What does a close-to-100% top marginal tax rate have to do with workers owning the means of production?

Yes, I’ve met a lot of people from former Soviet states that say the same things. But I also know even more people who lived in the USA when we had very high top marginal tax rates... you know, back when “America was great”.

Go back in time and most of the US was firmly against something that we today consider morally righteous.

e.g. LGBTQ rights, gender equality, abolition, that whites are not inherently superior to blacks, etc.

I disagree with you that socialism will become popular but we will see. I know dozens of people who have lived through socialism and they hate it so much they voted for trump, even though they hate trump. I’m not talking rednecks from the south. I’m talking about Vietnamese, Chinese, Russians, Cubans, etc. I don’t think it’s going to take a foothold in the US but we will see. That’s what voting is for.

That results from a navel-gazing view of history.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590540

I think you’re the one navel gazing. Plenty of proof that it fails and you dismiss it with no proof of your own. Sounds about right.

Meanwhile most countries are happily democratic. Nothing is perfect but democracy is about as close as you can get.

There's socialism and then there's communism, the difference is night and day.

Only way communism was socialist was that everybody was starving except party elite. Everybody was equal under the watchful eye of big brother... praised dear leader or camps... or both...