The Audacity of Moderation

Why does David Brooks think Norway doesn't have a generous social welfare safety net? Because they obviously can't affjord it! Image stolen from some stupid conservative Australian website that didn't credit it anyway.

Shorter David Brooks, "Moderates Have the Better Story", New York Times, 2 July 2019: 

Have I got a story for you! Not the tired old progressive story, the gloom and carnage mind-set of Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, in which global capitalism is a war zone and government must be on a war footing, controlling and protecting the population and giving it free stuff, but a new, boldly moderate story of a world where everything is just great now, with our new global middle class providing more creativity than ever before. The job of government could be to create a citizenry with the vigorous virtues—daring, empowered, always learning, always brave—as they do in the Nordic countries, which are not socialist wonderlands, whatever you may have been told. Why, they don't have minimum wages or estate taxes! Unlike Elizabeth Warren, who won't allow private day care and uses her so-called Green New Deal to stifle free trade. 

Honest to God, he's that crazed today, I don't even know where to start.

First, learn from the Nordic countries. American progressives sometimes imagine that the Nordic countries are socialist wonderlands. They are not. The Nordic countries have strong social supports and also open free-market economies. In fact, they can afford to have strong welfare policies only because they have dynamic free-market economies.

I guess I should start by acknowledging that the Nordic countries are not socialist wonderlands. It's true and it's true that a lot of people don't know that! (Including, I'm sorry to say, Senator Sanders.) Rather than adopting the socialist program of replacing private capital with public capital and putting the means of production under the ownership of the state, they have chosen to regulate private capital so as to minimize its ferocious injustices and abuses. They are social democracies:

characterised by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty,^[15] including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care and workers' compensation.^[16] The social democratic movement often has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions which are supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders.^[17]

It's true that they don't have minimum wages. But they have something else: massive union membership (over 70% of Danish workers, for instance) so that workers themselves exert power over wages, through their representatives, in some cases from the top:

The Nordic countries share active labour market policies as part of a corporatist economic model intended to reduce conflict between labour and the interests of capital. The corporatist system is most extensive in Sweden and Norway, where employer federations and labour representatives bargain at the national level mediated by the government. Labour market interventions are aimed at providing job retraining and relocation.^[29]

A single minimum wage has no function in a system like this, and of course low-income workers are far better paid than those in the US.

Denmark has a flat 15% tax on estates over $44,000 (DK 295,300) for heirs other than spouses, and an additional 25% for heirs who are not close relatives. Finland has a progressive inheritance tax (topping out at 19% for estates over €1 million). Sweden and Norway have abolished theirs in recent years (2004 and 2014 respectively) but nobody regards them as low-tax countries. And the myth that Scandinavian countries have less regulation than the US is just nonsense, as Matt Bruenig has pointed out, spread by a Heritage Foundation study based on irrelevant measures. A certain efficiency is created by endless work to "harmonize" regulations among the Nordic countries and their partners in the EU (all Nordic countries including Norway, which isn't a members, obey the EU regulations that David Brooks used to be paid to treat as virtual Stalinism during his years as a WSJ correspondent in Brussels, but don't expect him to remember that when he's getting his argument going).

Second, never coddle. Progressives are always trying to give away free stuff. They reduce citizens to children on Christmas morning. For example, Warren and Sanders want to make public college free. But as common sense and recent research tells us, when you give people something free, they value it less. They are more likely to drop out when times get hard.

You have to be kidding me:

...all students, regardless of nationality, can study for free at any public university in Norway, at all study levels. You will need to pay a small semester fee, however, which is typically only NOK 300-600 (~US$38-76). Tuition fees may be charged for some specialized postgraduate programs....

Until recently, Finland was also free for all students, but it’s now introduced tuition fees for non-EU students. While students from the EU/EEA/Switzerland can study in Finland for free, non-EU students need to pay tuition fees of at least €1,500 per year (~US$1,840). However, most students will pay between €4,000 and €20,000 (~US$4,900 – 24,500) depending on their course....

Free or near-free public tertiary education is almost as widespread in the developed world as universal government-run access to health care. The extraordinary costliness of public college in the US (not to mention the private ones!), so at odds with the intentions of the Morrill Act passed by the radical Republicans of the Lincoln presidency, is a scandal.

Third, drive decision-making downward. People become energetic, responsible adults by making decisions for themselves, their families and their communities. Moderates are always aiming to make responsibility, agency and choice as local as possible.

For example, moderates support child care tax credits so parents can decide if they want a day-care model or a parent-stays-home model. But Warren wants to make it hard for families to have choice. She supports only federally funded day care, effectively forcing families into federally funded programs, limiting their choice and making them wards of the system.

Does David Brooks believe you can get a childcare tax credit for being a stay-at-home dad or mom? Or is there some legislation being devised that will provide that? Otherwise, how do these programs provide more "choice" than Warren's plan (devised for people who already have no choice, to ensure the childcare they must get will be affordable and high quality, much like the system in New York City that's Bill de Blasio's greatest contribution to date)?

Meanwhile, in Scandinavia...

Sweden has been highly successful at establishing what is largely considered a leading international model of childcare. This has been achieved with a clear focus on establishing minimum standards in childcare. The result is a high-quality, accessible and affordable childcare system.

In addition to the high rate of participation – 85 per cent of children aged under five years attend pre-school, and 74 per cent of children aged six to nine attend leisure-time centres that provide after-school care.

Universal entitlement means that all parents are guaranteed a childcare space without undue delay. The system is largely publicly run, with only 20 per cent attending private day care centres. In 2002 the state introduced a system of maximum fees that could be charged, making the system even more affordable as parents pay no more than 1-3 per cent of their income in childcare fees.

The daycare system is now more inclusive than ever, incorporating, for example, children whose parents are unemployed and on parental leave.

Unusually, the high level of participation of women in the workforce is matched by a high fertility rate among this group. Women who know they can balance being a mother with having paid employment have more children. This is especially important in developed societies that have also become “ageing” societies.

This must be one of the stupidest columns David Brooks has ever written, and that's saying something. I could go on, and maybe I'll post some more later particularly on the "gloom and carnage mind-set' attributed to Senator Warren, but sweet Jesus, this is enough for now.