Especially before Reagan began gutting programs, American democracy was almost like socialism-lite. Plenty of work to be found that paid living wages. Well funded government institutions and social programs, plenty of straight up communist jobs programs too although they would never be referred to as such (I consider something like NASA to be a communist entity as the people own the means of production in this agency). Jobs programs. Etc. It was a big mistake we didn't restart the WPA after WWII however and really incentivized this idea of finding work within the public government instead of private industry that serves the public on a contractual basis.