I find myself correcting this misconception constantly. It is alarming how many people either don’t know or don’t understand what socialism actually means.

People routinely label any government subsidy, welfare program, or public service that benefits the population as “socialism.” That is not what the term means. In political and economic theory, socialism is fundamentally about social or public ownership of the means of production, not simply the existence of government programs.

I suspect the persistence of this misconception is a combination of confirmation bias, the Dunning–Kruger effect, and simple stubbornness.