Of Course Americans Are Turning to Social Democracy
Of Course Americans Are Turning to Social Democracy
They can no longer afford the luxury of a smaller, less expensive welfare state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/opinion/social-democracy.html?em_pos=small&ref=headline&nl_art=10&te=1&nl=opinion-today&emc=edit_ty_20190802?campaign_id=39&instance_id=11361&segment_id=15808&user_id=ca02b127fa17b8d676fde27e367a12bb®i_id=89651072emc=edit_ty_20190802
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The United States missed that train, largely because it didn’t face the same challenges. The American, more deregulated, everyone-for-himself, free-market model delivered the goods for years, without labor parties or strong unions, with a distant and reduced role for the state in the market and society, and with the exclusion of important sectors of its inhabitants from that society.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal was a semi-Social Democratic response to the Great Depression, but it didn’t stick. Until Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the economy’s steady growth kept inequality down, and the middle class thrived. Americans could afford the luxury of a smaller, less expensive welfare state because of its rich middle class. After the 80s, that began to change.
Europe has been much better at keeping inequality in check. Tax systems redistribute income across countries and include generous transfers like social security, health insurance and unemployment benefits. Now after four decades of growing wealth and income polarization, rising racial tensions and greater domestic challenges, one sector of the American electorate is seeking to finally put in place what the Europeans built over the half-century following World War II. The conditions that made it possible for the United States to manage without a large, generous, expensive but highly popular welfare state have slowly vanished.
Paradoxically, the rise of social democracy in the United States may save it from dying in Europe. With the exception of Spain, Social Democratic parties are losing their grip in the Old Continent. Moderate socialist experiments in Brazil and Chile have lost ground south of the Rio Grande, while the Mexican version is not faring well.
The hope that social democracy has finally come to America stems from positions that the contenders jockeying for the Democratic Party’s nomination are adopting. For the first time since Roosevelt and the New Deal, policies devoted to reducing inequality, helping the poor, supporting the young, protecting the elderly and considering the issues of race in a different context are being proposed by Democratic candidates. Ideas that in 2016 were considered radical or fringe have now become part of the mainstream conversation.
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