[Encolpius]

^ Ah, but you're wrong about that. The earliest cities and towns in America were settled because government gave the land away for free: from William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, to the Homestead Act. That's why America exists; that's why it attracted millions of peasants from the Old World with the hope of opportunity: the government literally gave people a place to live for free.

Then it subsidized the growth of those cities and towns with massive socialism for the banks and utilities and railroad companies and offered big subsidies to build telegraphs and created a subsidized, socialized penny post to maintain communications. The government later subsidized homeownership with Fannie Mae and the home interest mortgage deduction and the GI Bill. There were the great public works projects of the New Deal era, which built lots of infrastructure and public housing. More subsidies came with urban renewal and regeneration projects in the eighties and nineties, streetcars, stadiums, etc.

There's just one problem with all of this socialism -- most of it benefited people who were already wealthy, and very little of it has ever benefited black and brown people due to the long, racist history of American cities. So can you really blame some people for wanting a bit more socialism to build enough affordable housing in American cities so that everybody, nowadays, can live in them?