Bernie Sanders's Scandinavian fantasy (Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanderss-scandinavian-fantasy/2020/02/27/ee894d6e-599f-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html

-snip-

It is true that these countries have a generous safety net and, in order to fund it, high taxes. What is not often pointed out, however, is that in order to raise enough revenue, these taxes fall disproportionately on the poor, middle and upper middle class. Denmark has one of the highest top income tax rates in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 55.9 percent, but that rate is applied to anyone making 1.3 times the average national income. In the United States, this would mean that any income above $65,000 would be taxed at the rate of 55.9 percent. In fact, the highest tax rate in the United States, 43.7 percent, applies to income that is 9.3 times the national average, which means that only those with incomes over approximately $500,000 pay this rate.
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The biggest hit to the poor and middle classes in Northern Europe comes because they, like everyone, pay a national sales tax (value-added tax) of about 25 percent. These countries raise more than 20 percent of their taxes this way. In the United States, the average sales tax rate is 6.6 percent and accounts for only 8 percent of tax revenue.

One final statistic: A 2008 OECD report found that the top 10 percent in the United States pay 45 percent of all income taxes, while the top 10 percent in Denmark pay 26 percent and in Sweden 27 percent. Among wealthy countries, the average is 32 percent. The basic point is worth underlining because the American left seems largely unaware of it, and it has only become more true over the past decade: The United States has a significantly more progressive tax code than Europe, and its top 10 percent pays a vastly greater share of the country’s taxes than their European counterparts.

In other words, bringing the economic system of Denmark, Sweden and Norway to the United States would mean embracing more flexible labor markets, light regulations and a deeper commitment to free trade. It would mean a more generous set of social benefits — to be paid for by taxes on the middle class and poor. If Sanders embraced all that, it would be radical indeed.

Zakaria also points out, re Sanders using these countries as models, that Sweden and Norway have more billionaires per capita than the US has. And they have zero inheritance tax in those countries, and it's only 15% in Denmark.

So Sanders just doesn't understand how these countries provide the social safety net he likes to point to.

And Zakaria points out that Sanders doesn't understand how markets work in these Scandinavia countries, either.

He says that Sweden's attempt to implement a Sanders-style democratic socialism from 1960 to 1980 "tanked the market" so badly that Sweden didn't create a single new private sector job between 1970 and 1995. It took free-market reforms and shrinking the size of government drastically to kick-start the economy.


It's a bad idea to assume Sanders knows all the subjects he talks about.

As I've read a few times recently, Sanders was a so-so student in college who preferred reading Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/28/bernie-sanders-2020-what-you-need-to-know-about-117917

He went to Brooklyn College for a year before transferring to the University of Chicago, where on his way to earning a degree in political science he joined the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Student Peace Union and the Young People’s Socialist League—the official youth arm of the Socialist Party. He was a so-so student but spent hours in the library, reading psychology, sociology and history, and Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, too.

Focusing on ideology can provide you with a lot of slogans.

But it won't provide you with facts.

[LizBeth]

1. "reading psychology, sociology" and came up with mother repressing their daughter putting out

caused them cancer and women fantasize being raped by three or four simultaneously. Old B teachers are to blame for young boys failures in school.

[sweetloukillbot]

4. I read one article that mentioned him studying Wilhelm Reich

That explains his preoccupation with orgasms (or lack thereof) causing cancer.

[JudyM]

5. Many have studied Reich. And there is in fact quite a bit of research into the issue of stress

causing and exacerbating cancer, it is considered cutting edge. So it was not wacky thinking on his part, after all.

[sweetloukillbot]

7. People studying Reich doesn't make him less of a quack

Sitting in a pyramid collecting orgasm energy is woo.

[bluedye33139]

2. As a Norwegian American, let me point out that

Norway has massive wealth from oil, and its sovereign fund is so enormous and so disproportionately large that Norway is able to fund whatever it wants and will be able to do so for the foreseeable future.

No poor country can duplicate what Norway does. Even the US does not have the financial resources to enact a Norwegian-style government.

[Hoyt]

3. Recommended read for everyone, including Sanders and Warren, that won't get read.

With that said, I think we would be happier with a better safety-net, smaller houses/apartments, less autos, etc.

I laugh every time I hear Warren or Sanders bashing million/billionaires, because they will need a lot of them to keep from taxing the heck out of the middle-class to fund all their populist proposals.

[Mike 03]

6. Read this again and feel the blood drain from your face:

Sweden's attempt to implement a Sanders-style democratic socialism from 1960 to 1980 "tanked the market" so badly that Sweden didn't create a single new private sector job between 1970 and 1995. It took free-market reforms and shrinking the size of government drastically to kick-start the economy.

[IluvPitties]

9. Reality Check!

[highplainsdem]

11. Eye-opening, isn't it?

[k2qb3]

8. Anyone who uses "percentage of income taxes" as a metric is FOS.

We all know payroll and capital gains taxes distort that metric "bigly", right?

True enough the US isn't, and can't be, Norway though.

Sander's tax plan does a pretty good job of fixing most of what's wrong, it demonstrates, to me at least, understanding of the issues.

If we could just get a solid fee and dividend passed that would help a lot.

[brooklynite]

10. Well, Sanders never spoke as admiringly about the Nordic States as he did about Cuba and Nicaragua

And he never thought about honeymooning in Finland...

[betsuni]

12. K&R