Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs

[timosman]

http://news.investors.com/blogs-cap...rnie-sanders-to-stop-calling-it-socialist.htm

The Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country. Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a "market economy."

Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a socialist, has used Denmark as the example of the socialist utopia he wants to create in America. During the Democrats' first debate last month, he said "we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people."

While appearing in New Hampshire in September, Sanders said that he had "talked to a guy from Denmark" who told him that in Denmark, "it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it's pretty hard to be very, very poor."

"And that makes a lot of sense to me."

So because something makes sense to him, he has the right to force that system on people who don't want it? Isn't that what he's saying?

But we digress. This is about Danes being offending by Sanders using the word "socialist" to describe their form of government. And who can blame them, especially when the free world has had enough of national socialists and Soviet socialists and North Korean socialists and Cuban socialists?

While speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware "that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism."

"Therefore," he said, "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

Rasmussen acknowledged that "the Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens," but he also noted that it is "a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish."

To that we'll add that Sweden, another of Sanders' inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare. And the Swedes are better off for having done so, just as the Danes will continue to be better off as their government overhauls its welfare state.

If Sanders is going to continue to use these nations to guide his governing philosophy, he should base his policy positions on what they really are, not what he thinks they are or wants them to be. These countries have learned a harsh lesson. They don't deserve to be Berned again.

 

[Foreigner]

Danes have had a right - wing government for many years now. But they still collects as much taxes as before. 2nd in the world as a percentage of GDP.

Swedes had a uniqually smart social democrat government 10 years ago, and reduced their debt while reforming government. But that just means that there is no difference between the left and the center right parties anymore. As the financial crisis hit hard, and immigration increased, support has grown for the ultra right wing, which is originally neonazi but now moderating. The main problem they have though is 25% youth unemployment. Many have found employment in Norway but now the economy is going worse here too.

Norway has had huge oil revenues and therefore could keep the largest welfare state in Europe with less taxes than Swedes or Danes. But now the economy is tanking from low oil prices. We can either make sensible reform, or keep all benefits as it is while running deficits. Obviously one option is more sensible than the other. Currently the centre - right party is doing nothing. The leftist we had before was worse, as the burourocracy bloated uncontrollably. The Liberal party is between the blocks and moving in a libertarian direction, been supporting them for some years now.

All 3 countries are marked economies, but heavy taxes and regulations make them far less dynamic than they should.

 

[Aspie Minarcho-Capitalist]

I can't blame them, while Denmark and it's Scandinavian nations uphold a "progressive" taxation redistributive system, strong collective labour rights (they have the highest minimum wage threshold in the world) as well as a draconian welfare state (prioritized government spending on universal health care, unemployment benefits, and rigorous investments in state infrastructure), they are also economically individualist (near laissez faire) on fiscal; investment, business, financial and monetary freedom and are much more intensified than in the US.

They also benefit from genuinely competitive free trade (unlike "FTA's") equivalent to geographically isolated countries like Hong Kong; minimal regulation of invested capital production, uphold stronger property rights enforcement (than in the UK and US), incremented private consumption and have lower corporate tax rates. These meritocratic laissez faire policies sustain a balanced budget and an efficiently stabilized economy for any government who instigates this multitude of such draconian collectivist entitlements and centralized planning measures that Bernie Sanders's bleeding heart aficionados advertently discard, and it was retrospective free markets that generated the prosperity of Scandinavian nations, accounting for Sweden in particular.

Sanders wants to implement an inordinate 90% corporate income tax rate to redistribute money generated from private activities for public infrastructure re-innovations, and this would be very precarious under the juxtaposition of a debt based monetary system and state monopolistic corporatist technocracy, alongside underlying bureaucratic regulations that he would not obviate. He will bankrupt that is the remnants of the United States and the Ludwig Von Mises Institute explicates everything I've pointed out about the Scandinavian "socialist miracle."

https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Scandinavia_and_the_social_state