Would it help if you heard it from WaPo?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d9bbdc-945c-11e9-b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_story.html
If they have established anything, it’s not socialism, or even the dominance of a benevolent state, but responsible governance. They have achieved a clear division of labor, between government (which arguably has a comparative advantage in health insurance and education) and the private sector (which is better at producing and distributing most other goods and services).
What the Nordic countries don’t do is pretend that society can have a strong and efficient social safety net without a big, mandatory financial contribution from the middle class. Nor do they deal punitively with the private sector, upon whose productivity the entire system ultimately depends.
American socialists’ enthusiasm for the northern European systems may be sincere. We shall see whether it can withstand full and accurate information about how those systems actually work.
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/are-norway-and-sweden-socialist-countries
According to the latest edition of Economic Freedom in the World, Norway is the #25 country in the world and Sweden #43, out of 162; with the United States #6, and Singapore and Hong Kong first and second.
Germany describes its amalgam of free-markets and social insurance as the “social market.” Chile, with its privatization of Social Security, could be said to have moved completely to Mach 1 capitalism. The United States, somewhat uniquely among capitalist countries, practices extensive credit-socialism, and has a national government as well as many home-owners and students deeply in debt. There are positive and negative things to say about many real-world capitalist countries; but nobody - not even Ocasio-Cortez - wants to be associated with real-world socialist countries.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-myth-of-nordic-socialism-51554296401
Although there are areas—especially in taxes and labor market regulation—where socialist elements still exist in the Nordics, the region is by no means socialist today. In fact, according to the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark rank among the 30 most capitalist countries in the world.
In 1960, for every 100 “market-financed” Swedes (i.e. those who derived their income predominantly from private enterprise), there were 38 who were “tax-financed” (i.e. dependent on the public sector for their income, whether as civil servants or as recipients of payments from the state). Thirty years later, that number had risen to 151—in other words, there were significantly more people living off of the state than paying into the system. This reflects Sweden’s move away from a capitalist free-market economy to a socialist model.
This damaged the Swedish economy and resulted in prominent entrepreneurs leaving the country in frustration. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, for example, moved to Denmark in 1974 and later to Switzerland. The economic situation in Sweden deteriorated as a direct result of extreme labor market regulation and the constant expansion of the role of the state, which led to massive dissatisfaction among the population.
Pushback against these socialist ideas gathered momentum, and by the 1990s there was a comprehensive counter-movement that—without fundamentally questioning the Swedish model of high taxes and comprehensive welfare benefits—nevertheless eliminated many of its excesses. A major tax reform in 1990/91 slashed corporate taxes from 57% to 30%. Income from shares was exempted from taxation, while capital gains from shares were taxed at only 12.5%.
https://fee.org/articles/is-norway-a-role-model-for-democratic-socialism/
But it’s nonsensical to argue that oil-rich Norway somehow provides evidence for the overall notion of democratic socialism. It’s sort of like looking at data for Kuwait and asserting that the best economic system is hereditary sheikdom.
