Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Socialism Like . . . Sweden?
A few months ago Ricochet member @mattyvan put up a great post about Sweden, Sweden. Lessons for America? , which included an hour long documentary about Sweden’s economy. Since then we have seen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez become one of the most popular young Democrats and one of the oldest, Bernie Sanders, announce that he will run for president in 2020. With admitted socialist becoming more and more more prominent, it might be worth revisiting this topic.
While Cuba and Venezuela give us good examples of what socialism can do to a country, they do not exactly tell a happy story. So, the folks promoting “Democratic Socialism” are telling us to look to Sweden as an example of what we can do in America. The problem is, Sweden doesn’t really fit the model of what Bernie and company are trying to sell.
First, Sweden is not socialist. The government doesn’t own the means of production. It is a free-market economy.
Sweden does, however, have a huge welfare state and their people like it. Funding the welfare state takes a lot of money and you need a strong economy to create that wealth. Also, they found that government isn’t very good at providing the services people want so they have a more market approach to many of the benefits provided by the state. For instance, they have school vouchers that students can use to go either a public or private school. What might America’s so-called socialists think about that?
Another big disconnect between the Bernie/AOC form of socialism and the reality of what Sweden is doing is how the government is funded. In America politicians use the welfare state as a way to buy votes with other people’s money. They will tell you what you will get and then say it will be paid for by someone else. Someone who isn’t paying their “fair share.” The 1%, the 5%, the 10%, whatever, just not you. In Sweden it is understood that if you want all of these benefits, everyone must pay for them. That means poorer Swedes pay a very high percentage of their income in taxes.
The main point is, if you want a huge welfare state, you have to be willing to pay for it. I do not believe there is consensus for that large of a welfare state in America and there is absolutely no serious willingness to fund one by either party.
In the video below you can see John Stossel give a brief synopsis of the documentary Sweden: Lessons for America? You can view the whole thing on Matty Van’s post or by clicking here.
Published in General
Welcome Instapundit Readers!
Ricochet is the conservative place where the members write most of the content. For the price of some coffee (or covfefe), our members can post content on our member feed, where excellent posts are promoted to the Main Feed, which is visible to the public – and read by Pr. Reynolds.
If you like Vance’s writing, why don’t you join us, and see the rest of his work on the member feed?
It was the summer of 1979 and I was sitting with my two American friends in a cafeteria in Denmark eating lunch. I looked around at the other 200 or so vivacious people in the lunch room and realized that basically all of them could be cousins. Sure this guy across from me was chubby, and that girl two tables away was rail thin. But except for height and weight differences, the 200 individuals were all blonde and blue eyed. They were almost identical to one another.
It dawned on me at that moment that America is the nation made up mostly of us mongrels. Now it dawns on me in 2019 that we really do not need an entire political party whose major premise is that we all must support diversity, or else.
Thanks for the link Instapundit (and thanks for pointing that out @omegapaladin)
Enter discount code VANCE when you sign up and you will get . . . an error message saying “Please enter a valid code.”
@blueyeti : This is an opportunity to make Vance a liar — in a good way. (-:
What is going on that AOC seems to be yesterday’s news, but Greta is taking her place?
And what happened to the intense Meta-Talking Points of three weeks ago – the need to have a war with Iran, and Jeffrey Epstein?