I‘ve been waiting for a book like this for a while now.
As an undergraduate writing for the liberal-progressive campus paper, I volunteered to blurb a few titles a week from boxes of books Ralph Nader sent us after an interview. One in particular rattled me. Steven Hill’s Europe’s Promise—exactly what it sounds like, a scholarly promotion of the “European Way” and an affront to American exceptionalism—sparked my conversion. It culled up some soul-searching questions. Does everyone not have that root sense of “Thank God I’m an American”? Do most educated Americans, in fact, not? The much-maligned “knee-jerk patriot,” is that… me?
In his Debunking Utopia, in stores today, Iranian-born Swedish national Nima Sanandaji further punctures the illusion of Europe’s promise. Bernie Sanders’s dreamland, it turns out, lives nowhere. Not in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or Finland. In reality, decades of high taxes and low reward for hard work have eroded the national ethic of trustworthiness that made their policies seem like a good idea in the first place. And that’s not to mention the controversial curveball—immigration—that threw these historically homogenous nations off their game.
Senator Marco Rubio often joked during the primaries, “Bernie Sanders would make a great candidate for president. Of Sweden!” Sanandaji supposes not even Swedish voters would go for Sanders these days. With the 1970s welfare expansion policies having run their course, leaders of those frigid promised lands now look to welfare reform for a more prosperous future. Since Sweden’s center-right Alliance party secured a majority in the 2006 elections, which they held onto for eight years, voters have favored a socially liberal but fiscally reform-minded government.
Sanandaji’s indictment comes with a disclaimer that Nordic socialism put him and his brother through school, from nursery to PhD, and housed and fed his immigrant parents—all on the taxpayers’ dime. Before the dawn of the Nordic model progressive pundits harp on about, their social democracy was one we’d recognize. A moderate state-run healthcare system, which Sanandaji counts among the “basic welfare services,” like public education, combined with “low taxes and market-friendly policies”—this was the standard for the prosperous middle stretch of the twentieth century, when Volvo and IKEA were founded and flourished.
After a dramatic slide to the left, remaining Nordic social and economic successes have grown from the same seeds sown in those earlier decades. He writes, “to a large degree much-admired societies in the north are successful despite, not thanks to, their policies.”
Stats and graphs bust up the prevailing stateside myth, “[That] if America adopts Nordic policies, American society will shape into a Nordic society.” And, still, for this reader anyway, Sanandaji’s best arguments are the squishier qualitative ones, based on observations and first hand cultural immersion. In the chapter “Coffee-Consuming Workaholics,” he profiles the prototypical Sven or Ingrid. To these hardworking citizens of a trusting homogenous nation, a welfare state seemed the only thing.
A native Nordic work ethic, a consistent key to their prosperity, might be bred in the bone from the Viking era. Sanandaji suggests their hardiness was passed down, perhaps conditioned by the challenging climate. Gender parity was more the norm in those legendary days than it is in the socialist state, he points out. Women fill a large majority of local public sector jobs, and unlike the shield maidens of old, not enough “lean in.” No women lead Norway’s top sixty businesses, for instance. In the private sector, despite the efforts of a state-run task force to dissect the women problem, and affirmative action programs to correct it, there persists “a systematic underrepresentation of women at the top.”
Nordic immigrants to the United States are actually more likely to thrive. The poverty rate for Nordic Americans is less than half the poverty rate for all Americans. Sanandaji proffers Milton Friedman’s wisdom:
American progressives gleefully cite Danish life-expectancy statistics. But as our author points out, taxes have risen in Nordic countries at the same rate that lifespans have incrementally fallen relative to other nations. Norway and Denmark no longer place among the top ten. Sanandaji doesn’t indulge the conjecture, but I will: Could the inverse correlation of these two trends mean that high taxes cheapen life and dampen ambition? Without a robust business or family fortune to pass on—prospering is unprofitable, and unsustainable, when the government takes a significant majority of what you earn—Sven’s golden years lose their luster, perhaps.
The Swedish government has caught on to its self-destructive formula. Sanandaji cites a government-run study: “an average municipal tax of 32 percent and a state tax of 25 percent are collected. Finally, an average tax of 21 percent is added on top of the value of goods and services consumed. A government report has calculated that the total effective marginal tax rate, including all these taxes, amounts to 73 percent. The report, published by the Swedish government, admits that the rate is so high that lowering it is expected to lead to more rather than less revenues.” And he explains how Nordic welfare traps families in hidden unemployment—publicizing a figure ten percentage points lower than reported reality—and keeps the taxes employers pay for every hire hidden from employees who bear the burden.
With a thorough mythbusting, Sanandaji ably punctures progressives’ bubble in a few dozen places. It’s been soundly burst by the end of the introduction. His bias is minimal, and his objective apparently that of a conscientious economist. But he also has a soft spot for Nordic culture. An affectionate appreciation for the Nordic virtues colors the work. He’s observed welfare undermine Nordic people’s unshakable core values, with a certain sadness. But he retains a loyal countryman’s hope for reform.
