In the recent presidential election cycle, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont made a remarkable run for the Democratic nomination, drawing huge crowds of enthusiastic followers, many of whom were young adults. Had the Democratic National Committee not unfairly controlled the outcome by feeding debate questions to Hillary Clinton ahead of time and holding 712 “Super Delegates” who were free to vote for Clinton (and largely did) regardless of what the people in their states wanted, he may well have won the nomination.
Bernie’s popularity was due almost entirely because of his social democratic views. He advocated income equality (taking from the rich to give to the poor), free college tuition, and Medicare for all among other things. He proposed paying for the billions of dollars that his programs would cost by raising individual taxes, raising taxes on the wealthy, raising corporate taxes and imposing a health care tax on businesses. If he had his way, the United States would leave behind capitalism and move swiftly into a social democracy like those in many European countries including Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
However, social democracies do not work well. They are, after all, modified versions of the socialistic regimes that existed in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite nations, and that still exists in Cuba. Farming and manufacturing do not flourish when equality removes incentive for hard work. In Eastern Germany, for example, automobile construction was so slow, that a relative of a friend of mine had to pay in full for a car and then wait ten years for it to be delivered. In Cuba, the cars on the streets still date from the 1950s and 1960s. No one can afford a new car because of the low wages and stagnant economy. The communist world largely collapsed in the 1980s in large part because of the failures of socialism to deliver a decent standard of living to its people.
European social democracies, however, it can be argued, offer freedoms that did not exist in the failed communist countries. Instead, they simply use taxes to level incomes and provide safety nets for their citizens, providing cradle to grave support in the way of “free” healthcare, “free” college tuition, and programs similar to our social security, which is, of course, a form of socialism in itself. But despite those on the left in the U.S. who would argue that these countries serve as examples of what we in America should aspire to, the fact remains that social democracy is losing favor in Europe. One article reports that “In the five European Union (EU) states that held national elections last year, social democrats lost power in Denmark, fell to their worst-ever results in Finland, Poland and Spain and came to within a hair’s-breadth of such a nadir in Britain” (The Economist).
The simple fact is that the left in the United States is enthusiastically embracing a system that is failing all over the world, blindly refusing to face the fact that socialism simply doesn’t work. Free stuff is never free. If you want free college tuition, free child care, free health coverage, you will also have to have higher taxes. The highest income tax in the U.S. is 39.6 percent according to Forbes. In France, however, which offers the above mentioned free stuff, that rate is 59%. In Spain, 56%, Germany 57%, Sweden 61% and in Denmark 65.9% (Trading Economics). Free stuff costs money, folks! It currently takes from January until April 24 for an American to pay for his/her taxes. If you lived in Denmark and paid the lowest possible tax, you would still have to work from January until July 21 before your taxes were paid. Or, to look at it another way, out of every dollar you earn in the U.S. no more than 39 cents go to taxes whereas in Denmark as much as 66 cents would go to taxes, leaving you only 34 cents out of every dollar to spend as you see fit.
But, hey, if you are one of the 77.5 million Americans who pay no taxes at all, free stuff actually is free. In 2016 an estimated 45.3% of American households paid no taxes, leaving the other 54.7% of American to support them.
This country has long been the bastion of capitalism, not socialism. Here, no matter how poor your upbringing, if you get an education and work hard, you can achieve whatever your abilities allow. Look at Doctor Ben Carson, a black man who grew up in a ghetto but became a renowned neurosurgeon, a presidential candidate, and now serves as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a full Cabinet position in the federal government. His story is not unique. But he reached these pinnacles through his own determination and hard work. No one gave his mother free child care. No one gave him free college tuition. We succeed, in America, because we work hard. Do we provide for those who can not work? Of course! But as of February of 2016, there were nearly 95 million Americans of working age who were not working( CNBC). The answer is not to give them money to stay at home, the answer of every socialist. The answer is to provide them with jobs, something President Trump hopes to do. Democrats seem to have forgotten the old adage: “Give a man a fish and you feed him today. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life.”
www.forbes.com/…/new-estimates-of-how-many-households-pay-no-federal-income-.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/personal-income-tax-rate
www.cnbc.com/2016/12/02/95-million-american-workers-not-in-us-labor-force.html