I'm all for socialism and wealth redistribution (of course) and that's based on different things, but most importantly because it works so well in the country I live in. However, I can see problems in America. There are of course the problems relating to how your government has spent tax-payers money. It's used to fuel wars and recently billions and billions of money has gone into the private sector to save failing companies because the economic system was failing, a crisis that has serious repercussions also in Norway although we didn't fare as bad as countries like Iceland.
However, another potential problem is a possible positive feedback feeding the rightist way of minimal government thinking. It seems a lot of people in the USA are unhappy with the government, so they don't want to give it money or for it to gain power. They vote for changes that takes control and power from the government which in turn makes the government less capable of dealing with the sort of problems a government should be able to deal with .. which again feeds back to people's malcontent with it.
I think in order to be a socialist in America, you have to be able to see not what America is, but what it can be. JJJ doesn't want to pay taxes for repairing roads because the government does a crap job at it now, but Ethan can obviously imagine a more socialist America where the government
does fix potholes and people
do get their tax-money back in the form of safe environments for their children, good and free education, care for the elderly and those who are sick and so on.
I feel like in Norway, tax-money does come back to you that way and the system works. That makes it easy to support the same kind of thinking and politics for America although my words may weigh less being a foreigner and all ..
edit :
Of course another problem with capitalism and democracy that I also could have mentioned is that with the inequity of wealth and the formation of extreme class differences in society, you create a nation which is run by the upper crust - people who can't relate to the everyday life of the lower classes of which they govern. Then you have a government in which the interests of all the nations people are not represented, at least not by the right numbers.
The ideal classless social democracy society would not have this problem of course.