With the success of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come the rise in notoriety and popularity of so-called Democratic Socialism in the United States.
According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 43% of Americans said that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” for the United States. Regardless of whether or not Americans fully understand what “socialism” means, they appear to support it in some way nonetheless.
Because of this development, I thought it would be vital to speak with Swedish author Johan Norberg, an historian of ideas and CATO Institute fellow, who has written such books as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XOZ612/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">In Defense of Global Capitalism</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Progress-Reasons-Look-Forward-Future-ebook/dp/B06XRXM6CV/ref=pd_sim_351_1/131-1837604-6179500?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=B06XRXM6CV&amp;pd_rd_r=a12d6166-914b-4e62-8b4d-1740b7135366&amp;pd_rd_w=Kb9sj&amp;pd_rd_wg=8EbMt&amp;pf_rd_p=65e3eab0-d81f-4a76-93ff-f0b7b1d6cd3d&amp;pf_rd_r=CF7BWNGM5EXJS4Q655T1&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=CF7BWNGM5EXJS4Q655T1">Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future</a>,” among others.
His documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” hit the airwaves in 2018, and can be rented or purchased on Amazon and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/sweden-lessons-for-america/id1455593303">iTunes</a>, and can be viewed for free on <a href="https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ">YouTube</a>.
In part one of this two-part interview, which can be read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-swedish-author-johan-norberg-on-the-devastating-impact-of-socialism-and-what-it-could-cost-the-u-s">here</a>, Norberg talked about socialism as a philosophy, the rise and fall of Sweden due to its experimentation with socialist ideas, the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what that means for the United States, and how even voluntary “libertarian” experiments in socialism have failed.
In part two of this interview, Norberg discusses the essentially non-existent distinction between “socialism” and “democratic socialism,” polls suggesting that 43% of American voters are amenable to socialism, how Sweden turned things around, how capitalism hasn’t “failed” as many socialists suggest, and more.
<blockquote>DW: Sen. Bernie Sanders says that he’s not a “socialist,” but a “Democratic socialist,” and that they are not the same thing. Can you speak to that?
NORBERG: When it comes to democratic socialism, it really means socialism. The point is not which means to you use to enforce it and implement it on everybody. If you&#8217;re saying that you will go in there and socialize people&#8217;s abilities and innovations and businesses, you will destroy individualism, and you will destroy wealth. Whether you do it democratically by having a majority or by dictatorial means, that&#8217;s like the difference between murder and suicide. It&#8217;s not who does it or how many are in favor of it, it&#8217;s the result that really counts.
I think what he’s referring to is that, &#8220;Look, it&#8217;s not Venezuela or the Soviet Union. It’s Sweden and it&#8217;s Denmark.&#8221; That&#8217;s more his take on it, or that&#8217;s what he wants to be associated with nowadays, and then his problem is just that we do not recognize his ideals in any way or form whatsoever. Sweden is now lowering its corporate tax even further so that it will be lower than in the United States. I guess that&#8217;s not the direction he would take the United States.
DW: There&#8217;s a 2019 survey from Gallup that says 43% of Americans believe that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” in the United States. What does that tell you about the American voter?
NORBERG: It tells me that you&#8217;ve never experienced socialism and you don&#8217;t really know what it means. I think people believe that it means “free stuff.” And obviously, everybody wants free stuff – but I don&#8217;t think they really understand what it&#8217;s like.
If you compare this to a country where we&#8217;ve actually seen socialists in power having tried to implement similar policies, like Sweden, we would not have those polling numbers. I know there&#8217;s a poll recently where I think 10% of Swedes said that they were socialists. So, it seems like there are fewer socialists in Sweden than in the United States. If you ask our most successful social democratic prime minister of the modern era, Göran Persson, he was asked, &#8220;Are you in favor of socialism? Are you a socialist? Would you call yourself that?&#8221; He said, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t because you get confused with too many crazy people.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s what you get when you&#8217;ve experienced socialism. You have a more nuanced way of looking at it.
DW: Sweden pulled the reins and turn things around. With the rising tide in the United States that seems to favor socialism, or at least what they believe to be socialism, has the ship sailed on the advancement of this ideology, or is there a way to turn it around?
NORBERG: Well, as a Swede, I would have to remind you that, unfortunately, the only thing that turned it around was that the economy collapsed in Sweden. We experienced the results of socialism and that&#8217;s why it changed. But I don&#8217;t think it would necessarily have to go that far because there&#8217;s also so much information and knowledge about this. So many places where they tried, and we&#8217;ve tried, to implement policies similar to that, and we know the results. They are there if you care to just open a book or Google it. I think that&#8217;s an important task right now for those who oppose this development, to get that knowledge out there. It&#8217;s an important moment in U.S. history in that way.
DW: Have you seen a shift in attitude globally and in the United States toward socialism since 2015/2016?
NORBERG: What I&#8217;ve seen is that something happened after the financial crisis, because after 2008 or so, people began to lose their faith in the financial system, in the banks, and rightly so because they&#8217;d been awful in so many ways. I would argue, and I&#8217;ve even written a book on this subject, that this was because the government really pushed everybody in that direction by an excess of liquidity, and at the same time, a promise of bailouts if they made stupid mistakes. Then of course you take stupid risks because heads you win, tails the taxpayer loses.
Unfortunately, what often happens after recessions, and especially the financial crisis, is that people begin to lose their faith in it and begin to think that the government should step in to a larger degree. I think this was the pivotal thing that made people begin to think that they could experiment with anticapitalist ideas.
DW: Proponents of socialism or socialistic ideology will claim that the United States is an example of “failed capitalism.” They will point to the wealth gap or to the way corporations operate in certain ways, and claim that we need to go in a new direction. What would you say to that?
NORBERG: The system isn&#8217;t broken. American capitalism is not broken. If you look at the kinds of benefits it’s creating for people, for consumers, for workers, and for retirees who have their money invested in businesses, it keeps delivering.
There&#8217;s this narrative saying that the American worker is getting a raw deal over the last decade, and you look at the headline numbers like, &#8220;Hourly wages have only increased by 5% since 1970,” and it&#8217;s a completely distorted number. It doesn&#8217;t include all the non-monitored benefits that we&#8217;re getting to a larger extent now, for tax purposes and because workers demanded to take a particular job, like health insurance, pension contributions, paid leave, vacation, etc.
If you include that, it&#8217;s not a 5% increase in hourly wages since 1970, it&#8217;s 66%.
That&#8217;s a bit of a difference and it&#8217;s pretty good – and that doesn&#8217;t even capture the most important thing, namely, the reduction in price of all the goods and services that we buy on the market, which increases our purchasing power to a larger degree. So, that&#8217;s the first thing that has to be mentioned. It keeps on delivering. Don’t take this for granted because that doesn&#8217;t happen in every place around the world.
The other thing I would say is that there are things that are broken. There are sections of the economy that definitely don’t work. In the U.S., we&#8217;ve failed in getting people who&#8217;ve lost their jobs into new jobs; we have a housing market that&#8217;s completely broken, etc. But when you examine those things, in every case, the problem is not that people acting in their own best interest on the market have failed, it is that the government has stepped in and stopped them from doing that.
When it comes to the housing market, it&#8217;s a perfect correlation between the places blocking new construction and the zoning laws and all those things that make it impossible to move to the places where the jobs are being created.
Occupational licensing is another one of the major problems, especially coming from Sweden, where we don&#8217;t do stuff like that. I&#8217;m appalled to see how it can take months, even years to get an education for a simple job that&#8217;s traditionally considered low-skill in many ways – and this is just to protect those who already have the jobs. Even worse, when they are not coordinated across state borders, it means that if you lose your job as a plumber or a barber in one state, you can&#8217;t move over the state border and take a similar job without going through the efforts, the costs, and the time to get a new license like that.
We need to look seriously at what the government does to hurt us before we start saying that the government should do even more.
DW: Is there anything that we haven&#8217;t mentioned on this subject that you want our readers or the general voting public to know?
NORBERG: I&#8217;ve noticed that one of the more popular suggestions by the left-wing of the Democratic Party is some sort of wealth tax, and it’s important to mention that we&#8217;ve abolished that in Nordic countries – in Denmark as early as 1997, and in Sweden in 2007. It wasn&#8217;t a tax on rich people because the rich people always find a place to stuff their assets or move somewhere else. It was a tax on investing in Sweden. It was a tax on creating new businesses and jobs. We benefited tremendously by abolishing the wealth tax because suddenly people felt free to create fortunes and moved to Sweden again. So it’s also worthwhile for people to look at the experience of European countries who experimented with the ideas that are now on offer in the United States.</blockquote>
I’d like to thank Johan Norberg for taking the time to speak with me about such an increasingly important topic. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/johanknorberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>, or visit his <a href="http://www.johannorberg.net/">official website</a>.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-swedish-author-johan-norberg-on-the-devastating-impact-of-socialism-and-what-it-could-cost-the-u-s">INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.</a>

Johan Norberg

INTERVIEW (Part II): Swedish Author Johan Norberg Talks The Destruction Of Socialism, How Sweden Turned It Around, And More

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Socialism

Economics

Socialism

Sweden

With the success of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come the rise in notoriety and popularity of so-called Democratic socialism in the United States.
According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 43% of Americans said that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” for the United States. Regardless of whether or not Americans fully understand what “socialism” means, they appear to support it in some way nonetheless.
Because of this development, I thought it would be vital to speak with Swedish author Johan Norberg, an historian of ideas and CATO Institute fellow, who has written such books as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XOZ612/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1">In Defense of Global Capitalism</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XRXM6CV/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0">Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future</a>,” among others.
His documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” hit the airwaves in 2018, and can be rented or purchased on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sweden-Lessons-America-Johan-Norberg/dp/B07HP1YGX8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sweden+lessons+for+america&amp;psr=EVGR%7CPBPE%7CPSEL&amp;qid=1581840519&amp;s=prime-exclusive&amp;sr=8-1">Amazon</a> and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/sweden-lessons-for-america/id1455593303">iTunes</a>, and is available for free on <a href="https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ">YouTube</a>.
In part one of this two-part interview, Norberg discusses socialism as a philosophy, the rise and fall of Sweden due to its experimentation with socialist ideas, the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what that means for the United States, and how even voluntary “libertarian” experiments in socialism have failed.
<blockquote>DW: There are a lot of people who cite the so-called “Nordic model” when advocating for socialism or “democratic socialism.” Is Sweden a socialist nation? And if it&#8217;s not, why do people seem to think it is?
NORBERG: Well, for some reason when I describe Sweden and Swedish policies to American socialists, they hate it; they seem to think that it&#8217;s awful. It&#8217;s a model not just based on an economy of private property and private enterprise, but also specifically, when you look at the business climate, we have low corporate taxes, we have free trade, we have, in many areas I would say, less regulation of business than the United States. We don&#8217;t have the kind of occupational licensing requirements that you do. In many of those areas, we are more fiercely capitalist than the United States. And those don’t seem to be the policies that the [Sen. Bernie] Sanders supporters are in favor of.
And if you also think about the kind of reforms that we&#8217;ve put in place since the 1990s – we&#8217;ve reformed social security, partially privatized it; we’ve opened up the public sector to competition and to freedom of choice; we have a national school voucher system – many different things to encourage dynamism and market forces. And that seems to be the total opposite of what any socialist that I&#8217;ve met is in favor of.
DW: Can you give me the abridged version of what happened in Sweden with the accumulation of wealth, the implementation of socialism, and then the realization that such ideas were not working?
NORBERG: Sure. We have to go back to that because this is the one story that people have forgotten. Their perception of Sweden is in many ways stuck in the 1970s and 1980s. That’s what they remember. This was the brief interlude in Swedish history when we really did experiment with socialist ideals. The background was that we had already made ourselves one of the richest countries on the planet, so we had a lot of money to redistribute. But, that was based on a different model. All that wealth was produced in an incredibly open economic model with a very limited government. Up until the early 1960s, Sweden had lower taxes than not just other European countries, but also lower taxes than the United States. That was the model that gave us all the wealth.
At that point, Swedish socialists and politicians said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just redistribute this. We&#8217;ve got all of this wealth, so we don&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore.&#8221; And that&#8217;s the moment in time when they doubled the size of government, and jacked up all the taxes, and regulated the labor markets. The problem was that while you can go for some time with the accumulated wealth of yesteryear, eventually, you run out of it. At the beginning of the 1970s, we were 10% richer than other industrialized economies. 25 years later, we were 10% poorer than they were.
So almost at the exact moment when we began to grow the size of government, we began to lag behind all the other economies, and it was really the “Atlas Shrugged” moment in Swedish history because businesses left, entrepreneurs, innovators, our IKEAs and Tetra Paks, our great inventors and sportsman left Sweden because it wasn&#8217;t a hospitable climate for innovation and for starting businesses anymore. It all ended in a terrible crisis in the early 1990s, and that was the moment in time when everybody from the Left to the Right said, &#8220;This is all over. We can&#8217;t do this. We have to reform our systems and get back to the future, to get back to growth.&#8221;
DW: Proponents of socialism will tell you that the ideology works in concept, but simply hasn&#8217;t been implemented correctly. They&#8217;ll set aside Venezuela, which they once championed as a socialist success story, as having been corrupted. What&#8217;s the reality there? Why hasn&#8217;t socialism ever succeeded?
NORBERG: Well, it&#8217;s interesting because they always adore the policies. It&#8217;s just that they don&#8217;t like the outcomes and the results, the consequences. Socialists in Sweden and in the United States adored Venezuelan policies until it destroyed the economy, and had GDP per capita collapse by more than 60%, and people began to starve. At that point they said, &#8220;It&#8217;s not real socialism.&#8221;
So, apparently their definition is not just some kind of socialist policy, but it also has to turn out well – and in that case, they&#8217;re right because it has never been implemented anywhere with good results.
What they did was that they started to regulate the economy in a real way, in a socialist way, that Sweden never did. They began to take over private businesses. They began with drastic price controls because they thought that this was the way to give people cheap bread. But obviously, the result was, as it is everywhere where such things are being implemented, that farmers stopped producing food, and instead, they sell it on the black markets, and they smuggle it out of the country because they can&#8217;t make a living with those kinds of price controls.
They took all the capital, some of which they got because of the price increases in oil (some $1,000 billion over ten years), which could be used to invest in the country, it was all taken by the government to give to their supporters, some for programs and policies, but most of all just wasted in corruption and other stuff, which meant that they didn&#8217;t even invest in the future of the oil industry. So, the output grows smaller and smaller all the time. The moment when prices began to come down to normal levels, they couldn&#8217;t sustain anything anymore, and it all collapsed tremendously – and we all knew this. We could all see this because those policies on socializing businesses and implementing price controls, wasting capital rather than investing it, always ends up in tears – but socialists loved it until they noticed that people began to starve.
DW: What&#8217;s your opinion of socialism as a philosophical concept, and as a form of government?
NORBERG: Lots of people say that the ideas of socialism are wonderful, it’s just that the means were too brutal and awful, and the means corrupted the ends in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Therefore, it collapsed. I would say it is the other way around. It&#8217;s the complete opposite. The problem is that socialism goes against human nature. It is the total opposite of any kind of system of human morality, and that’s why they always end up with walls and barbed wire and machine guns because that&#8217;s the only way to force people to do it. We know this because we&#8217;ve seen so many different experiments with socialism – even libertarian voluntary forms of socialism, like the kibbutz in Israel for example, and they were done by idealists.
No one was forced to work collectively. From each according to his ability, to each according to their needs – but it didn&#8217;t even work there. What happened was that people didn&#8217;t want that regimentation, that kind of collective ownership. People began to demand to do things in different ways and own stuff. They began to realize that when everything was in common, they began to waste stuff. People kept the light up and the heat during night when they didn&#8217;t need it because they didn&#8217;t have to pay market prices. People took their pets to the dining room because food was free. So people began to demand this kind of freedom, and when it came to work, what happened was that as one of the kibbutzim pioneers said, &#8220;It became a paradise for parasites” because if you don&#8217;t get your wage according to what you&#8217;ve done, the effort you put into it, why bother? Why do you ever work at all, in that case?
People of talent then began to leave the kibbutz.
The thing is, had this been Eastern Germany or Venezuela or the Soviet Union, they saw the same thing, and forced people to work, not for gain of a profit, but for the government, they had to force them. They brought out the machine guns. And if people wanted to leave for another place, they built the walls and they killed people who did it. So, it&#8217;s really that the brutal ends were a result of the whole system going so much against the human nature of people who want some freedom, who want some individual responsibility, and who want to gain according to what they do rather than what the governments tell them.
That&#8217;s a very long way of answering the question, but I think that&#8217;s important for the philosophical part of it. It&#8217;s not that the means corrupted the ends. It&#8217;s that the ends would never work, and that&#8217;s why they needed brutal means.
DW: One of the current front-runners in the Democratic primary race is a self-proclaimed socialist. What does that tell you about the political climate in the United States?
NORBERG: Well, it tells you that you should be worried about the state of political discourse in the United States, and I recognize this because this was where Sweden was in the 1970s. We had this tremendous growth; we had big, successful companies bringing in the money and the profits to the economy; and we thought two things: We thought that we were on top of the world and we could do anything. We didn&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore. But also, people began to say, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s unfair. Why should a little group and the few businesses make all this money? Let&#8217;s just redistribute all of this.&#8221;
And especially, I think, if you are young, if you&#8217;re a student, if you haven&#8217;t been actively involved in working to sustain yourself to a large extent or never been involved in business, you&#8217;re used to the money just being there for you, and you also notice all these definite problems and inequalities in the world, and you just think, &#8220;Well, all the money&#8217;s there. Let&#8217;s just do something about it.&#8221; And you forget that, no, the money isn&#8217;t “just there.” We have to create it every minute, all the time, constantly, and the worse we make the situation for those who create that wealth, the less we will get in the long run. It happens again and again in human history, and often paradoxically, it happens when times are good and people think that they can do anything.</blockquote>
In part two of this interview, which will be released on Saturday, Norberg discusses the essentially non-existent distinction between “socialism” and “democratic socialism,” polls suggesting that 43% of American voters are amenable to socialism, how Sweden turned things around, how capitalism hasn’t “failed” as many socialists suggest, and more.
I’d like to thank Johan Norberg for taking the time to speak with me about such an increasingly important topic. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/johanknorberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>, or visit his <a href="http://www.johannorberg.net/">official website</a>.

INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.

2020 Election

Communism

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is not ready to let go of her self-created &#8220;bootstrap&#8221; controversy just yet. After inspiring a flood of criticism and mockery online when she engaged in her own &#8220;you didn&#8217;t build that&#8221; moment during a congressional hearing last Thursday — attempting to debunk the rags-to-riches American ideal by approaching the famous metaphor literally — the far-left freshman congresswoman revived the issue in a post Sunday. Republicans hitting her with &#8220;&#8216;bootstrap&#8217; jokes&#8221; just weren&#8217;t paying enough &#8220;attention&#8221; to the debate, she said.
&#8220;For GOPers who spent this week mocking the poor [with] &#8216;bootstrap&#8217; jokes, why don’t you listen to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony [and] give one damn reason why we shouldn’t have an accurate poverty line in this country,&#8221; an incensed Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. &#8220;Unless of course you were talking [without] paying [attention] to the actual hearing.&#8221;
The Democrat, who is one of the most vocal supporters of fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; (I-VT) presidential campaign, linked to a video of a testimony from a single mom who told Congress, &#8220;I&#8217;ve pulled myself up by the bootstraps so many damn times that I ripped them off.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
For GOPers who spent this week mocking the poor w/“bootstrap” jokes, why don’t you listen to Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony &amp; give one damn reason why we shouldn’t have an accurate poverty line in this country.
Unless of course you were talking w/o paying attn to the actual hearing. <a href="https://t.co/4YCypOfxpB">https://t.co/4YCypOfxpB</a>
&mdash; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1226569210412879872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The &#8220;bootstrap&#8221; buzz started last Thursday when Ocasio-Cortez brought up the century-old saying to defend her left-wing economic agenda.
&#8220;I also want to thank you about bringing up the poverty draft and this idea of a bootstrap,&#8221; she said. &#8220;You know, this idea and this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke because it’s a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap — by your shoelaces? It’s physically impossible. The whole thing is a joke.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> on America’s rags-to-riches ideal: “It’s a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap, by your shoelaces? It’s physically impossible. The whole thing is a joke.” <a href="https://t.co/9WNf8UE06T">pic.twitter.com/9WNf8UE06T</a>
&mdash; Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1225506336781357057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As noted by the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/aoc-invokes-mlk-to-defend-comments-calling-bootstrap-meritocracy-a-joke">Washington Examiner</a>, it wasn&#8217;t the first time Ocasio-Cortez had disparaged the notion of being self-made in America. &#8220;Ah yes, of course, it’s classic Republican &#8216;bootstrap&#8217; meritocracy: where the smartest, hardest-working, most fitting person for the job just so happens to be your son-in-law,&#8221; she said back in 2018.
As<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-gave-her-own-version-of-obamas-you-didnt-build-that-the-backlash-triggered-these-damage-control-tweets"> The Daily Wire</a> noted, the democratic socialist&#8217;s comment is &#8220;an echo&#8221; of then-President Obama’s famous &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-everything-you-need-know-about-elizabeth-aaron-bandler">you didn’t build that</a>&#8221; remark during the 2012 election. &#8220;If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Somebody else made that happen.&#8221;
Met with blowback, Ocasio-Cortez posted a series of defenses of her literal complaint about the metaphorical statement. First, she cited Martin Luther King Jr., who referenced the saying in a comment about racial inequality. &#8220;I see that the right is worked up that we pointed out the myth of bootstrapping when 60% of the wealth in this country is *inherited.* But hey, if you think I’m hopelessly dumb, try listening to MLK talk about “bootstrapping” &amp; the racial wealth gap, too,&#8221; she tweeted along with a video of King (posts below).
She then attempted to elaborate on her premise that no one is self-made in America, specifically citing those who serve in the military and businesses that get tax breaks: &#8220;What does &#8216;bootstrapping&#8217; mean to the GOP? That you didn’t go to public school? That you didn’t enlist in the military, which is funded by the gov? That you never got a tax break for starting a business or buying a home? That your parents never used food assistance to feed you?&#8221;
&#8220;Question for the GOP: Does starting a business with a 60 million dollar loan from your dad count as &#8216;bootstrapping?'&#8221; she asked in another post. &#8220;Does getting a $2 trillion dollar corporate handout from the GOP count as &#8216;bootstrapping?&#8217; Asking for a corrupt president &amp; his friends.&#8221;
Ocasio-Cortez then cited her own rags-to-riches story as supposed evidence that Americans don&#8217;t elevate their economic status by willpower, hard work and talent because she received some help from others along the way. &#8220;I worked my butt off to get elected against all odds, without any special connections or money,&#8221; she tweeted in a follow-up post. &#8220;I worked double shifts and wore through my shoes, outspent 10:1 to get elected. Even [with] all that hard work, it would be narcissistic to pretend I &#8216;bootstrapped&#8217; it alone [and without] others.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I see that the right is worked up that we pointed out the myth of bootstrapping when 60% of the wealth in this country is *inherited.*
But hey, if you think I’m hopelessly dumb, try listening to MLK talk about “bootstrapping” &amp; the racial wealth gap, too: <a href="https://t.co/RHdSfzaJzH">pic.twitter.com/RHdSfzaJzH</a>
&mdash; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1225544102390960128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
What does “bootstrapping” mean to the GOP? That you didn’t go to public school? That you didn’t enlist in the military, which is funded by the gov? That you never got a tax break for starting a business or buying a home? That your parents never used food assistance to feed you?
&mdash; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1225545010508070917?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I worked my butt off to get elected against all odds, without any special connections or money. I worked double shifts and wore through my shoes, outspent 10:1 to get elected.
Even w/ all that hard work, it would be narcissistic to pretend I “bootstrapped” it alone &amp; w/o others.
&mdash; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1225547053863964676?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s role as one of the more prominent Sanders&#8217; supporters has kept her in the news even more than usual as of late. Over the weekend, she also stirred up some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/economics-major-ocasio-cortez-invents-new-economist-by-mashing-up-two-names-internet-implodes">blowback</a> online when she, an economics major, conflated two economists with very different theories on the field.
“It’s funny that you ask this because I was just reading today about how Milton Keynes, a famous economist back in the day, predicted that by 2030, US GDP would grow six to eight times what it is, which would allow for everyday people to work 15 hours a week,” she said. In a follow-up social media post, Ocasio-Cortez declared, &#8220;UGGGH TYPO. It’s John Maynard Keynes. Mixed his name with Milton Friedman — a (very) different economist.&#8221;
Like the &#8220;bootstrap&#8221; comment, her &#8220;Milton Keynes&#8221; conflation was met with criticism, including from Johns Hopkins Applied Economics Prof. Steve Hanke, who tweeted in response, &#8220;[Ocasio-Cortez] reveals the meaningless of an economics degree today. Her embrace of [socialism] has her so confused that she mixes up [Friedman] &amp; [Keynes]. As [Friedrich Hayek] said: ‘If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> reveals the meaningless of an economics degree today. Her embrace of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/socialism?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#socialism</a> has her so confused that she mixes up <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Friedman?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Friedman</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Keynes?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Keynes</a>. As <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hayek?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Hayek</a> said: &quot;If socialists understood economics they wouldn&#39;t be socialists.&quot;<a href="https://t.co/udYOtubu5z">https://t.co/udYOtubu5z</a>
&mdash; Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) <a href="https://twitter.com/steve_hanke/status/1226521887410356226?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-makes-series-of-election-predictions-for-democrats-ocasio-cortez-schumer-nadler">Trump Makes Series Of Election Predictions For Democrats: Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, Nadler</a>

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ocasio-Cortez Has New ‘D*mn’ Message For Those Mocking Her For ‘Bootstrap’ Comment

I have been teaching economics since 1967 — 40 years of it at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. During that interval, economic reality has not changed. Just as Galileo&#8217;s law about the independent influence of gravity on falling objects has not changed, neither have the fundamental principles of economics. Economics is fun and simple. It&#8217;s made complicated by some economics professors — fortunately, not by my colleagues at George Mason University. Let&#8217;s apply some simple tools of economics to reveal outright myths, lies and tricks.
Who is punished by tariffs on imported goods? Let&#8217;s go through the steps. The Canadian government imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products and protects Canada&#8217;s dairy producers from American competition. What should be the U.S. government&#8217;s response to Canada&#8217;s screwing its citizens? If you were in the Trump administration, you might retaliate by imposing stiff tariffs on softwood products built from pine, spruce and fir trees used by U.S. homebuilders. In other words, the U.S. should retaliate against Canada&#8217;s harming its citizens by forcing them to pay higher dairy product prices, by forcing Americans through tariffs to pay higher prices for wood and thereby raising the cost of building homes.
Many politicians, pundits and some economists would have us believe that corporations pay taxes, but do they? Economists distinguish between entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those upon whom tax is initially levied. Just because a tax is levied on a corporation doesn&#8217;t mean that the corporation bears its burden. Faced with a tax, a corporation can shift the tax burden by raising its product prices, lowering dividends or laying off workers. The lesson here is that only people pay taxes, not legal fictions like corporations. Corporations are simply tax collectors for the government. Similarly, no one would fall for a politician telling a homeowner, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to tax you; I&#8217;m going to tax your property.&#8221; I guarantee that it will be a person, not the property, writing out the check to the taxing authority. Again, only people pay taxes.
Here&#8217;s a question: Are natural or manmade disasters good for the economy? Dr. Larry Summers, top economic adviser to President Obama, said about the Kobe, Japan, earthquake: &#8220;(The disaster) may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.&#8221; After devastating Floridian hurricanes, it&#8217;s not uncommon to read newspaper headlines such as &#8220;Storms create lucrative times,&#8221; or &#8220;Economic growth from hurricanes could outweigh costs,&#8221; or &#8220;It&#8217;s a perverse thing &#8230; there&#8217;s real pain, but from an economic point of view, it is a plus.&#8221; Then there&#8217;s Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who wrote in his New York Times column &#8220;After the Horror,&#8221; after the 9/11 attack, &#8220;Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could do some economic good.&#8221; He went on to explain that rebuilding the destruction would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation.
One would never hear my colleagues in George Mason University&#8217;s economics department spouting such insanities. Just ask yourself whether the Japanese economy would have faced even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9/11 terrorists have made a greater contribution to our economy had they also destroyed lives and buildings in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Atlanta? The belief that a society benefits from destruction is sheer lunacy.
French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained it in his pamphlet &#8220;What is Seen and What is Not Seen.&#8221; He said, &#8220;There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.&#8221; That&#8217;s why my George Mason University colleagues are good economists.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Menu

Economics

Articles tagged with Economics

INTERVIEW (Part II): Swedish Author Johan Norberg Talks The Destruction Of Socialism, How Sweden Turned It Around, And More

INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.

Ocasio-Cortez Has New ‘D*mn’ Message For Those Mocking Her For ‘Bootstrap’ Comment

WILLIAMS: Economics Reality