Look, the USSR, Cuba, China, Venezuela, Sweden, etc. are not true socialist economies and the governments were hardly what Marxism or more recent socialist philosophies encompass.
Under a truly socialist system you'd still have to work. Its just that you would own part of the company where you worked. You'd have a stake in it. You wouldn't be homeless and you wouldn't starve or die due to lack of medical care if you didn't work, but you wouldn't have much more than a place to live, food, and medical care. If you wanted a nice place to live, furniture, to eat out, to travel, to own a computer or cellphone, to access the internet from home, to own books or gear or anything beyond the necesseties you'd have to work. Not to mention that your community might not take very friendly to you if you didn't contribute, which working would contribute directly TO your community.
You wouldn't be working for a paycheck, you'd be working to better your community; you wouldn't be working for wealthy people who pay you as little as they can get away with, you'd be working for you and your community, you'd work because you wanted a better life and a meaningful one instead of clinging to an unrealistic dream that you'll one day be wealthy and own lots of stuff. Life wouldn't be focused on the material but on the experiential.
It wouldn't be that you graduate high school and go to college to get a job, then get a job and work until your an elderly person and then retire for a little while before you die; it would be that you graduate school and go to college to learn, then you work because you want to be a part of your community and contribute and benefit from living in an organized society (because why live in one otherwise?) and when you got older you'd retire and not worry about paying the bills or dying because medicare won't cover your healthcare, but instead you get to take a different role in contributing to your community and enjoy your golden years.
And throughout your life, instead of work being your focus, you're able to spend more time with your wife or husband and with your kids as they grow up instead of working all the time until they grow up and move away. You won't worry about being fired because you want a raise but only because you don't do your job well. And you won't have to worry that you make so little compared to the cost of living that in order to maintain a quality of life and own a home you have to indebt yourself for 30 years or more.
It isn't perfect, but its not about money. Its about life, community, freedom, and experience. Research it. Stop assuming you know what socialism is because you don't. It hasn't yet existed in the world. If you only realized what the benefits of socialism truly are and give up your materialistic and unrealistic dreams of wealth and instead lived each day as a meaningful member of your community without undue worry about financial disaster because you lose your job and/or your house loses its value or you or someone in your family gets really sick. Let go of this idea that there is no competition in a socialist economy or that you don't have to work at all and can just leach of the system. People do that now in any system, both the very poor and the very wealthy. But if we got rid of the wealthy, you leach far more than the poor ever could, at least your tax dollars wouldn't go to already wealthy and would only go to the poor and the needy.
