In a thread under this meme, a chud commented "socialism is cringe." When I responded with, "Taxes going towards social welfare programs isn't socialism, lol," a girl replied:
actually it is definitely a socialist thing. Public schools, public infrastructure (such as roads and parks), stuff such as the fire brigade, public transport, medicare/Medicaid, and even the military. Essentially, if the government funds it, it is widely beneficial to people, and its free for said people to access... Then it's probably socialist. A lot of American stuff is based on socialism. Some elements of socialism is literally required to function. Imagine if there was no public school. Or every fire department was privately owned. Your kids get no education, your house burns down... Well unless you are rich enough to pay, of course.
I said, "Socialism is when the means of production are publicly-owned. Taxes being used to fund programs has existed long before socialism was an established ideology. I get what you mean, but sometimes I cringe when people say that socialism is when the government does stuff. This is coming from a socialist."
Then she came back with this:
"In a purely socialist system, all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective, directed by a central planner or government body. " By that definition, a government funded state school is controlled by the government, whom the public vote in. Hence...
I mean, the "all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective" part is pretty key to establishing whether something is socialist or not. Sure, publicly-funded fire departments, healthcare, education, and transportation would exist in a socialist system, but those institutions aren't inherently socialist by themselves just because we pay taxes to fund them. But I'm struggling to put into words that socialism refers to the economy and society as a whole, and not just things that we pay for through taxes.
Socialism is a separate thing to policies that socialists like.
Welfare and social safety nets are policies that socialists like. They are things that improve the lives of workers under the hellscape that is capitalism. They make capitalism more bearable for workers. Having socialism would be better though.
Socialism is when workers own the means of production, either through a centralised means or through owning it themselves.
The crucial point here is that socialist want to make the lives of workers better and recognise that all of these things do that. If someone agrees, they can become a socialist if they can be brought to recognise that owning the means of production would also improve the lives of workers like all the other policies that socialists support.