(Photo of Denmark is by Fedor Selivanov, and was found at newyorker.com.)Bernie Sanders likes to hold up the nation of Denmark as the model for what the United States could be. He calls it a Democratic socialism. There's just one problem with that. Denmark is not a socialist country. It is a social democracy -- with a market-based free enterprise system, an adequate social safety net, and regulations that ensure all citizens are treated fairly and share in economic growth.
And while Sanders supporters won't like to hear this, that describes the vision of Joe Biden more than it does Bernie Sanders. Here's part of how Thomas A. Friedman puts it in The New York Times:
Bernie Sanders often cites Denmark as the kind of country he would like America to be under his ideology of “democratic socialism.” Well, here’s a news flash: Bernie Sanders, with his hostile attitudes toward free trade, free markets and multinational corporations, probably couldn’t get elected to a municipal council in Denmark today. Ironically, Joe Biden, with his more balanced views on trade, corporations and unions, probably could. . . .
Denmark is actually a hypercompetitive, wide-open, market economy devoted to free trade and expanding globalization, since trade — exports and imports — makes up roughly half of Denmark’s G.D.P.
Indeed, Denmark’s 5.8 million people have produced some of the most globally competitive multinationals in the world, by the names of A.P. Moller-Maersk, Danske Bank, Novo Nordisk, Carlsberg Group, Vestas, Coloplast, the Lego Group and Novozymes. These are the very giant multinationals Sanders constantly rails against.
As the former Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen once remarked in a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to those who might not fully grasp the Danish model: “I would like to make one thing clear, Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state, which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”
It is through these engines of capitalism, free trade, economic openness and globalization that Denmark has managed to become wealthy enough to afford the social safety net that Sanders rightly admires — as do I: access for all to child care, medical and parental leave from work, tuition-free college, a living stipend, universal health care and generous pensions. . . .
America is now out of balance. We all sense it in the gross and widening inequality we see around us. Sanders sincerely wants to eliminate that. Alas, so do a lot of us. Michael Bloomberg was running on a platform advocating a 5-percent surtax on incomes of over $5 million annually.
But when you begin that conversation, as Sanders does, by effectively demonizing all risk-taking American entrepreneurs as corrupt, by vowing to redistribute their income — which Sanders seems to believe is all ill gotten by definition — by pretending that all the benefits can be paid for by the wealthy and nothing from the middle class and by voting against the new version of NAFTA — which was supported by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Nancy Pelosi as precisely the kind of trade deal with the very union and environmental protections Democrats have long sought — then your true model country is not Denmark. It’s a socialist fantasy.
The truth is, Joe Biden would make a much better Scandinavian-type leader than Bernie Sanders.
Biden, in my view, would be much more likely to — and able to — build a new social contract in America than a President Sanders, because Biden not only genuinely cares about the working class and the homeless — and understands the need for access to lifelong education and health care — he also knows that you don’t get there by demonizing the engines of capitalism and job creation. You have to find a way to work with them.
Denmark did not become Denmark because of a revolution. It evolved where it is today through a steady iteration — unleashing its entrepreneurs on the world to generate as much wealth as they could while constantly forging a dialog at home among all the stakeholders about how best to share enough of the profits to have a truly just safety net, while not destroying the free-market, free-trade engines of growth, and while maintaining a high sales tax so everyone contributes something.
If Denmark’s social contract is your model — and it’s a good one — then I’d trust Biden much more than Bernie to head us there.
