ELI5: Why do nowadays so many intelligent and educated young people believe in communism?

Few young people believe in communism.

I'm just going to clarify something: Communism and Facism are the left and right ends of the political spectrum, Socialism and Capitalism are the left and right ends of the economic spectrum.

Many younger people (including myself, so take this with a grain of salt) believe in social democracy. In such a system, the government should be a democracy with members representative of the population.

Economically, the redistribution of wealth is an important idea. Progressive taxation is a policy representative of this. Quite simply, the higher your income, the higher your taxes (normally, this applies only to income tax).

Let's say you make $200000 and you live in a country with linear taxation. If your income tax is 15%, you would have $170000 left.

Now lets use a progressive taxation system. Lets say, up to $100000, your income is taxed 15%. Above that, your income is taxed 20%. 85% of 100k + 80% of the remaining 100k = 165,000.

This redistribution of wealth is aimed to increase economic and social equality.

High taxes (particularly for the rich) are desired in social democracy because those funds can be invested into infrastructure e.g. education, health, transport

This further reduces inequality, because it means the poor can afford to get proper health care, education etc. This also allows them to be more economically productive further reducing inequality.

This is all theory, but the development of the Nordic countries shows evidence that supports the theory. The Nordic countries have extremely high standards of living, human development and economic productivity (and subsequently, income). There are, of course, other factors that affect the development of these countries but the model seems to be working quite well for them.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread