Tag: Bernie Sanders

The Non-Stop Nordics

Image of Nordic flags by miguelb

This week, the advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders released its 2020 World Press Freedoms Index. The index ranks the world’s nations and some territories on the freedom journalists have to report on what is happening in their countries and to challenge power. At the top of list: Norway, Finland, and Denmark, and Sweden.

The Netherlands rounds out the top five. The largest European countries fall between 11 and 35. The United States is at 45. The world’s largest democracy, India, is at 142. Singapore, where I live, is at 158. China is fourth from the bottom at 177.

Seriously, is there anything these Nordic countries can’t do right? Here’s what I’m talking about.

Start with just how rich these countries are, using data from the World Bank. In terms of GDP per capita, Norway is at number 7.

Norway is that high, though, mainly because it is an oil state. On the other hand, it’s only that low because it’s sandwiched in with a lot of known tax shelter countries and territories, which cater to the global wealthy. Let’s look further down the list to more “normal” countries.

There they are – Denmark, Sweden, and Finland – right in the pack of the world’s richest economies.

And they’re among the countries with the least amount of inequality, as well. Here is a chart from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But, you might object, what about freedom? All kinds – individual, civil, and economic? After all, that’s what the western world prides itself on. The libertarian Cato Institute compiles an index. Three of the four Nordic countries appear in the top 11. The United States comes in at number 15 (tied with Estonia). Norway is just below the US at number 17.

(A special shoutout to the Netherlands, by the way, which is always high in all of these rankings, as well, and tied for 11th in freedom, just after Sweden.)

Suppose you want to dial in on just economic freedom, defined as the ease of doing business and whether the government is “big” or not. The conservative Heritage Foundation has you covered. Despite the Nordic governments famously collecting a lot in taxes (which get turned into services, like universal health care, etc.), Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway are right in there with the “mostly free” countries.

Maybe your focus is productivity. After all, it’s been humankind’s ability to become more and more productive over the last couple of centuries that has freed it from millennia of poverty and subsistence. Let’s turn to the World Economic Forum and its Global Competitiveness Report. There the Nordic countries are again.

Getting back again to those “big” governments of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Surely “big” government is a prescription for disaster due to the possibility of corruption, correct? Well, let’s turn to Transparency International and its measure of how corrupt the world’s governments are perceived to be, from least to most. The Nordics are in the top ten for least corrupt. The United States, by the way, doesn’t show up until number 23, just above France.

What about health care? How do the Scandinavian countries stack up? This one is harder to summarize in one simple chart because of the number of variables. Is everyone covered by health insurance? Is it affordable for individuals and the countries? How does the system perform on various life outcomes, like life expectancy, maternal mortality, infant and child mortality, etc? I found one ranking by the World Health Organization, but it was from 2000. Many changes have occurred in global health care systems since then, especially in the US with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act.

Even so, many organizations and media outlets have pressed ahead to rank systems. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation focuses on how the US spends far more money on health care than other countries, yet gets far worse outcomes. Note that two of the Nordic countries, Finland and Norway, are on the left as “best”.

The Commonwealth Fund also has a set of charts showing how non-US systems cost far less and produce comparable to better outcomes. Notice in the report how the Nordic countries are nestled comfortably in with the other countries with better outcomes. Let’s focus on one in particular – life expectancy. Norway and Sweden are in the pack, while life expectancy for the US actually declined in recent years.

To wrap up, what about the future for the citizens of the Nordic countries? After all, anyone with kids hopes their lot will be better than their own.

Let’s look at education first, because it is key to so many parts of a modern country’s success. The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests are a globally accepted standard for comparing educational outcomes. Finland has long had a globally recognized education system. Sweden ranks highly, and Denmark and Norway are comparable or rank more highly than the US.

And finally, let’s finish with social mobility – that is, the chances that a person can do better economically than their parents did. The World Economic Forum has you covered.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden are the top four for future prospects, just like they were the top four for press freedom, where all of this began. Non-stop Nordics, indeed.

Sure, I’ll support Clinton. But I won’t be stupid about it.

Following her primary victory in New York this week, Hillary Clinton reached out to Bernie Sanders’ voters:

To all the people who supported Sen. Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.

I believe this is true. On a great many issues, Clinton lines up with Sanders just enough that I’m willing to submit to the twisted logic of the United States’ political duopoly and – should she end up the Democratic nominee – vote for her instead of a third party.

But just enough means differences remain. And boy, it is a doozy of a divide.

For me, Sanders’ entire campaign has been about breaking the power of the plutocrats – the rich – and restoring the power of the people in our democracy. That’s why there is the twin focus on the problem of excessive money polluting our politics and a lack of money diminishing the economic opportunity, security, and freedom of the typical American.

Before this primary season, I guess I still thought there was widespread agreement among people on the left, broadly speaking, that this was a worthy goal. Now I’m not so sure. What I now see in Clinton – and, by extension, her supporters – is a seeming acceptance of plutocracy – an acceptance that the best that we can hope for against the wealthy and their interests is to hustle, bargain, and plead for small changes, rather than take on their power directly and forcefully. This is, by the way, a charitable interpretation. I am sorely tempted to believe that Clinton-like centrist Democrats actually believe that the wealthy have a natural right to rule. After all, didn’t they clearly win the economic game? Sure, offset the losers somewhat, but not so as to upset the natural order. (This is, by the way, a variation on the themes put forward by Thomas Frank in his new book “Listen, Liberal”. I recommend it.)

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Clinton would prove to be the “fighter” she always claims to be against the power of the plutocrats. I would gladly be proven completely wrong. But I suspect I won’t be. Despite the relative success of Bernie Sanders and his campaign, I doubt very much that Clinton and her brand of liberal have gotten the message that we’re at the end of a decades-long experiment in bad policy. Better alternatives are out there. The Sanders campaign is not spouting some sort of utopian vision. We have the benefit of seeing that other countries have already experimented with other systems – the Nordic countries, in particular – which have far better social outcomes for most of their citizens. Are these systems perfect? Of course not. Would we have to put an American spin on them? Yes. But moving in the direction of a democratic socialist politics and economy remains a goal worth fighting for. I sincerely hope that Clinton and her supporters start showing that they share this vision.

Sanders should stay in the race, but stick to his critique of our political economy

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Bernie Sanders explains his vision of democratic socialism during a speech in Nov. 19, 2015.

While still conceivable after New York, Bernie Sanders’ chances of winning the Democratic primary have now become highly improbable. Improbable, but not impossible. And for that reason alone I think he should stay in the race. (For the record, this is exactly what Hillary Clinton did in 2008. She stuck it out until June of that year, even after it was apparent that she was on the ropes.)

But as a Sanders supporter, I wish he and his campaign would stick to their original, long-standing – and accurate – critique of U.S. political economy. That is, that our democratic republic has been hijacked by plutocrats, who are using the power of their money to distort our politics and economics to serve their interests and not those of most Americans.

What I don’t want is to see his campaign descend merely into constant sniping and criticism of fellow progressives and the primary process in general. Yes, suspicious activity – like the voter registration changes leading up to the New York primary – need to be thoroughly investigated. And yes, there are a variety of reforms needed in the way the Democratic party primaries are managed, including the existence of superdelegates.

But at this point, these are short-term tactical matters, having to do with this campaign alone. It is also important to play the long game, and Sanders is clearly winning that. He has energized young people. He’s proven that a sizable portion of the Democratic party electorate – roughly 40% – wants to see the party lean in the direction of democratic socialism, rather than stick with a centrist, corporatist approach to politics that has dominated the party for the last 30 years. (With any luck, Sanders will stay in through California, and we’ll have something of a national referendum on this issue.) And he has done all of this mostly as an outsider with largely small donations, proving that there is room to maneuver in U.S. political institutions for people-centered candidates and movements. All of this is a base upon which a new political economy can be built – and upon which a new Democratic party can be built, complete with the primary election reforms mentioned before.

But to do any of this, Sanders and his campaign – and his supporters – need to maintain the moral high ground, which is so clearly won. That’s what makes more centrist Democrats squirm. And I’m not inclined to let them off the hook or give them excuses to ignore the central message of the Sanders campaign, which is that their approach has proven to be a misguided failure for most Americans and that a new way is needed.

The U.S. Needs More Political Parties. Here’s How.

U.S. politics seems to be at pivotal moment in which the traditional political duopoly is being openly questioned. Over the objections of party leaders, Donald Trump is running away with the Republican nomination by using authoritarian appeals to attract new and old nativist, xenophobic supporters. Bernie Sanders is activating many new, young voters and others with a vision of making the U.S. more like the social democracies of the Nordic countries, over the objections of centrist Democrats.

In the end, only one candidate will win in each primary, of course, thanks to our use of so-called “winner-take-all”  or “first-past-the-post” voting systems. The metaphorical post in this case is the formula of 50% plus one. If any given party’s candidate gets half of the total plus one more vote, that candidate and her or his voters get everything – all of the voice, all of the privileges, all of the power. The other nearly half of the people? They get nothing.

This kind of voting system is often praised for creating a form of political stability. It forces voters with diverse and sometimes contradictory views to compromise and rally behind one party and candidate in hope of making the magic number. Now, I have no problem with compromise. In fact, no democracy can function without it. But this system also has the effect of driving us into having only two large, viable parties. By viable, I mean a party has enough of a reasonable, fair shot at winning elections that the other parties have to take its existence into account. Yes, I know, we have a variety of small parties and occasionally a third-party presidential run, but their chances of success are slim to none.

So why is the two-party system such a big problem? I believe it causes many people to give up on politics because they feel like their viewpoint, their values, their policies can never get a hearing in our representative institutions. Many voters are being energized because of the very real possibility of seeing their voice finally expressed through one of the major parties – for good and for ill. But, inevitably, because of winner-take-all systems, many of them will go home disappointed.

So, what’s the solution? There are three parts.

Ranked-Choice Voting

The first part goes by two names: either “ranked-choice” or “instant run-off” voting. Here’s a short (1:30) video from Minnesota Public Radio – via the electoral reform group FairVote – that will give you a quick outline:

To summarize, you get to vote for, say, your top three choices of candidate in ranked order. If no candidate gets a clear majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes gets tossed out. But that candidate’s voters still have influence! Their second-choice votes now flow to that candidate, who could then get the majority. If not, the process continues until you have a winner that most people saw as being one of their top choices. (Such a process, by the way, might have helped stop Donald Trump from taking over the Republican primary by allowing the “establishment” candidates to coalesce their fractured support in each primary.)

Proportional Representation

Even with ranked-choice voting, you don’t necessarily get more political parties. For that you need a form of proportional representation. Again, I turn to FairVote for one example of such a system:

As a quick summary, instead of single-winner, smaller districts, you would have multiple winners in bigger districts. If there is a sizable political minority within an area, their chances are pretty good that they would get at least one representative.

Easier Ballot Access

But even ranked-choice and proportional representation don’t get you more parties. You also need easier ballot access. Laws in many states make it very hard for a new party to win the right to get on the ballot. And, of course, who makes the laws? The already established parties. Let’s be honest. Practically no one really wants truly stiff competition – not in business, not in life, not in politics. And once they have power, fewer people still are readily willing to give it up. Both parties are content to hold on to what they have and keep the contest simple.

Dreaming Big

Are any of these reforms to our political system actually going to happen? Probably not. Entrenched interests are very powerful, so we’re likely stuck – for a long time, at least – with a system from which many, if not most, American citizens feel alienated. But this appears to be the year of big dreams – whether it’s Medicare for All or Mexican walls – so what’s the harm in adding one more to the mix? All that’s at stake is a true representative democracy that’s actually worthy of the name.

P.S.

By the way, it is possible to have perhaps too many parties. Like the U.S., other representative democracies, like India (the world’s largest, remember) and Norway (as a recent Norwegian acquaintance told me) also have political paralysis either because of the number of parties or enough parties won’t come together to create a viable coalition under their parliamentary systems. There is no magic solution to the design of political systems – only occasional tweaking when it’s clear that one system has run its course.

P.P.S.

Here are a couple of defenses of the two-party system.