The term “socialism” has gained popularity in recent years throughout America, despite backlash from the Republican party, in particular.

The Democratic party, on the other hand, has been heavily involved with socialism. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and newcomer New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have become the faces of socialism in the United States.

An August 2018 Gallup poll stated that 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they had a positive view of socialism – here’s why that’s such a problem for the country.

The president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) decided to apply conventional economic analysis to the U.S. economy under socialism, and it didn’t paint the prettiest picture.

The CEA estimates are not based on some random model. They’re based on data from a wide body of research and studies that clearly and convincingly show that less-free economies perform far worse than free economies.

According to the analysis, if the U.S. were to enforce Venezuelan-style socialist policies, it would cause economic turmoil. These policies have been praised by Sanders, Cortez and dozens of other Democratic candidates.

Venezuela is the most recent economy to go full-out socialist in this hemisphere since Nicaragua in the late 1970s. And as recently as the 1960s, its citizens were richer on a per capita basis than people in Great Britain. In just a few short years, Venezuela has seen their wealth disappear rapidly.

The Venezuelan model in America would lead to the nationalization of key industries, price and currency controls, rationing, poor health, political instability and widespread politicization of the rest of the economy.

Such policies would lead to a collapse of 40 percent in real GDP, or about $24,000 per person, according to the CEA report.

One of the key proposals that socialists have been campaigning for over the past few years is free universal healthcare.

In July of 2018, Sanders proposed “Medicare for All” plan for Americans. That sounds great, right? You’d have to be crazy not to accept something that important for free- for this reason, many of Sanders and Cortez’s supporters are so young.

As a college student in America, money is a touchy subject. In 2018, graduates averaged over $30,000 in student loans. Proposals from Sanders like free healthcare and free college sound like paradise. There’s only one problem. Nothing in this world is free: someone is always paying the bill.

Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal would have cost Americans $32.6 trillion dollars over 10 years, requiring historic tax hikes, according to a Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia.

If we want to compare this to how socialism has fared in Venezuela, it also doesn’t paint a pretty picture. The hard times and crackdowns on dissent have driven almost three million Venezuelans to leave the country.

In 2017, one aid agency said that more than 11 percent of children under age 5 were suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition.

The numbers only get worse from there. The inflation rate in Venezuela has surged to 2.3 million percent and is expected to near 10 million percent by the end of the year.

Let’s put that in perspective. That means at the rate that inflation is increasing, the price of a cup of coffee would double between paychecks. The inflation rate is expected to reach 10 million percent by the end of the year, and this all started with socialism.

Sanders just released his 2019 “Medicare for All” proposal, which will likely be just as much as an expense as last year. And he’s not the only Democratic socialist proposing expensive plans for Americans.

Ocasio-Cortez offered the “Green New Deal,” which aims to address climate change and economic inequality- sounds great, until you look at the costs.

According to a new study co-authored by the former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it could cost as much as $93 trillion, or approximately $600,000 per household. The proposal didn’t pass in the Senate earlier last month.

Socialism can best described as shopping for nice clothes. They look great, and you can’t wait to wear them, until you discover the price. The difference between this analogy and real life is that Sanders, Cortez and Venezuela don’t put the clothes back on the rack. Instead, they buy the entire store.

Despite all the numbers, socialism is still on the rise. Americans need to be continuously informed with who they elect, as parties are constantly becoming more polar.

Sanders will be running for President in the 2020 election after losing the Democrat bid to Hillary Clinton in 2016. And if millennials, 51 percent of whom don’t support capitalism according to a Harvard university survey, continue to become a bigger impact on election day, it could spell a Sanders presidency.