Posted on 02/02/2020 12:37:40 PM PST by grundle
Bernie Sanders supporters are quick to make clear that their guy doesn’t want to turn America into Cuba or Venezuela or the old Soviet Union. By “democratic socialism,” the US senator from Vermont means Scandinavia, more or less. And what’s wrong with that? The Nordic nations are pretty nice. Even President Trump has conceded that Norway produces a quality immigrant.
I could do on and on, mentioning how the Nordics score highly in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index, especially when it comes to government regulation. They’re also free traders, unlike Sanders, who opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s and its successor agreement today. As a JPMorgan analysis cautioned: “Copy the Nordic model if you like, but understand that it entails a lot of capitalism and pro-business policies, a lot of taxation on middle class spending and wages, minimal reliance on corporate taxation and plenty of co-pays and deductibles in its healthcare system.”
Here’s a tale of Scandinavian socialism that Team Bernie never tells, via a Milken Review Institute piece from Swedish economist Andreas Bergh:
In the 1970s, several well-intended political reforms backfired. The desire to increase income equality through high marginal tax rates and generous welfare benefits weakened work incentives and created strong incentives for tax avoidance. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, many wealthy Swedes – notably Bjorn Borg – left the country to avoid the taxman. Meanwhile, the desire to tame the business cycle and minimize unemployment led to the subsidization of noncompetitive industries. The unions’ desire to drive wages ahead of productivity growth led to inflation, while efforts to restore Sweden’s competitiveness through repeated currency devaluations led to both a lower living standard and investment-sapping uncertainty.
Perhaps most important, the mix of subsidies and devaluations sent the signal that firms in trouble could turn to the government for help, rather than be forced to innovate in order to stay competitive. When that happens, economies inevitably pay a price. After the crisis of the early 1990s, the Swedish economy recovered smartly. In many ways, Sweden learned from its mistakes and took measures to avoid large budget deficits and inflationary wage pressures. By the mid-1990s, these changes were institutionalized – and strikingly, often with support from Social Democrats as well as the right-wing parties. Prominent examples include a tax reform that lowered marginal rates substantially and a pension reform that balanced the risks between pensioners and taxpayers by automatically adjusting payments to demographic and economic conditions.
Whatever Sanders wants to turn America into, it doesn’t sound much like Scandinavia as it exists in current reality. Then again, as that JPMorgan report concluded: “A real-life proof of concept for a successful democratic socialist society, like the Lost City of Atlantis, has yet to be found.”
“JPMorgan report concluded: “A real-life proof of concept for a successful democratic socialist society, like the Lost City of Atlantis, has yet to be found.” Write that one down.
Its easy to turn the US in to Scandinavia - just import more muslims.
good post
“A real-life proof of concept for a successful democratic socialist society, like the Lost City of Atlantis, has yet to be found.”
You’ll find one in your typical ant colony. A host of industrious, mindless drones, enthrall to a single queen, devoted to the Collective. I imagine Leftists dream of a human super-colony, led by an elite group of queens consisting of their woke selves. But we are creatures of free will, not ants, and I don’t think the world needs more ants, in any case. It’s got plenty of those already.
Democratic socialism
National socialism
What’s the difference?
Make no mistake about it, Bernie Sanders is an out and out communist.
From the Nat’l Review:
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The Corner
Politics & Policy
Bernie Sanders’s Soviet Honeymoon
By John Fund
June 24, 2015 1:31 PM
What is it about worn-out socialist “worker paradises” like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians?
After Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced his run for president, Britain’s Guardian newspaper pawed through old archives in his home town of Burlington, Vermont where he served as mayor in the 1980s. They discovered that Sanders really did practice the socialist solidarity he preached about rhetorically.
During Bernie’s mayoral tenure, Burlington formed an alliance with the Soviet city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow. When in 1988 he married his wife, Jane, the mayor decided it would be a perfect place for his honeymoon. In a tape of his interview with Yaroslavl’s mayor, Alexander Riabkov, Sanders acknowledges that housing and health care appear to be “significantly better” in the U.S. than in the socialist paradise. “However,” he added, “the cost of both services is much, much, higher in the United States.”
Sanders made further globe-trotting expeditions to socialist countries. He visited Cuba, scoring a meeting with Havana’s mayor. In 1985 he attended the celebrations marking the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. “In a letter addressed to the people of Nicaragua, penned in conjunction with that trip, Sanders denounced the activities of the Reagan administration, which he said was under the influence of large corporations,” the Guardian notes. “In the long run, I am certain that you will win,” Sanders wrote, “and that your heroic revolution against the Somoza dictatorship will be maintained and strengthened.” (The Sandinistas were ousted by Nicaragua’s voters in 1990).
Burny dont give a flyin fig about nothin but Burny!
Goog earth the western sahara, it's right there.
2020 TAXES VS SANDERS TAX PROPOSED RATES
But that’s with federal income taxes at only 37% (plus Medicare tax surcharge that brings it to 40%). That’s with capital gains tax only at 20% (plus Obamacare surcharge that brings it to 23.8%). Add in FICA (Social Security taxes) of 12.4% for anyone self- employed, on the first $137,700 you make.
Do you want to hear what Bernie proposes? Get ready to get violently ill. More importantly, get ready to move to another country.
Bernie wants your income tax rate to jump from 40% to 69.2%. And Bernie wants to remove the cap on FICA taxes. Now instead of paying about 16% combined taxes for Social Security and Medicare up to $137,700, under Bernie you’ll pay it on every dollar you earn- to infinity.
So why didn’t Bernie honeymoon in Norway? Hmmmmm?
All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts for ever
Everybody wants to rule the world.
Norway restricts immigration to those earning $47,000 or more annually.
Bernie’s goal: “Make America Like Venezuela”
Thanks for that...
The only thing we need to do that’s Scandinavian happens to involve those bikini teams. That and maybe lingonberries?
Oh Scandinavia would be mild. Note tagline.
Well put analysis. I will use that next time I have to argue with a libtard.
Being president authorizes you to reinvent or end the current system of representative republicanism? I thought they were sworn to uphold the Constitution.
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