Thread by @bansisharma

1. Denmark, Denmark

Let us look at two Denmarks. The first is a socialist utopia of Bernie Sanders' imagination and political opportunism, which is also being wistfully alluded to by the Nobel Laureate below. It only exists in socialist imaginations.

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1029820529182691328

2. Now let us turn to the real Denmark that actually exists on God's green earth. It is a nice place no doubt, but not exactly a socialist Mecca. Drawing upon the work of Michel Kelly-Gagnon of Montreal Economic Institute, allow me to bring the real Denmark into relief.

3. As Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen himself put it, in reaction to this fictionalized vision of his country: "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

4. Admittedly, it is a market economy with high taxes and an extensive welfare state. But it wasn't always so--and it might not stay that way for very much longer.

5. Denmark did not become wealthy through redistribution. In fact, as Otto Brøns-Petersen of Denmark's Center for Political Studies explained, it got rich under a taxation and spending regime not that different from that of the big bad United States.

6. Danish tax levels only took off only after it became rich under low taxation. And once the taxes took off, the process of getting richer came to a grinding halt.

7. Denmark still qualifies as a market economy today despite its high taxes and large welfare state for a number of important reasons. As Brøns-Petersen points out, property rights are well-protected, the currency is sound, international trade is relatively free, ...

8. ... and the regulation of business, labour, and credit is light. There are few restrictions on hiring and firing, there's no legislated minimum wage, and taxpayers are not called upon to bail out their banks.

9. For these kinds of reasons, Denmark scores quite well when it comes to overall economic freedom -- 11th on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. It ranks even higher on the World Bank's "Doing Business" list, coming in at number 3.

10. Denmark's welfare state is more of a rickety derelict than a solid structure. Successive governments have had to repeatedly reform the system, scaling back its benefits.

11. British journalist Michael Booth, who has lived in Scandinavia for over a decade and written a book about his experience there, says that the quality of the free education and health care Danes receive is far from great.

12. Denmark's PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) educational rankings are just average, they have the lowest life expectancy in the EU aside from former communist countries, and the highest rates of death from cancer in the world.

13. Booth also says there is a broad consensus that the Danish welfare state remains unsustainable, despite the many reforms of recent decades. "The Danes' dirty secret is that its public sector has been propped up by--now dwindling--oil revenues."

Bernie, are you listening?

14. The lessons to draw from the Danish model are clear, even if they're not the ones Bernie Sanders would like you to draw. The Danes benefited from low taxes in order to get rich, and they remain fairly well-off thanks to a light regulatory touch.

15. Denmark's extensive welfare state is not the great success it's cracked up to be. Anything else is just a romanticized fairy tale that politicians (who already own multiple homes and live a rather lavish life) want to sell to unsuspecting youngsters to stay in power.

The End

1. Sweden, Sweden
As the armchair socialists in America avert their gaze from Venezuela, making excuses for its failure, and cast their admiring glances toward the Nordic countries, claiming those to be munificent examples of socialism's successes, Sweden too is often brought up.

2. So let us do Sweden too. This time I draw upon Nima Sanandaji's book "Scandinavian Unexceptionalism" published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

3. The affluence and cultural norms upon which Sweden's social-democratic policies rest are not the product of socialism. Sweden's prosperity "developed during periods characterized by free-market policies, low or moderate taxes, and limited state involvement in the economy."

4. Sweden was a poor nation for most of the 19th century (which explains the great wave of Swedish emigration to the United States in 1800s). That began to change as Stockholm, starting around 1870, turned to free-enterprise reforms.

5. Robust capitalism replaced the formerly agrarian system, and Sweden grew rich. "Property rights, free markets, and the rule of law combined with large number of well-educated engineers and entrepreneurs."

6. The result was an environment in which Swedes experienced "an unprecedented period of sustained and rapid economic development." In fact, between 1870 and 1936, Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialized world.

7. Sweden'd hard-left turn didn't come about until much later. It was in the late 1960's and early 1970's that taxes soared, welfare payments expanded, and entrepreneurship got discouraged. But what emerged wasn't heaven on earth.

8. In 1976 Time magazine wrote a story on Sweden which reported that Sweden found itself struggling with crime, drug addiction, welfare dependency, and a plague of red tape. Successful Swedes -- most famously Ingmar Bergman -- were fleeing the country to avoid its killing taxes.

9. "Growing numbers are plagued by a persistent, gnawing question: Is their Utopia going sour?" Sweden's world-beating growth rate dried up. In 1975, Sweden had been the fourth-wealthiest nation on earth (as measured by GDP per capita); by 1993 it had dropped to 14th.

10. By then, Swedes had begun to regard their experiment with socialism "a colossal failure." So slowly and steadily, they started rolling it back. The real key to Scandinavia's unique successes isn't socialism.

11. It's culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law -- these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries.

12. In the region's small and homogeneous countries, those norms took deep root. The good outcomes and high living standards they produced antedated the socialist nostrums of the 1970's. Scandinavia's quality of life didn't spring from leftist policies. It survived them.

13. When Scandinavian emigrants left for the United States, those cultural attributes went with them and produced the same good effects. Scandinavian-Americans have higher incomes and lower poverty rates than the US average.

14. Indeed, Danish Americans economically outperform Danes still living in Denmark, as do Swedish-Americans compared with Swedes, and Finnish-Americans compared with Finns.

15. No, Scandinavia doesn't "violate the laws of the economic universe." It confirms them. With free markets and healthy values, almost any society will thrive. Socialism only makes things worse.

The End

Iceland, Iceland
Norway, Norway
Finland, Finland

No I am not going to do them individually, because it would be highly redundant. They are all part of the Nordic region which basically underwent exact same economic trajectory as Denmark & Sweden. You know one, you know them all.