The real debate Americans are having — including those on the far left trying to gain greater control of the Democratic Party — is about how regulated markets should be and how to make the rules fairer. No one in the 2020 race, not even relative outlier and self-proclaimed democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is proposing that we recreate the Great Leap Forward.

Despite what you may have heard from Team Trump — and despite the many TV interviewers asking Democratic politicians whether they’re “capitalist” or “socialist,” as if that’s a meaningful binary — all modern countries have elements of capitalism and socialism.

That includes the United States. We have public schools, public roads, subsidized health care for the elderly and other forms of social insurance. Yet we also have private property, and the government does not control the means of production — which is, you know, actually how socialism is defined.