The Weekly Standard: Benjamin Katzef Sliberstein: Sorry Leftist Americans, Your Swedish Utopia Does Not Exist

The Weekly Standard: Opinion: Benjamin Katzef Sliberstein: Sorry Leftist Americans, Your Swedish Utopia Does Not Exist

Imagine a county about the size of Turkey in land, but with only about nine-million people, that is not just energy independent, but exports a lot of their natural resources, that is also social democratic in nature when it comes to their politics. You have a country like that and you’ll have a very socialist country in the sense that you’ll have a lot of welfare state benefits that are funded through your large energy sector and private enterprise economy. Sweden, is a social democracy, because they tend to be social democratic when it comes to their politics and they can afford to be socialist. Especially compared with even Germany to their south that has a lot more people and imports a lot of their energy. Not because there’s some magic to the welfare state and government giving people a lot of social services.

When a politician, or political candidate tells you that they want to give you a lot of free government services, ask them if they are also going to give you a free beach house in North Dakota with a great ocean view. Also ask them how much are they going to have pay for their free government services. Which I know is sort of like asking a four-hundred pound gluten who can barely walk, because they’re so fat, how skinny are you. Or asking a blind person how well can they see. But that’s just it, because there’s no such thing as free government services. Even people on Welfare and public assistance who aren’t working, or going to end up at least paying back some of the money they received when they weren’t working assuming they go back to work. Everything that government does for people comes with a price. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or free government services.

If America was energy independent and we had kept our infrastructure system up to date and our entire country was full developed and we didn’t have a Bible Belt that was so poor compared with the Midwest, Northeast and West Coast, then maybe I would consider thinking about considering democratic socialism as the economic model for America. Not exactly going out on a limb I know, but I’m not impressed with democratic socialism as a political ideology. But the simple fact is we can’t afford democratic socialism as an economic model. What we need to be doing instead is encouraging more people to work with better education’s and getting good jobs and becoming as economically independent as possible. While still leaving in place a safety net for people who truly need it.