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Not so. There are a lot of Scandinavians who live throughout the upper Great Plains and the Mountain West states, which are mostly some of the most conservative in the nation.
The Scandinavians who live in these states are not necessarily liberal, either.
I was actually just looking at that myself.
Even the Dakotas are more liberal than you might think, at least given that they're heavily rural states. If they had bigger cities I don't find it difficult to imagine them being as liberal as Minnesota. North Dakota has had a pretty even mixture of both democrat and republican senators for many decades now. That's somewhat true of South Dakota, though to a lesser extent. But South Dakota is the state that gave us George McGovern!
Could you ever imagine a Mississippi or an Alabama giving us a George McGovern? I hardly think so, not even 30 or 50 years ago.
The Danish Prime Minister, after seeing Denmark misrepresented by a US candidate, said the following in late 2015:
None of the five Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, & Iceland) are socialist. Sweden had a flirtation via a plan called 'employee funds' in 1984. The plan would have amounted to a true socialist reform. But after a center-right government took over in 1991, the plan was abolished. Sweden made other free-market reforms during the 90s. Taxes were cut, and privatization measures were enacted. Sweden was once arguably the furthest to the left of the five, and now has school vouchers--to the right of even the US.
There is actually no unitary 'Nordic Model,' as often implied by US liberal pundits. The countries all have varying polices, and as with Sweden, have varied over time. This should not have been a surprise to these pundits in a country that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Barack Obama in 2008.
The notion that the Scandinavians have figured out some magic formula under which 'socialism works' is yet another American liberal myth.
I am so happy to have you explain these complicated matters to me.
So it appears we have established that none of the Scandinavian countries are socialist. As I posted before, I believe there to be a switcheroo underway by American leftists who want to remove the stigma of 'socialism.'
I wish to post 2 more interesting pieces of data from Swedish econ writer Dr. Numi Sanandaji. He looks at the incentive to work (vs. to collect welfare) in the 5 Scandi countries and the U.S. In 2001 in Denmark, for example, there was only 3% increase in income from taking a job (vs. welfare). Here are the full numbers:
How much more (percentage of income) would a single-earner family make by working, compared to a long term unemployment benefit?
So you can see that in the past 13 years, the Scandis have moved in the direction of the U.S. economy, by decreasing the incentive to go on the public dole.
So again we see that while people like Bernie Sanders seek to make the U.S. more like the Scandinavians (and misrepresenting them as 'socialist'), the Scandinavians have been steadily making themselves more like the U.S.
As a Norwegian, I would ask everybody who calls Scandinavian countries Socialist, take a 101 course in politics.
All Scandinavian countries are Social Democracies.. the best from both "wings".
And Bernie wanted the US to move more towards Social Democracy. Not Socialism!
Many in the US would still consider Social Democracy socialism.
To people with that mentality, anything other than an outright "survival of the fittest" brand of capitalism that reduces low-income citizens to a Dickensian existence is socialism.
LOL! Conservatives trying their hardest to come up with excuses as to why the most liberal countries in the world have the highest standards of living in the world. Next thing you know they'll try to tell us Scandinavian countries are Fox News territory who would vote for Donald Trump in a landslide
Let's see ...
The 10 Most Liberal Countries Of The World
Norway #5
Sweden #6
Finland #8 (we'll call Finland a Scandinavian country for the purposes of showing another very liberal, Nordic nation that has a high standard of living, even though it's technically not Scandinavian)
Now this next one is a real doozey ...
The Most Liberal Countries You Should Move to in 2017
Iceland #1
Finland #2
Sweden #3
Norway #4
^
Now, here's the funny part: Click on the link and look at the least liberal (that is the most conservative) countries in the world!
Need I go on? I hope I don't have to. It's basically unanimous: Scandinavian countries are the most liberal in the world, overall. Whether you want to call them "socialist" or not is basically irrelevant: They are very liberal. Far left. Would make Bernie Sanders happy. Cons trying to make excuses as to why they have such a high standard of living while being so extremely liberal are simply desperate to try to explain something that does not fit their narrative.
Comparing any of those counties to the United States is inherently foolish. Their populations are all tiny and white in comparison. Maybe the progressive socialist thing works under those circumstances. Over here it is just a recipe for bankruptcy.
Comparing any of those counties to the United States is inherently foolish. Their populations are all tiny and white in comparison. Maybe the progressive socialist thing works under those circumstances. Over here it is just a recipe for bankruptcy.
Did you read what I wrote? No you didn't. Breaking news: Nowhere in that post did I compare any of those countries to the US. All I did was point out that they're very liberal countries, which is petty much a fact.
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