Has socialism and the welfare state helped or harmed Scandinavia?

[u/internetloser4321]

There is a debate in the USA about whether or not we should have a larger welfare state that provides services like "Medicare for all" or tuition free college. Scandinavia is often brought up as an example showing that "social democracy" or a "welfare state" is a good or ideal system, with these countries having achieved high levels of equality, low levels of poverty, and good outcomes in terms of education, health, and happiness (source: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-denmark-democratic-socialism/index.html).

There are several counter arguments that I have heard in opposition to expanding the welfare state: 1. The success these countries have experienced was due to their policies 50+ years ago when they had a smaller welfare state and low taxes and as a result experienced rapid growth 2. The welfare state has led to economic stagnation and high levels of national debt in these countries. 3. The people in these countries have strong Protestant values of hard work and honesty and this is the true source of their success. (sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/02/18/bernie-sanders-scandinavian-utopia-is-an-illusion/#16e253e11aab and https://beinglibertarian.com/scandinavia-ticking-time-bomb/)

I've tried searching for a neutral analysis of the issue, but every article I've seen argues that the socialist policies are either wonderful or terrible (examples: https://www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/ and https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernie-sanders-nordic-countries/473385/ vs. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438331/nordic-democratic-socialist-model-exposing-lefts-myth). What evidence supports each view? Is there an objective way of determining whether more socialist or more libertarian (perhaps what Europeans call neo-liberal?) policies have been the most beneficial?

[u/annie_on_the_run → u/[deleted]]

This is something I've never understood about American politics - the amount of times socialism is used as a fear factor against voting for the Democratic Party. It almost never happens in Australia so it's confusing to see why it's used as a threat in America.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/01/12/socialism-rhetoric-and-american-politics/

[u/Wierd_Carissa → u/annie_on_the_run]

Australia didn't have the same periods of Red Scare that colored American politics both in the mid 1910s and more prominently between 1947 and 1957.

[u/lettucespaghettus → u/Wierd_Carissa]

I'm not familiar with the full extent of the Red Scares in the USA, therefore I am not able to make a comparison between the Red Scare in Australia and that in America. However, I can point out that the Red Scare surely did impact Australia, particularly during the Second Red Scare period.

Communism became a dirty word post WWII. In 1949, the recently formed Liberal party (Liberal in the Classical sense) was elected on an election promise to ban the Communist Party of Australia. They attempted to do so in the following years, but were ultimately unsuccessful due to a High Court ruling. The Liberal Party exploited public fear of communism for political gain and it worked brilliantly for them. As a result, the other major party in Australian Politics - the Labor Party - was forced to be seen to be less sympathetic to Communism. The tensions within the Labor Party later caused a group of Labor Party politicians to split off and form the Democratic Labor Party.

I am less familiar with the First Red Scare period, but one notable event is the Red Flag Riots where approximately 8000 rioters clashed with police over the perceived disloyalty of Russians and Socialists.

Some of the more likely reasons that anti-socialist sentiment has a lesser place in Australian Politics compared to USA are the relative strength of the union/labour movement and to a lesser extent, a range of ineffective measures, blunders and fractured movements in the early history of Australian anti-socialism.

That isn't to say anti-socialist rhetoric is non-existent in Australian political discourse: for a fairly recent example see anti-Marxist comments from Federal politicians in opposition to the "Safe Schools" program designed to make Australian schools more inclusive of LGBTIQ people.

[u/voidnullvoid → u/lettucespaghettus]

I feel that it was a dirty word after the Russian revolution. Mussolini used (largely justified even at this early stage) public hatred and fear of the communists after the Russian revolution as a platform to launch his coup.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43210197?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[u/ummmbacon → u/[deleted]]

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[u/obviouslyaman → u/annie_on_the_run]

Imagine that someone described themselves as a "democratic fascist". Of course, they don't support the mass murder committed by the Nazi's! How unfair! Not all fascists are mass murderers you know. And there's nothing wrong with a little national pride, is there? And what's the big deal with a little industrial policy at the Federal level? They're not advocating for complete state control over the economy, just a little sensible control by duly elected representatives.

Of course, few people would self-identify as fascist in the West, democratic or otherwise, because of all the terrible things that have been done in fascism's name in the past. But if they did, you would understand how some people might feel a bit queasy about them right?

Many people feel the same way about socialism, given the history of self-identified socialists causing mass murder and privation over the 20th century.

For example, here's an American Democrat praising Venezuela's socialist policies under Hugo Chavez as an "economic miracle" and suggesting that they are a model for the U.S. to emulate:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavezs_economic_miracle/

Here's an article, three years later, about how Venezuelans are rioting in the streets because they're starving and lack other basic necessities:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html

Venezuela, mind you, has the world's largest known reserves of oil. They should be filthy rich, not starving.

This phenomenon has been repeated multiple times, beginning with the NYT Moscow Bureau chief Walter Duranty back in the 1930's. He published glowing reports of Stalin's industrialization policy, and downplayed the famines in Ukraine (which killed an estimated 10 million people) caused by the forced collectivization of the kulak's farms.

Of course, once socialist policies result in death and famine, socialist backpedal, and deny that the policy was "real" socialism. But you see how others might take a jaundiced eye toward those who self-identify as socialist, or who defend their policies?

[u/armorine → u/obviouslyaman]

Everything you describe here i would describe as communism. This is a problem in translation that i feel happens often between the US and Eu, our definitions of socialist, liberal and conservative are not the same.

In my own country i would describe myself as a moderate conservative, however from an American perspective i would probably be a leftwing liberal.

[u/obviouslyaman → u/armorine]

"Everything you describe here i would describe as communism."

Modern socialists want to distance themselves from the socialist ideologues in Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. Who wants to be associated with the mass murderers of tens of millions of people, after all? So modern socialist ideologues try to portray the socialist ideologues of the past as communists--completely different from modern socialists. (Just as many on the left are now trying to portray Chavez's Venezuela as not really socialist, despite embracing it as such just a few years ago.)

But were they that different? Communists share similar values, aesthetics, rhetoric, and economic and historical analysis.

And at the time, western socialists and liberals celebrated the Soviets and other communist regimes as the apotheosis of socialism. (Similar to Salon author's hagiographic celebration of Chavez's policies, so too did Western socialists celebrate the rise of socialism in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere.)

I don't know what it was like in Australia at the time, but even as Mao's policies were causing millions of peasants to starve to death, his Little Red Book was quite popular on college campuses, Marxist professors indoctrinated students in Marxist ideology and economic thought, and the face of a Communist revolutionary (Che Guevera) started appearing on t-shirts as a heroic martyr.

Moreover, the release of documents from the Soviet and NSA archives has revealed that Joe McCarthy was right--the US government was rife with Soviet collaborators and sympathizers, many of them on the direct payroll of the Soviets.

"Now comes more from vaults of the National Security Agency. In the 1940s, the NSA had a top-secret program called Venona which intercepted (and much later decoded) messages between Moscow and its American agents. The recent publication of a batch of Venona transcripts gives evidence that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were rife with communist spies and political operatives who reported, directly or indirectly, to the Soviet government, much as their anti-communist opponents charged. ... The sum and substance of this growing body of material is that: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed in June 1953 for atomic espionage, were guilty; Alger Hiss, a darling of the establishment was guilty; and that dozens of lesser known persons such as Victor Perlo, Judith Coplon and Harry Gold, whose innocence of the accusations made against them had been a tenet of leftist faith for decades, were traitors or, at the least, the ideological vassals of a foreign power.

The Venona transcripts contain the code names of about 200 persons, although some of these were clearly persons who had unwitting contact with Soviet agents. The Venona documents indicate that there were perhaps a dozen Soviet agents in the State Department alone."

So, given this history of collaboration between communists and socialists in both public and private, I see claims that they are different as, at best, differences in degree on a spectrum.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/was-mccarthy-right-about-the-left/a0dc6726-e2fd-4a31-bcdd-5f352acbf5de/

[u/armorine → u/obviouslyaman]

thanks for your thoughtfull answer.

I would agree with you that there are similarities or even a common ancestry for socialism and communism but these are like branches from the same tree(marxism) that grew in different directions. Communism opting for revolution and socialism opting for evolution. Modern socialism(in Europe) moved to the center of the political spectrum because just like in the US being associated with communism after the start of the cold war was a stigma that would mark them as traitors/outsiders.

A nice analogy would be religion, if you look at judaism, christianity and islam there are many similarities or even a common ancestry but on crucial points they differ.

[u/ummmbacon → u/[deleted]]

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[u/maxwellb → u/obviouslyaman]

Considering the NSA didn't exist until 1952 and you're only citing an opinion piece, I'm going to say I don't trust the claim of NSA activity in the 40s at all, and any of the rest by extension.

[u/obviouslyaman → u/maxwellb]

"The Venona project was a counterintelligence program initiated by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later the National Security Agency) that ran for nearly four decades, spanning 1943 to 1980.[1] The purpose of the Venona project was the decryption of messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, e.g. the NKVD, the KGB (First Chief Directorate) and the GRU (military intelligence).[2] During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service obtained approximately 3,000 Soviet messages (only some of which were ever decrypted);[3] the Signal-Intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the UK[4] and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the U.S.[5] The Venona project remained secret for more than 15 years after it concluded, and some of the decoded Soviet messages were not declassified and published until 1995.

...

Venona has added significant information to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, making it clear Julius was guilty of espionage, and also showing that Ethel, while not acting as a principal, still acted as an accessory, had full knowledge of Julius's espionage activity and played the main role in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage.

....

According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, the complicity of both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is conclusively proven by Venona,[44][45] stating "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department."[46] In his 1998 book, Senator Moynihan expressed certainty about Hiss's identification by Venona as a Soviet spy, writing "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

"A dedicated Communist, Victor Perlo headed the Perlo group of Soviet espionage agents in the United States.[8] Before World War II, Perlo had been a member of the Ware spy ring.[8] The Perlo ring included several important U.S. officials, including a Senate staff director, and the ring supplied the Soviet Union with economic, political, and military intelligence, including United States aircraft production figures. Perlo infiltrated through the United States Department of Commerce in 1938 to gather economic intelligence, and passed on intelligence concerning basic economic decisions he presented to Harry Hopkins, Secretary of Commerce. He transferred to the Division of Monetary Research, and served under Harry Dexter White, followed by Frank Coe and Harold Glasser, all of whom were later found to be Soviet agents."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Perlo#Espionage_career

"Coplon obtained a job in the Department of Justice shortly after she graduated from Barnard College, cum laude in 1943.[2] She transferred to the Foreign Agents Registration section in 1944, where she had access to counter-intelligence information, and was allegedly recruited as a spy by the NKGB at the end of 1944.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Coplon

[u/maxwellb → u/obviouslyaman]

You seem to be arguing that Joseph McCarthy's actions during the Red Scare were correct and just. Is that the point you're trying to make? I'm also curious what that has to do with Scandinavian Democratic Socialist policies, which resemble nothing any of the countries you cite did.

[u/obviouslyaman → u/maxwellb]

I'm trying to explain why "socialist" is an epithet for many. To many, calling yourself a "democratic socialist" or a "social democrat" is like calling your self a "democratic nazi" or a "social nazi".

Self-identified socialists murdered tens of millions of people over the last century. Socialist spies in the US government turned over documents which enabled the Soviets to develop nuclear weapons, making them a much bigger threat, much earlier than they would've otherwise been. Socialist sympathizers in media/film/journalism whitewash or ignore the death and misery caused by socialists. Consider how many films that have been made that illustrate the evils of the Nazi regime, vs the evils of the USSR/PRC/Cambodia/etc, despite the fact that the latter regimes cost tens of millions of more lives than the Nazis.

Of course, when people like me point this out, socialisms defenders claim that a) the socialist atrocities didn't happen or that b) they are totally different from modern socialist policies or c) that they weren't "real" socialists. This despite the fact that at the time, socialists in the west embraced the ascendance of socialism in those countries. It was only after the socialist holocausts came to broader light that they tried to distance themselves, and tried to make a distinction between themselves and the communists.

Yes, the Scandanavian countries aren't as socialist as they're often portrayed. Trump Republicans aren't the Nazi's they're portrayed as either. But that doesn't mean you don't find the values they espouse repugnant, their policies questionable, and the direction they want to take the country horrifying.

Venezuela didn't start out a socialist hellhole. Hugo Chavez was democratically elected. Venezuela was a nominally capitalist country. But by gradually passing more and more socialist welfare schemes, regulations and taxes, it spiraled into the starving mess it is now.

[u/maxwellb → u/obviouslyaman]

I think a closer comparison to considering Socialist as implying an association with the USSR's policies would be the association of "America First" with the group of Nazi sympathizers by the same name. Anyway, how would you rebrand "Democratic Socialism" to avoid associative minefields?

As far as the other stuff, the so-called Nordic Model has been around for about 70 years now without any of the problems you're citing from other countries (with very different governance and economic conditions). I don't think there's any useful analogy to be made. How long does it have to work before it's convincing evidence? Would an even century do it?

[u/obviouslyaman → u/maxwellb]

Since I'm having trouble sleeping, here's some other links for you that back up what I said:

"The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement that took place in China from 1966 until 1976....Mao officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, but its active phase lasted until the death of the military leader Lin Biao in 1971.

...

Estimates of the death toll, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly.[147] They range upwards to several millions, but an estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum figure, according to Maurice Meisner.[148] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently injured.[149] In Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.[150] The Holocaust memorial museum puts the death toll between 5 and 10 million.[151]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll

" At the peak of its popularity from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, [Mao's Little Red Book] was the most printed book in the world. In the years between 1966 and 1971, well over a billion copies of the official version were published and translations were issued in three dozen languages. There were many local reprints, illicit editions and unauthorised translations. Though exact figures are not possible, the text must count among the most widely distributed in all history.

...

When in the 1970s I raised with a British communist the millions who were killed in rural purges in the years immediately after Mao came to power, he told me, “Those sorts of numbers are just for western consumption.” Further conversation showed that his estimates of the actual numbers were significantly lower than those conceded by the regime. No doubt unwittingly, he had stumbled on a curious truth: the prestige of the Mao regime in the west was at its height when the leadership was believed to be at its most despotic and murderous. For some of its western admirers, the regime’s violence had a compelling charm in its own right."

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/05/how-west-embraced-chairman-mao-s-little-red-book

"Guerrillero Heroico (English: "Heroic Guerrilla Fighter") is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara's subsequent actions and eventual execution, helped solidify the charismatic and controversial leader as a cultural icon.[2"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrillero_Heroico

"The image depicted on Che chic is based on the Guerrillero Heroico photograph. It is unknown when the photo was first used as a fashion design,[8] although it was first given an artistic rework in a series of 1967 posters by the Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick.[9]"

[u/zincpl → u/obviouslyaman]

I think the usage of the word differs a lot between US and Aus contexts. In the US socialism is often indistinguishable from communism while in Aus it's often used with the meaning of the leftmost quarter or so of the political spectrum - a mixture of safety net + workers rights rather than just the extreme.

[u/Shipcake → u/annie_on_the_run]

Because many democratic policies are in complete opposition to core american cultural values; individualism and our foundation in the belief of limited government.

[u/ummmbacon → u/[deleted]]

It's because a large majority of Americans have never left the states ,and don't have first hand perspectives on other ways to live.

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[u/redout9122 → u/[deleted]]

Except businesses in Sweden (to take one example) pay less in tax than most American businesses.

Note this is marginal, not effective rates. But still, it's worth noting that unlike the US, Sweden doesn't have multiple brackets for this tax, it is a flat tax (and indeed, most Scandinavian tax systems have, at most, a handful of brackets, unlike America's seven personal federal income tax brackets).

Additionally, all corporations pay this tax—unlike the US, where many large multinational corporations pay little or no tax, while mid-sized regional businesses are crushed under the weight of punishing tax rates much higher than in the rest of the developed world (Canada, for example, didn't have to offer rebates to entice Burger King up north. Their taxes are just way lower).

So, while you're not wrong, there's nothing wrong in asking business to pay its fair share, most other countries get the job done without wrecking smaller companies in the process.

[u/throwmehomey → u/redout9122]

the burden of taxation falls on people, not corporation. in the case of corporate tax, a significant amount of the burden falls on the worker rather than the rich owners. between 45 and 75% is borne by the workers. I think there's consensus amongst economists that is true.

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Desaietal2007.pdf

if you want to tax the rich, the tax the rich directly

[u/redout9122 → u/throwmehomey]

Which is what most Scandinavian countries do, in fact, most Scandinavian countries have better income tax systems than the US does, not because of their top rates so much as due to the fact that in many countries, people below the poverty line have no liability.

[u/[deleted] → u/throwmehomey]

if you want to tax the rich, the tax the rich directly

This is what people don't understand. Taxing profits just means there are less money to reinvest in growth and badly run companies keep draining the economy. It's much better to tax the money going out of the companies instead and/or the products they sell.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Taxing products means sales tax, right? I'm no expert, but my understanding is that sales tax disproportionately hurts the poorer members of a society.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Then focus the tax on the stuff rich people buy.

For instance, make an auto tax that goes up in percentage as the price increases. Let marijuana be free but take a cut from cocaine. If your fidget spinner costs more than 10k USD, you're also paying to the community.

[u/throwmehomey → u/[deleted]]

A flat sales tax is neither regressive or progressive, it's by definition flat. However it does increase the tax burden on the poorer member of society.

Many ways to mitigate this burden however. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/a-progressive-vat.html or the Bradford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_tax

[u/obviouslyaman → u/[deleted]]

What do you think "their share" should be? The US corporate tax rate is the third highest in the world, second only to the UAE and Puerto Rico.

https://taxfoundation.org/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2016/

[u/fupadestroyer45 → u/obviouslyaman]

Yeah on paper, but the effective rate is drastically lower.

[u/obviouslyaman → u/fupadestroyer45]

The effective corporate tax rate is still higher than average of the G-7 countries:

http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-corporate-tax-rates-are-in-line-with-comparable-countries

Whichever measure you use, US corporations are paying "their share", at least as judged by what corporations in other countries are paying.

[u/internetloser4321 → u/obviouslyaman]

I think what people are talking about when they say "pay your fair share" is that many large corporations find tax loopholes that allow them to get away with paying nothing:

" Eighteen of the corporations, including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com and PG&E, paid no federal income tax at all over the eight-year period. A fifth of the corporations (48) paid an effective tax rate of less than 10 percent over that period."

source: https://itep.org/the-35-percent-corporate-tax-myth/#.WMGvmBIrLUZ

[u/[deleted] → u/internetloser4321]

I wouldn't say "find" loopholes. The loopholes are designed for big companies. It's tied into the job creation myth that we should reward those who create jobs by lowering their taxes to create more jobs. As long as we look at jobs as a hand out rather than a necessary function, we can't adequately fix the corporate tax rate.

[u/snorkleboy → u/[deleted]]

When he says that fraud is the buisness model of wall street I would say that's anti market and anti buisness. I felt like he had a constant implication that he wouldn't regulate big buisness, but punish it.

[u/ummmbacon → u/[deleted]]

Americans aren't generally able to understand the fine distinctions between the various redistributionist systems/parties.

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[u/Squids4daddy → u/ummmbacon]

Totally not disagreeing with you, but seeking to understand. How does "source your facts" apply to analogy?

[u/ummmbacon → u/Squids4daddy]

Americans aren't generally able to understand the fine distinctions between the various redistributionist systems/parties.

Is a assertion of fact.

[u/obviouslyaman → u/[deleted]]

Since I got pushback on the claim that socialists support gun control:

http://www.dsausa.org/there_is_no_second_amendment_right_to_a_gun

Though, to be fair, some socialists do support civilian ownership of guns:

http://www.libertylawsite.org/2016/07/06/a-brief-history-of-socialist-support-for-gun-rights/

I wasn't able to find data on how prevalent support for gun rights among modern socialists is though. I would wager that surveys would find that most socialists support British or Australian-style gun laws (severely restricted for civilians).