>>150907024
Socialism is a system where private property is either entertained as an illusion by the State who actually plans and controls the economy, or a collectivist junta that wants to abolish the concept as a whole. On paper, it's all fluffy bunnies and everyone having a nice home, but in practices, it is mismanagement at every level, authoritarianism, and health care that is a tax-funded Ponzi scheme that inevitably introduces euthanasia as an option to cut costs as resources are stretched thin.
Socialists pretend that government can abolish fundamental laws of economics on a whim for they do not understand what a price or money actually is. Neither respond well to artificial changes, and you ask any ex-soviet babushka what is was like finding clothes and shoes for children when quotas are decided by bureaucrats.
As for why it is a "dirty word," Fascism and Communism are both socialist systems. In both cases, it has failed so miserably that it irrevocably altered biomes from mismanagement, to say nothing of famines and genocides. Democratic Socialism is literally what comes before your business is seized, as the state needs more of whatever widgets you produce (or discovered you don't agree with the Party on something.)