In 2015, I wrote a column entitled “A Nordic Nightmare for Bernie Sanders.”
Today, let’s do something similar, but this time I’ll explain why economic data from northernmost Europe is bad news for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I’m motivated to address the issue because I just saw this tweet about how Scandinavian-Americans are much richer than their relatives who stayed home.
Why is this bad news from AOC?
Because, like Crazy Bernie, she wants America to be more like Scandinavia. Here are some excerpts from a Commentary article by Daniel Schatz.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, has stressed that she wants America to be more like Scandinavia. No surprise there, given that the youngest congresswoman to take office in American history is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist. In defense of her ideas—which include a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a guaranteed job plan for all Americans, to be paid for by a proposed 70 percent marginal tax rate—Ocasio-Cortez has referred to Nordic countries as successful democratic socialist models that the United States should seek to emulate. …“my policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, [and] in Sweden.”
But if AOC thinks America should be more like Scandinavia, she should first explain why we should copy nations that having living standards significantly below U.S. levels.
And, she should further be asked to explain why she thinks the Nordic Model is better when people from those countries who came to America are much richer than the ones who stayed home (and “cream skimming” is not the answer because it was lower-class Scandinavians who emigrated).
Heck, since we are figuratively asking her for responses, we may as well ask her if she knows anything about the economic history of Scandinavia.
