Robert Weissberg examines Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders‘ campaign promises for an American Thinker column.
Thanks to Bernie Sanders, “Democratic Socialism”, by which he means a cornucopia of state-supplied benefits paid for by squeezing billionaires, is now all the rage. And according to Bernie and his fans, this vision is hardly Utopian — generous womb-to-tomb entitlements work just fine in Scandinavia.
Predictably, the clamor for DS stresses the “free stuff” — free education, including college, single-payer comprehensive medical care, universal state-funded daycare, subsidized housing, and countless other “free” or nearly free goodies.
Unfortunately, little is said about price tags and, even more importantly, total silence surrounds whether an arrangement that thrives in Norway can similarly flourish in the U.S. It is assumed that people and their values are world-wide interchangeable so if all Norwegians suddenly departed and Somali immigrants replaced them, Norway’s democratic socialism would scarcely miss a beat.
Absolute nonsense — and if that were true, Democratic Socialism would be universal, even in dirt-poor sub-Saharan Africa.
Begin by acknowledging the obvious — successful Democratic Socialism requires mountains of tax revenue to finance all the handouts. Absent sufficient income, everything is empty rhetoric. Put colloquially, Democratic Socialism requires flocks of Golden Geese, all happy to lay ample golden eggs.
In practice, this means large numbers of profit-making, taxpaying businesses. Absent these, the economy is just a giant Ponzi scheme where government extracts money from one welfare recipient to bestow it on to another. This need for generating wealth is easily forgotten when fantasizing about all the forthcoming free stuff. Nor do fans of Democratic Socialism appreciate that an angry goose can hide its eggs from egg collectors or fly to friendlier climates if squeezed too hard.
Those feeling “the Bern” may not realize it, but Scandinavia is a hotbed of big-time capitalism. According to the Forbes 2000, a rating of the world’s largest companies, multi-billion dollar revenue firms include Stavanger (an oil and gas giant), Nordea (banking), A P Møller-Maersk (shipping), Volvo, SKF, Nokia and many, many more.
These big cash-generating firms, in turn, need thousands of skilled employees who dutifully show up, properly perform their jobs, and otherwise allow these private sector firms to earn the profits financing all the “free” stuff. Think of it this way: would Volvo stay in Sweden, let alone be able to pay the taxes if their workforce were a bunch of illiterates baffled by cutting edge robotic technology? Would any quality-conscience consumer own a Volvo if manufactured by incompetents?
The citizen-related demands of successful Democratic Socialism further requires that people not torture the Golden Goose for more than it can produce. Tradeoffs are always necessary so generosity in one area requires frugality elsewhere.