Ever since Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ran for president in 2016, the socialist movement in America has become much more prominent in our national discourse. The Democratic Socialists of America have increased their membership exponentially since 2016, and many down ballot candidates affiliated with the organization have run under their banner. This resurgence has also led to a spirited debate about the definition of socialism — specifically whether Nordic societies that DSA members wish to emulate are truly socialist. While this argument is certainly an interesting academic one, it has significantly muddled our political discourse and is frankly irrelevant. Socialist or not, America would be well served by following Nordic welfare models and beginning to substantially increase government intervention in the economy.
When discussing Nordic economies, it is important to first get a clear idea of how much the government is actually involved. Denmark has the highest tax revenue as a share of GDP in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Furthermore, Norway has a collectively owned $1 trillion capital fund derived from oil revenues that it uses to fund its welfare state. Additionally, Norway has nationalized oil reserves and oil companies, which is interestingly very similar to Venezuela. Finland has an incredibly socialized economy, which for the U.S. to match would require our government to, “not only build a social democratic welfare state, but also socialize $35 trillion of assets, unionize 120 million workers, and move 25 million workers into the public sector,” according to People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig.
This large amount of government spending has been put to good use by these countries. All of them have universal healthcare, free college, low child poverty, subsidized child care and paid family leave, among other social welfare policies.
Considering the kinds of problems the U.S. is currently facing domestically, socialist or not, we would benefit from adopting many of these same programs. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year because they do not have health insurance, and medical costs are a leading cause of bankruptcy. American students currently hold $1.5 trillion dollars in student loan debt. Childcare expenses are currently a huge cost burden on American families, and the U.S. has some of the highest child poverty rates among developed nations. Additionally, the lack of a sufficient housing voucher program has led to many eligible families not receiving the aid that they need. From these examples, it is pretty clear that a lack of a strong social safety net has caused serious problems for the well-being of American citizens — issues that Nordic countries have somehow managed to solve.
And while establishing similar programs to address these issues may sound like a considerable lift, the U.S. is closer to it than one might think. While the conventional wisdom is that these countries spend relatively high percentages of their GDP on welfare states and America does not, some scholars claim that if expenditures in the U.S. tax code are accounted for it actually matches Scandinavian levels of social spending. The main difference, however, is that spending in the tax code mainly helps those who are able to take advantage of the various deductions, exemptions and credits, rather than the poorest of the poor who would be most helped by universal programs.
Since the U.S. has a relatively low tax burden, raising taxes to New Deal-era progressiveness, as well as cutting wasteful expenditures in the tax code could bring us in line with other western countries. Lastly, easing eligibility requirements and nonsensical restrictions such as work requirements would help the poor easily access these benefits, instead of enriching the private companies that are paid to administer the programs.
Whether any of these changes amount to socialism is a debate that will likely never end. However, one thing that is not debatable is that more government intervention is needed if we are to have social programs on the scale of countries like Norway and Denmark. Moreover, regardless of what label we give increased expenditures on social welfare, our political discourse would vastly improve if we focused on why the U.S. has failed to provide an adequate social safety-net, rather than getting hung up on semantics.
Jacob Asch is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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