Daily Beast: Bernie’s Socialist Dreamland Is BS

[brooklynite]

During the first Democratic debate of this cycle’s presidential primaries, the past Tuesday, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Bernie Sanders “how can any kind of a socialist win a general election in the United States?” Sanders replied: “we’re going to win because first we’re going to explain what Democratic Socialism is.” Sanders proceeded to set forth a critique of America’s economic inequality and incomplete social safety net, and concluded: “we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden, and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

...snip...

The first part of this hard work is fiscal discipline. For decades, according to World Bank figures, Denmark has maintained a sound budget. Aside from the Clinton Administration’s record from 1992 through 2000, the United States has been much weaker in this area. During those years of fiscal probity, balanced-budget advocacy group The Concord Coalition published an annual scorecard of the “Deficit Hawks” in Congress. Then-Congressman Bernie Sanders did not make the list. On the contrary, in both the House and Senate, Sanders has supported spending such as agribusiness subsidies, while opposing fiscal reforms such as earmark bans and balanced budget amendments. On the campaign trail, when challenged over his ideas for substantial new spending, Sanders claims the spending will be offset by economic growth and long-term cost reductions. That type of “dynamic accounting” was popular with Reagan and George W. Bush, and has consistently led to higher deficits.

A second key for Denmark’s effective social services has been market-oriented government reform. Denmark introduced market forces to improve government performance in the 1980s, and Denmark undertook dramatic welfare reform in the 1990s. Bill Clinton campaigned and governed in a similar vein, with the Reinventing Government initiative focused on creating market forces within government, and Welfare Reform passing in 1996. Sanders has not advanced any such reforms in either chamber of Congress or on the campaign trail this year (he voted against the 1996 reform).

Perhaps the most important element of Denmark’s success is creating wealth through a policy framework that includes business-friendly regulations and free trade. Immediately after the Democratic debate, the Danish Ambassador to the United States told Time Magazine that: “Denmark has a lot to offer in terms of how we organize our society,” he said. “Danes have a very flexible labor market and we are open for business.” On this, the Clintons have been consistently right, and Sanders has been a consistent foe. In the first debate of the primary, he equated capitalism primarily with greed, recklessness, and economic ruin. He has praised the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Castro regime in Cuba. He has repeatedly campaigned against free trade agreements, including Bill Clinton’s NAFTA agreement and Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/18/bernie-s-socialist-dreamland-is-bs.html

I personally have no objection to an expanded social safety net, but let's not be naive about the complexity in implementing it.

[AgingAmerican]

1. He isn't trying to create a 'socialist dreamland'

You guys just do not get it.

[99th_Monkey]

4. or at least gets as much coverage as Trump's latest brain-fart. nt

[99th_Monkey]

3. It's like FDR never existed. Self-inflicted amnesia, about FDR, is very much in vogue it seems. nt

[RiverLover]

30. Very, very true. It makes my heart hurt. /nt

[deutsey]

40. Same here

[stonecutter357]

28. i get it just fine and i am voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton....

[LWolf]

33. No,

they get it. It just doesn't fit their current agenda.

[rockfordfile]

5. This sounds/reads like something from Fox News

[aidbo]

8. He's done work for the American Enterprise Institute.

https://www.aei.org/publication/barbarians-at-the-gate/

The article linked in the OP also appears to be his only article on DB

[madaboutharry]

6. The rub is this:

Americans can never and will never be Danes. They can't be Norwegians either. Americans are culturally and temperamentally different. Americans are too uptight, too competitive, and too socially isolated from one another to ever cope with the Nordic Model. American culture has never been based in equalitarianism. I don't see that changing. Ever.

That said, I don't think Bernie Sanders seeks to turn America into a giant Denmark. I think he sees taking the parts that work well in Scandinavian countries and Applying them in a way that makes sense for the United States. For example, convincing employers that family leave is actually good for business.

[Chitown Kev]

17. THIS

To be blunt about it, America is not white enough.

I firmly believe that if blacks and browns didn't benefit from the ACA, Southern whites would have had no problem supporting it...just as they had no problem supporting the New Deal.

[Jamaal510]

25. It's funny you

mentioned this. Not too long ago, 2 of my older siblings were discussing a correlation between how homogeneous some of the Scandinavian countries are and how they have a stronger safety net than the melting pot that is the U S of A. It's interesting to wonder if some of the racist mouth-breathers here in America would be quicker to support a stronger safety net if we weren't in the picture, and if RW politicians and billionaires would have a harder time demonizing government programs if that were the case.

[mdbl]

38. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case

Just like when I asked a close friend of mine why the South went repuglican, his response was "they followed the racism". This from a conversation 10 years ago.

[PatrickforO]

7. Well there it is! A regular 'dictatorship of the proletariat!'

You know what? The money that we owe in the national debt? We owe it to OURSELVES. That's right. You heard me.

The problem is that it is the Fed, not the US government that creates money. Basically they put some figures in a column, thus creating new dollars out of thin air, and then they charge us interest for it.

Why you ask? Because we've let them.

Nationalize the central bank, get rid of the Fed, and let the government print money as needed for projects. Just like the colonies of New York and Pennsylvania did before the Revolution. Just like Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil war.

Seriously. The enemy isn't the government. It is the capitalist bankers who hold us all in thrall.

You should read Ellen Brown's 'Web of Debt.'

[snagglepuss]

32. read Ellen Brown's 'Web of Debt.'

I will.

[workinclasszero]

9. We will never do anything to really help

Non rich Americans until we take a meat axe to our insane military budget and close hundreds of us military bases all over the world.

And swear off the American Empire building. Our military was supposed to be a defensive force not an imperial force.

[lovemydog]

14. Very true.

We should have peace, and a peace dividend.

It's an incredible drain on our resources. And much of our military spending isn't labor intensive. Jobs programs are a much more effective, labor intensive way of providing jobs, repairing our infrastructure and improving our economy.

[workinclasszero]

20. Totally agree

Our infrastructure is crumbling. We could put hundreds of thousands or even more than that to work rebuilding it.

But oh we don't have the money! It's tied up in million dollar missiles, 3 billion dollar aircraft carriers and billion dollar bombers.

[restorefreedom]

15. very true, it is about allocation of resources. i heard him say the other day

I think it was on ellen, is part of the problem is we are spending in areas where we shouldnt and not spending in areas where we should. i hope by "spending in areas where we shouldnt" he was talking about the ridiculous bloated military budget and all the "toys" for the neocons.

[Ken Burch]

22. Why would you support HRC if you believe that, though?

She's FOR American Empire building. And a perpetually massive war budget.

And she's not even the only Dem who can win.

[cascadiance]

26. Yep, I think Bernie's campaign might have even been looking at my platform proposal here on DU...

... since his recent proposed war tax on the wealthy almost mirrored what I suggested as a platform plank here earlier. I proposed a war surtax portion of the top marginal tax rate to be assessed if we were in a state of war measurable by some standards TBD. By doing so in a good way, we could not only raise more tax revenue, especially when we are at war when we need to have money to spend on it and have it in effect be paid for by those that benefit from it most, but by having such a tax, we actually put incentives for the very rich to reverse the notions of pushing a military industrial complex notion of us going to war to generate them revenue, when it will cost them more taxes to be paid.

Bernie LISTENS to us and does the right things! And doing something like that actually uses our state of corruption to work for us, if we could get such a law passed, so that the corruption would in effect help stop military spending then.

[Salviati]

24. Agreed. That's always my litimus test for when someone is serious about the deficit.

Unless they're talking about large (+20%) cuts in the pentagons budget, then they're just using the budget debate to further their own policy goals.

[WillyT]

10. LOL !!!

Dmitri Mehlhorn is an American author and businessman. He is a public policy writer and best known as the author of "A Requiem for Blockbusting: Law, Economics, and Race-Based Real Estate Speculation" for the Fordham Law Review. Mehlhorn is also a contributor to the American Enterprise Institute, The Daily Beast, the Boston University Journal of Science and Technology Law and The Atlantic.[5][6][7]

Mehlhorn started his career at McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, and later became the Managing Director at Gerson Lehrman Group. He was also the Chief of Staff at O'Melveny & Myers, an international law firm.[8] Mehlhorn is the former chief operating officer and President of Bloomberg BNA Legal.[9][10] In 2013, he became a Senior Advisor to Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles.[3] Since 2014, Mehlhorn has been a partner at Vidinovo, a venture capital network. He is a member of the boards for the technology companies, MedGenome, American Prison Data Systems and Aquicore. Mehlhorn has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, GenomeWeb and Venture Beat.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mehlhorn

[Report1212]

11. This guy works for Michelle Rhee's Students First

I mean, do we just outright have anti union right wingers being posted here now

https://twitter.com/DmitriMehlhorn?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

[mmonk]

12. I lived under some of the bs like the reforms made to unbrideled capitalism

after the great depression and the addition of Medicare and Medicaid in the past when we were more humane and people were above corporations in law.

[sadoldgirl]

13. Okay, Hillary likes Denmark, but says

correctly that we are the US. So, Bernie, try the comparison to
Canada, which is our close neighbor, and whose language we
share.

The greatest thing he could do is to ask the people whether
their grandparents or great grand parents voted for FDR and
if so why.At that time nobody would have called his plans
a democratic socialist plan, and yet they were and would be
in todays US policies. FDR was a democrat not only with a
capital D, but more importantly with a small d.

I have talked to people (some years ago) about FDR and their
clear answer was always:"He cared for the people." By now
the people should expect racial equality as well, and there is
no doubt that Bernie is a strong advocate for it as well.

[Chitown Kev]

18. hope that grandparent or great grandparent

is NOT a black veteran/household worker or a Japanese-American.

[reformist2]

16. Third-way Dems want to stomp on any hope you have of a future very different from now.

They're for incremental change, small improvements, to be sure, which is better than what the Repubs want.

But they don't want to give up *too* much of their wealth to the masses. They're nicer elites than the Repubs, but they do enjoy lording it over the rest of us almost as much.

Bernie actually wants a releveling of the landscape, a real redistribution of their largely unearned, undeserved wealth - the result most often of rising real estate and/or stock prices. And that horrifies them. Third-way Dems would rather have Jeb! win than Bernie.

[whatchamacallit]

19. Thanks DU 1%er Guy!

And people wonder why some think there's little difference between the parties...

[Chitown Kev]

21. How this could have been approached

is on an issue by issue basis...this author chooses more capitalist models of things but how about Denmark's health care system?

[Fearless]

23. You really don't get how badly you're being screwed by the 1% do you?

[ret5hd]

27. Uhhhh...you're responding to the 1%.

[stonecutter357]

29. i get it just fine and i am voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton....

[MannyGoldstein]

31. So Denmark put a lifetime cap on welfare benefits

that were already shitty to begin with, just like Clinton did?

Of course not.

That entire piece is full of similar BS innuendo, following the Clinton meme begun yesterday of "Denmark ain't so great, either."

[Vinca]

34. It's hard to imagine how it can be considered BS when people in the countries cited

are happier, live longer, are better educated and healthier. Should we be screaming "We're number 13?" Or was it 18? This country could top them all if those at the top paid their fair share.

[senz]

36. + 1000

[madfloridian]

35. Read this about the Daily Beast author.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027268761

He has a really big agenda.

[Art_from_Ark]

39. You know what's *really* BS (= bullshit)?

Self-proclaimed one-percenters making passive-aggressive posts that are designed to tell us peasants we need to shut up and suck it up.