Is the U.S. More Socialist than Scandinavia?

It is in that we have a more progressive overall tax system than the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden do.

In Denmark, the poorest 30% pay 14.1% of all taxes.  In the United States, the poorest 30% pay only 6.1% of taxes.  In Denmark, the richest 30% pay 48.7% of all taxes.  But in the United States, the richest 30% are soaked for 65.3% of all taxes.

Our poorest 30% in the U.S. pay only 43% of the portion of all taxes paid by the poorest 30% in Denmark, which most Americans assume is much more socialist than we are.  Meanwhile, our richest 30% pay 34% more of the total tax burden than do the richest 30% in Denmark.  These are not small differences in the degree of our socialism.  They are Titanic, with Titanic consequences.  We are more into the envy of class warfare than are the Scandinavians!

The United States has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world.  None of the Scandinavian countries are as bad at soaking their richer citizens and at giving their poorer citizens a pass in taking responsibility for the costs of the very government programs on which they have an equal vote.  Americans are clearly living the socialist dream that those with the greatest income will carry those with less income.  We are living by the socialist mantra that each shall provide to the rulers according to their means.  The rulers will then use the money to subsidize those they who will support them politically with votes or money and to provide distracting circuses.

As with all countries that have tried to live by socialist principles, we are finding that many of the more able or willing to produce are having second thoughts.  We are finding that some of the more able and responsible shrug and retire early.  Or that some simply slowdown and hold their cards until such blithering fools as Obama and Harry Reid are removed from their positions in the 2012 elections.  The majority of businessmen are in such a holding phase just now.  Our economy is in the doldrums as a result and we will not see any growth either until after the November 2012 elections with an Obama loss or until it is absolutely clear that he will lose.  Atlas has Shrugged and is waiting to see if he should put the World back on his shoulder at a later time.

The tax comparisons come from Government vs. Markets: The Changing Economic Role of the State (2011) by Vito Tanzi.  Tanzi is a senior economic official of the IMF.  The tax burden numbers for Denmark and the United States are given by Richard W. Rahn from an article published in the Washington Times on 31 August 2011.  That article also appears on the CATO Institute website here.

Edward Hudgins: Paternalists Want Power and Bank on Envy

In an article called Banking on Envy, Edward Hudgins, of the Atlas Society, says that the defeat of ObamaCare has caused Obama to invoke envy to attack the banks.  He says envy is the chief weapon, and frequent motivation, of the paternalist.  Obama claimed that the banks were responsible for the current recession and that the government had had to bail them out because the banks had made risky loans in pursuit of profit and bonuses.  He failed to note that the government forced the banks to take the money and they rapidly paid it back with interest.  And, of course, he failed to note that the banks had been pushed hard by the government over a couple of decades to make more and more risky loans to home buyers so that home ownership would increase, especially among the poor and lower middle class.

Hudgins says,

With chutzpah pouring out of his every pore, Obama announced support for restrictions on what he defines as risky bank activities “that are central to the legislation that has passed the House under the leadership of Chairman Barney Frank, and that we’re working to pass in the Senate under the leadership of Chairman Chris Dodd.”  Here he named the two members of Congress who most of all laid the groundwork for the current economic crisis. Both worked for years to force banks to make risky home loans to individuals who couldn’t afford them and both took campaign funds from the government-chartered Fannie Mae, which was making money packaging and marketing those bad loans. They sold the crack, and now they want to be deputized as drug-busting police.

Obama argued that the banks get cheap money from the Federal Reserve and use this "privilege" to trade for profit.  His implication is that profit is evil.  Now it is true that the banks get cheap money and that they try to use it to make a profit, but the government set this system up itself.  Hudgins says that the Obama paternalist's tactics are revealed by his effort to gain more effective control of the already highly regulated banking industry.  He goes on a great rampage next against paternalists and their lust for power.

His proposed restrictions on banks will further constrain capital investment in the American economy and reduce so-called “risky” lending. These constraints will certainly slow economic growth. They will especially make it tough for entrepreneurs to create whole new industries that are by their nature risky ventures, for which they bear the costs of the risk, and by which they hope to make huge, well-deserved profits. But it really isn’t economic growth and prosperity that paternalists seek.

Obama is shameless to suggest that his government, which is overseeing the most irresponsible and wasteful spending spree with taxpayer money in American history, should be imposing discipline on private bank responsibility. But it’s not responsible, efficient, and honest government that paternalists seek.

Paternalists want power. They are obsessed by the need to control every aspect of our lives. That’s why Leftists reacted as they did to the Supreme Court’s ruling—released on the same day as Obama’s anti-bank press conference—that corporations have free speech rights to make their thoughts about candidates known during elections. Obama is vowing to find ways to stamp out these First Amendment freedoms. The freedom of others to criticize is a grave danger to control-freak paternalists.

One of the principal tactics that paternalists use to induce individuals to surrender their freedom is to stoke their envy, resentment, and hate against some scapegoat and to promise that they, the paternalists, are the only ones who can punish the villains. “Look, that one is richer than you! Let’s get ‘em!”

Envy, of course, is an essentially nihilistic sentiment that revels in tearing down. It is a form of social relativism that teaches that one’s worth or status is always in comparison to others. And the easiest way to raise one’s own pseudo-sense of worth and status is to tear down others, to judge one’s self as better off only if others are worse off. Envy is a path to individual and social destruction.

 It is so good to have company that shares my sense of outrage at the elitist paternalists using low envy to satisfy their lust for power while not caring what harm is done to free markets and the rights of the individual.