New Koch Daughter Just Dropped To Teach Us That Socialist Nordic Countries Totally Capitalist Actually!
Fine, then we'll take whatever flavor of 'capitalism' that is, please and thank you.
For the last several decades, any time a politician has gone and supported anything that might actually help people in some way, we have heard the all-too-expected angry chorus from Republican politicians and conservative pundits of “That’s SOCIALISM! They’re trying to do socialism to us! The next thing you know, we’ll all be in bread lines!” Obama, they insisted, was an especially terrifying secret socialist, not to mention a secret Kenyan Muslim who was going to force everyone to do Sharia law.
Well, it seems that this strategy may have backfired a little bit, causing more than a few people to say to themselves, “Well gee, if that’s socialism, then fine! I’m a socialist! Bring on the health care and higher wages!” Candidates openly identifying as Democratic Socialists have been consistently winning primaries and general elections. Hell, the largest city in the nation happily elected a guy who is not only a loud and proud Democratic Socialist, but an actual Muslim from Uganda.
Naturally, there have been all different flavors of backlash and armchair analysis of this phenomenon, from both sides of the aisle, but over the last week or so, I’ve suddenly seen an unusual number of social media posts and comments trying to make the case that the Democratic Socialists have hoodwinked people into thinking that social programs, the Nordic model, the economic practices of other European nations are socialism, when in fact … they are capitalism.
Here, we see it on an Instagram post promoting an article titled “I Was In The DSA, Here’s What They Really Believe” from Bari Weiss’s Free Press. It was written by Jake Altman, a guy who left the DSA in a huff a few years ago over their support for Gaza, opposition to colonialism, and “outright hostility toward anti-Communism.”
The same argument pops up in several Xitter posts similar to the one below, from people who — it ought to be said — don’t actually want the Nordic model either.
A particularly stellar example, however, comes from newly minted Wall Street Journal associate opinion editor Mary Julia Koch — who, yes, is in fact the daughter of David Koch. Koch’s mother, Julia Koch, is the third richest woman in the world, with just about $74 billion to her name.
In a video published to the outlet’s Instagram, and an op-ed published to their “Free Expression” vertical, Koch decried the tendency of Democratic Socialists to compare what they want to do to what goes on in Nordic countries, just because Nordic countries are doing all of the things they want to do.
She explains, with the the kind of smug look you only get from never having not been a billionaire:
“America's Democratic Socialists are obsessed with the Nordic model. Universal healthcare, big welfare states, all sold with Instagram-worthy aesthetics. The only problem: These countries aren't socialist.
“Their economies are highly competitive free markets built on private ownership and global trade. Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden consistently rank among the top 15 countries with the most economic and personal freedom. Scandinavian countries do offer more public services in the US, but they're paid for by broad and steep taxation, and it's not like the citizens are just sitting around collecting benefits.”
I like that the implication here is that what the Left wants is for people to just “sit around collecting benefits.” No, that’s just the right-wing fantasy explanation for what it is that we want, because they want to be able to characterize our want of “more public services” as actually a secret, sinful desire for sloth. It can’t ever be that we just want people to have health care, it’s that we want them all to do nothing with their lives but mooch off the hardworking heirs of billionaires who definitely got their job at the Wall Street Journal because “merit.”
“In Norway, labor force participation is higher than it is in the US.”
Again, we like it when people have jobs. That is why we support unions and labor rights and other nice things that make people’s jobs better and more secure.
This also seems like a good time to point out that in Norway the usual workweek is 37.5 hours, people get 25 mandatory paid vacation days a year plus 10 national holidays, 16 days of paid sick leave (and more funded by the nation’s social insurance if 16 days isn’t enough), as well as 10 to 30 days to stay home with a sick child (depending on the number of children), 49 weeks of parental leave for a new child, “objective justifications” for being fired or laid off (as opposed to at-will employment) … I could go on.
I guess now when Republicans hear us talking about those things now, they’ll have to cry “That’s capitalism!” instead of “But that’s socialism”?
“Yes, these countries have lower levels of crime and economic inequality and higher levels of public trust, but they're ethnically and culturally homogeneous and so much smaller than America.”
Boy, that certainly took a hard turn into white nationalist territory, didn’t it? Is this meant to suggest that the reason we have higher crime rates in the US than they have in Nordic countries is because of Black and Brown people? Really?
The reason these countries have lower crime rates is not because they are “ethnically and culturally homogeneous” but because there are lower levels of economic inequality. Because people can trust that they will be able to lead nice lives, that their future is secure, that their children or future children’s future is secure.
In a world where the term “hangry” exists, it should not be hard to understand why a country with extreme economic inequality would have more of an issue with crime than a country that does not. Poverty leads to crime, and not just the “stealing a loaf of bread to feed your sister’s children” kind of crime. If people don’t believe they have a future, they are more likely to act recklessly. Also, if people feel that the system is working against them, they will create new systems or work outside the system. This isn’t actually that hard.
(Of course, if she’s suggesting that the reason we can’t have nice things is because racist white people would rather go without than see people of color have the nice things as well, she’d have a point — but I don’t think that’s where she was going with that.)
“The population of the New York City metro area is four times the size of the entire country of Norway. We're comparing apples to oranges.”
This actually has nothing to do with anything. The programs we want would actually be better supported by larger populations, single payer health care in particular. (Though we’ve gotta give Koch credit for literally holding a basket of apples and oranges to demonstrate this.)
“By the way, Norway is Western Europe's largest oil and natural gas producer. That’s the reason for their economic success, not the welfare state.”
So if the US made more money from oil and gas, we could have a welfare state? She’d be okay with that? Because I feel like she might not.
Of course, the idea that the United States doesn’t have enough money for a welfare state (which, by the way, should not be a disparaging term) is absurd. We have the money, and, frankly, we’d ultimately have more money if we were to have a system in which people could thrive. It’s a lot harder to make money selling things if no one can afford to buy them.
“If today’s socialist sympathizers really want inspiration, they should look to Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Soviet Russia. I wonder why they never mention those countries.”
Because they’re not socialist in the way anyone is advocating for in the DSA. The USSR was not actually a socialist or communist nation any more than it was a democratic nation (which, nota bene, it also claimed to be). It was a totalitarian nation with an economy that would more accurately described as “state capitalism.”
The closest thing to a purely capitalist society that has existed in the world was probably Chile under Pinochet, and they had to kill a whole lot of people to make that work. Though it’s probably worth noting here that Koch’s father and uncle were heavily inspired by Milton Friedman and the other Chicago School economists and free-market libertarians who inspired Pinochet’s economic policies. I don’t know if Mary Julia Koch shares her daddy’s sensibilities, but if she does, would it be fair of me to claim that she therefore also supports taking dissidents on “helicopter rides”?
Koch is just two years out of college, which may explain why she does not appear to be familiar with the concept of a “mixed economy,” or the fact that practically all modern nations are “mixed economies.” That means that they are a mixture of capitalism and socialism. The United States is a mixed economy. Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are all mixed economies. Hell, even Cuba, to a degree, is a mixed economy, as people are permitted to have small and medium-sized businesses. It’s all just a matter of degree.
If we were a truly capitalist society, things would be pretty much exactly the way her father wanted them to be. When he wrote the 1980 Libertarian Party campaign platform, he called for the abolition of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid; the “deregulation of the medical insurance industry”; the privatization of the postal service, public schools, public roads, railroads, and national highway systems; the abolition of minimum wage laws, of all “personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes” and ultimately all taxation whatsoever, of compulsory education laws, “all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs,” the EPA, the Department of Energy, the FAA, the FEC, the FDA, OSHA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission … the list goes on.
Does that seem like the kind of glorious free market capitalism that the Nordic countries are doing?
Want to send us money in an entirely different way? Click here or join our Patreon!
I will say, however, that I’m not entirely disappointed by this being a talking point on the Right. Really, it means that they are admitting that social welfare programs are good things that people want, to the point where they want capitalism to be able to take credit for it. That’s a big step. Because that allows us to say “Well, fine then! We’ll take that flavor of capitalism, please and thank you.”
Ultimately, people just truly don’t care what anything is called anymore, they just want policies that are going to improve their lives. They want universal health care. They want childcare. They want to be able to send their kids to college without taking out a second mortgage on their home. They want to be able to get a home in the first place. They want the normal things that everyone wants and they are realizing that we may need to add a little more socialism to our mixed economy if we want to get there. You want to call that capitalism? Fine. You want to call it socialism? Fine. You want to call it Hans Glukens Flanken? Sign us up!
I guess, if Republicans really didn’t want people to be socialists, they probably should have stopped screaming that every program meant to help people was “socialism” for the past hundred years.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Well ackshually they're capitalist countries!
Okay, let's adopt more policies like them.
NO THAT'S SOCIALISM!!!
Oh, do "explain" more oligarch lies to us, princess.