It's time to consider actual socialism 

What comes to mind when thinking of public housing? Is it Cabrini-Green or Bronx style public housing with all its 1970, racist, graffiti-ridden connotations? Or perhaps, for the cosmopolitan set, Scandinavian (read "white") public housing, complete with kindergartens, manicured lawns, functional public transportation, and strong state support?

What America has is a patchwork system of means-tested, scant, formal public housing owned by the state. It has Section 8, whose vouchers go to subsidize private interests and owners. The only thing blocking the U.S. from getting serious about helping its people is the lock on the state and federal legislatures, whose owners, i.e. campaign donors, scream in pain at the very thought of their gravy train coming to an end.

Make no mistake, providing public housing will end their gravy train. No longer will property owners and investors be able to kick little old ladies, grown men and women, and the disabled out onto the street at their own discretion as if lifted out of a page from a Charles Dickens novel. No longer will American workers be forced to choose between eating or heating their residences. No longer will Americans walk around despondent, aware that their government's only interest is to keep them from organizing and burning down the offices of their property managers, social service agencies, and centers of government. No longer will Americans look at every other person as a competitor or as someone responsible for their own misfortune.

When the state provides clean, safe, and large-scale public housing at little or no cost for all Americans, men, women, married couples, single individuals, the sick, the healthy, the infirm, alcoholics, felons, and from all walks of life, that is when you can expect all the social indicators of a collapsing society to reverse.

Until then, we can expect the usual suspects to continue their macabre parade down our main streets: decreased life spans, tents on the sidewalk in front of your house, mass shootings, suicides, teen pregnancies, hunger, ill health, bankruptcies, mass incarceration, and failing schools.

We live in a new era now. Gone are the days of lifelong employment; gone are the days of a high school graduate being able to buy a house fairly soon out of high school; gone are the days of trading your car in every two years for a new one; gone are the days of defined benefit pensions; gone are the days of nutritious, inexpensive food; gone are the days of responsive government.

Instead, we now live in an economy characterized by austerity budgets, high deficits, record public borrowing, throw-away jobs, and failing infrastructure. So yes, it's time to consider actual socialism. We can begin by funding and building large-scale, safe, public housing. After that, let's work on Medicare for all.

Shanti Harris

San Luis Obispo