Leftists, bless their hearts, are so child-like in their belief in unicorns and the “magic” of Socialism.
But, unlike children, their beliefs have brought misery to millions of people.
Via IBD:
Election ’16: Socialist Bernie Sanders believes nations “like Denmark, like Sweden, and Norway” employ the welfare-state economic model that the U.S. should replicate. An economist from one of these countries shows how wrong he is.
Sanders’ teenage infatuation with the European welfare state is well-documented. He’s convinced that America could learn from what those nations listed above “have accomplished for their working people.” He has said that it “makes a lot of sense” to him that “it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it’s pretty hard to be very, very poor” in Denmark. In his single-issue mind, capitalism and free markets are evil forces that government must restrain.
These positions are why he appeals to his supporters, and there are enough of them within the Democratic Party to have kept him in the presidential primary race this long — much longer than anyone expected. But, Sanders and his supporters who think they know so much in reality know nothing at all.
At one time, Sweden, a small nation, had the fourth-largest economy in the world. That was in 1970. Twenty-five years later, the economy had tumbled to 14th and the private sector stopped creating jobs, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data. This wasn’t caused by Sanders’ demonic duo of capitalism and free markets. It was caused by the very policies he idolizes.
“Sweden got rich first with free trade and an open economy, before we had the big government,” Swedish economist Johan Norberg explains in a new YouTube video.
“In the 1950s, Sweden was already one of the world’s richest countries, and back then, taxes were lower in Sweden than in the United States.”
It was only after that, says Norberg, “did we start expanding the government dramatically.”
“And do you know what happened then? We started losing,” says Norberg.
“It all ended in a terrible crisis.”….
Related:
Townhall: 5 Ways Socialism Destroys Societies
Mises Institute: Greece Illustrates 150 Years of Socialist Failure in Europe
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It’s too bad that Sweden began an economic recovery but has failed to see the foolishness of unlimited immigration, especially of people who have starkly divergent values and who will no assimilate. The first issue, economics, is recoverable. The second problem: not so much.
The absurd childishness of socialism is obvious to anyone who is looking. The trouble starts when people stop looking.