Those thinking they got something for free are hurt the worse, by this stealth taxation, while the politicians who make illusory promises blithely ignore that crucial factoid.

The TIAA report says Millennials embrace socialism because they fail three Financial Literacy tests questions: interest-rate, interest rate-v-inflation, & stock diversification (questions found at the bottom of page 5 of the TIAA report as footnotes 4, 5, and 6).

We believe their flawed socialism-embrace boils down to one even more basic issue…

…Millennials think taxing only higher-income product providers is a ‘zero-sum’ game, and those taxed never make efforts to offset the tax-burden by raising costs…on all.

That’s where Millennials are wrong – ‘free’ is NEVER free…

…and those hurt worse are the very people Socialists like Sanders claim to be helping.

If just that one basic fact could be made to sink in, Millennials would run from Socialism.