Scandinavia Was Never a Good Socialist Model for the US, or the World
Download MP3This is the Heartland Daily Podcast. The other day, Heartland Institute editorial director, Chris Talgo, who is also a research fellow at our Socialism Research Center, was a guest on the nationally syndicated Pele Naroth Taylor show. Pele apparently got notice of a paper Chris and Heartland's Justin Haskins wrote back in 2019 titled Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth, an Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Chris was on Pele's program to talk about that paper. It's a fascinating conversation.
Speaker 1:Have a listen.
Speaker 2:Well, for nearly a 100 years, Scandinavia has been a model for American progressives. The Franklin D. Roosevelt looked to America. There's a book called Sweden the Middle Way that was required reading for the reservation, a country that had the equality of the socialist countries and the wealth generating capacity of the capitalist states. That was the theme.
Speaker 2:Then in the 19 fifties sixties seventies, it was a favorite with the Kennedy clan and often often appealed to and talked about. And if in American film you drove a Volvo, that sent a signal to to the viewer that you were kind of American professor, East Coast type, you know, and looked up to Scandinavia. Finally, we have, the in the 2000, still the the the progressive leaders of the American Democratic Party today are still talking about Scandinavia. And they're talking about Scandinavia in a socialist context saying, well, socialism works. Look at this peninsula in the North of Europe.
Speaker 2:Well, Khris Thalgo doesn't think so, and he's written a pamphlet. He's worked for the Heartland Institute, taught US history and American government for 5 years in South Carolina. And, his paper is called Dean Barking King, the Scandinavian Socialist Myth and Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Welcome to the show, Chris.
Speaker 3:Hey. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:So, what is your thesis that, Scandinavia is not the socialist paradise that the democratic left in the US seems to think?
Speaker 3:The thesis is actually pretty straightforward. These are not socialist nations, and, most of their leaders have said so on multiple occasions. There's there's this myth that has existed for, like you said, the past 20 years or so that the Scandinavian nations, Norway, Sweden, and the rest are these socialist, utopias when that is completely not the case. So what we did was a couple of years ago, especially when, Bernie Sanders and AOC, were really, trying to say, hey, the United States should follow this model. We said, well, we're gonna do some, some in-depth research into what these countries are actually like.
Speaker 3:And after we did that, we found that on, very many benchmarks, on on, you know, freedom of, the economy, regulation, free trade, all this kind of stuff. The Scandinavian countries actually are more capitalist, more free market than the United States is currently. And I know that that's just, you know, kinda difficult to understand. But really what this, you know, gets down to is, almost all these nations have a flat income tax. They do not have a progressive income tax.
Speaker 3:They have extremely low regulations, especially for entrepreneurship. So it's very easy to create a business in most of these countries. And, I would say this this notion that, they have this giant social safety net, might have been true, like you said, in the sixties seventies, post World War 2, but, what happened was and I think Britain was a great example of this. They said this doesn't work. We cannot keep doing this.
Speaker 3:So what did they do? They went in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm actually based in Sweden, and some of what you say is right, but some of it I disagree with. I mean, the flat there's no flat tax for I mean, I don't know. I've I can't tell you that there are people who have written papers for and against the Scandinavian model. I mean, it was never socialist, but it was social democrat. I mean, there were graded tax rates.
Speaker 2:Okay? But it is very easy to start a company. And the tax regime is very favorable to corporations, but it is difficult to start up a, a private company. It doesn't favor private capitalist entrepreneurs. It's it's better.
Speaker 2:It's good for big business and and established That's why you see very few restaurants in the towns. Very difficult for immigrants starting up a pizzeria, for instance. So they take they're snared in with taxes and so on. And the taxes for private individuals is very high. But, I mean, there was always this principle of social democracy that you don't need to own the cow to to to get the milk.
Speaker 2:You know? So the industry was always in private hands. There's never any collectivization of private property. So it never was socialist, but it was social democrat, and that's different. You know?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. So people and and Americans say, oh, it's communist. It's socialist, and they go too far by by this nomenclature. It was nothing like the Soviet Union ever.
Speaker 2:But then they make a sort of, then the the then they skate over it by saying, well, it's, like, actually a libertarian paradise, which isn't either. You know? So, I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Because it still it still is a different kind of society than the US for better or for worse, but it's it's better on some metrics and worse on other metrics. Wouldn't you agree?
Speaker 3:I completely agree, and you you raise a very good point. So so everyone in those countries, generally speaking, pays a high income tax. That is absolutely guaranteed for sure. But one of the big differences, those countries are very small. They have very homogeneous populations.
Speaker 3:The people are coming from a common culture. It's very different than the United States where we're this giant country with 350,000,000 plus people from a vast array of different backgrounds with vast different cultures. So maybe that would work in Norway or Sweden where everyone, I think, you know, in my, family's from Norway. And, actually, my brother's dad lives there currently. And part of the reason that he chose to do that was because he wanted to live in a place where it's like everyone, kinda says, hey.
Speaker 3:We're all gonna work, you know, hard. We're all gonna pay for certain things, but it's not gonna be nearly as progressive in terms of the rich are gonna pay 80% and the poor are gonna actually get a bunch of stuff in return. They also, you know, when we did our report, didn't have nearly the social welfare state that the United States, you know, currently has in place where half the population doesn't pay any income taxes, doesn't work, and actually just gets a bunch of free stuff from the government. So, in in in in terms of saying that, it is a free market, you know, utopia, of course not. It's not.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. But the at the at the other end of the token, I think that it's very unfair to say that these are, like you said, communist, socialist, you know, governments where everything's nationalized because that is just simply not the case.
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Speaker 2:The right wing in America gets all these things completely wrong. I mean, they and and you that's why I kind of ban banished the word communist from my from my shows because it doesn't it's not revelatory. I don't mind criticizing Scandinavia. Go ahead. You know?
Speaker 2:That's fine. And I'm quite critical of it myself, but you've gotta get use the right title. And then if you jump onto this anti communist bandwagon, Because these are, after all, some of the most successful societies in earth on earth. And I speak as somebody who's always been railing against Scandinavia in a way, kind of kicking against. But I found, well, objectively I mean, if you look at the 5 happiest societies in the world according to the Good Life Index, they're all in Scandinavia, so they must be doing something right.
Speaker 2:But as you said, there were once some ingenious societies and people prepared to pay for that through their high taxes, but now not because of the large number of migrants who I think were imported partly because the the right wing in Sweden, the business class, wanted to sabotage the welfare state because they thought, well, the Swedes are not gonna want to pay their high taxes anymore. So we'll because they didn't feel any solidarity with the migrants. In some extent, they're succeeding. But, anyway, I mean, do you do you see any virtue in in a Scandinavia model? I mean, I just looked at the OECD, the and they said, well, America is better on income tax income, housing, and jobs.
Speaker 2:So traditional sort of more opportunity in America, and we kind of all know that. But Scandinavia is better on environmental soft issues like education, quality of life, holidays, and things like that. So isn't there something to be said for that that Scandinavian approach as well?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. It's but it but it's a very different mentality. In the United States, you know, it is the land of opportunity. It's the land of freedom, and you can come here and if you work hard, generally speaking, you can you can, you know, work your way up the income ladder. I think the European countries in general are are different.
Speaker 3:You know, they're coming from a very different background for 100 of years. They had kings. They had, you know, you know, hierarchy and aristocracy of sorts. So it's it's it's fundamentally different. But what I think the Scandinavian countries have done in, you know, recent years, especially post World War 2 is say, hey, wait a second.
Speaker 3:We want we do wanna create society in which everyone's, you know, basics are taken care of, whether that's, you know, education, healthcare, and that kind of stuff. But they also is Norway in particular, has vast natural resources. You know, they sell lots of natural gas, they sell lots of oil. So, you know, unlike the United States, which is saying, Hey, wait a second. We want to stop, producing, fossil fuels because it's terrible for the world.
Speaker 3:Norway and some of those other countries are actually saying, hey, this is something that we want to make money off of. And in Norway, they make lots money, and they actually give that in the form of a rebate check back to the, Norwegians just like they do in Alaska. So I think, you know, you know, it it it's not an apples to apples comparison at all.
Speaker 2:No. No. Well, your point is you can't just import a model to the United States, which, as you said, is much bigger. Although, interestingly, I saw somewhere. I read a really good interesting paper on on the states in the United States that have the highest, biggest welfare state.
Speaker 2:They're the most white states. Why? Because back in in when, you know, when when your your state sort of culture was formed, people the whites were willing to pay taxes for people they felt affinity with. So in the southern states, there wasn't that kind of affinity. So Vermont is like the most Scandinavian of American states, but it's also one of the most homogeneous.
Speaker 3:That is
Speaker 2:sort of
Speaker 3:such a great point. Yeah. That is such a great point is that there are little pockets of, you know, Scandinavian, I'd say, like, the culture mentality, you know, here in the United States, but they are few and far between. And they they do seem to work on a very small basis. Like Vermont, you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. That that is a good example. The people of Vermont have a common culture. It is very homogeneous, just like you said. They, you know, they they have, you know, come to some sort of agreement that, hey, this is the society we wanna create in our little state, in our little, like, niche of America.
Speaker 3:But to say that that would translate to to California and Texas and New York and Illinois is just, you know, absurd.
Speaker 2:What and similarly, I mean, the Scandinavians are I I think that when you import because we're under huge influence from the United States and a lot of America I mean, I'm a great admirer of the United States, but it's sometimes, it's flawed to try and import a solution that works for one country without knowing all the sort of hidden levers and cogs that make another society work because you're importing something, a sort of partial model. And what makes your society work? Well, you don't might not actually, it's the unspoken rules of your society. And if you import a foreign model at your peril and I'm not sure that the import importation of the American model has made the Scandinavian better. At least I think it's a point of discussion.
Speaker 2:I think there's some ideologues who want to do that or have wanted to do that, but I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not competent to really have that discussion, but I think there there are people on both sides of discussion who could have a really interesting discussion about it. But, what, so you're you're you're hoping or you you your your targets are this sort of, Bernie Sanders of this world and all his supporters, I guess. Because what were they what were they talking up? What were what were they trying to spell the American public?
Speaker 3:So for the past 5 years or so, you know, Alicia Ocasio Cortez and, Bernie Sanders and, you know, what what what they call the squad has, you know, gone all over American mainstream media and said, hey. You know, the Scandinavian countries have it right. The American you know, the United States of America has it totally wrong, and we should copy exactly what they are doing. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to not only, like, rewrite history, but they're also trying to say, hey. This model that you said works in a very small part of the world under very unique circumstances, let's just automatically apply that to the United States of America.
Speaker 3:And I think that, you know, we realize the folly of that, especially in the early 2000 when the United States said, hey. We're gonna go into the Middle East, and we're just gonna make them like us. That doesn't work. It doesn't happen. You can't overnight, you know, transform a society.
Speaker 3:That takes decades. It takes centuries. It takes a long time. It takes so the the the audacity of them to say, hey. We're just gonna look at what they're doing over in Scandinavia and just apply that here, and everything's gonna be hunky dory.
Speaker 3:To me, it's just, you know, the the the height of, you know, ludicrousness.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that we certainly so we certainly agree on that that it's difficult, and and politicians can't just pull in a couple of reforms. I mean, let's say that the British are different from the from the Americans even though they share the same language, and it's been difficult to impose, I don't know, American models. You've gotta do you've gotta know all the factors that are at play, all the things that make America success and factor in all of those and not just the headline aspect of US culture or Scandinavian culture, whatever. But you've got to realize that, I said, there might be a lot of hidden factors that contribute to success.
Speaker 2:And if you don't include those also in your calculation, then you won't have a successful reform. But it's very interesting that you're comparing Iraq and and spreading democracy to importing as we as it were other countries' models. And I think I guess I mean, all all countries' politics try to use other nations' models to their own. It's a sort of, and I guess the left I guess no one is that in well informed about Scandinavia. So you can kind of paint your utopia onto Scandinavia, and no one knows the better.
Speaker 2:So you could say, well, that's what it's like, and there's nobody nobody's who's gonna tell you who's wrong. So I think what you're doing is incredibly useful. You've you've you've carried out an incredibly useful task, really. What's the feedback been? I mean, who who how's it been taken in, this this paper?
Speaker 2:I guess a lot of people saying, yeah. I told you so.
Speaker 3:I'd say, I'll I'll yeah. You know, it came out a couple years ago, and it came out, you know, at the height of the, the Bernie Sanders, you know Right. You know, you know, fur. And, really, what what we saw was we saw, a lot of, you know, alternative media outlets, not the mainstream media, but, you know, alternative media outlets, say thank you very much for doing this, and we wanted to, like, get this out in the atmosphere. And we've also had, you know, a bunch of state legislators say thank you for doing this.
Speaker 3:And, you know, the we we we have a, entire, center devoted to, socialism research. And, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do is we're trying to just make sure that the American people know Mhmm. The true side of socialism, the sorted history of socialism. Florida just has me.
Speaker 2:Chris Talgo, certainly. And I I recommend people read the the Black Book of Communism for know how more more people were killed by communism, by Nazism, and it's a it's a big topic and incredibly interesting one. Well, Chris, thanks for sorting out and and, and killing off, myths for us. We love we love to kill off myths on this show.
