Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Polemics

Are Nordic countries succeeding with socialism like Bernie Sanders says?

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Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries
Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries

Last week, I saw back to back studies on Nordic countries reported by the far-left UK Independent and Barron’s magazine. We’re probably going to hear more about how great socialism is from socialists, and since they seem to point to Nordic countries as proof, we should probably look at the studies and see what the truth is.

Let’s start with the report from Barron’s. You’ll have heard of Barron’s if you’re an investor.

It says:

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.

These countries used to be socialist in the 1970s and 1980s. Socialism means a huge government work force, high taxes, massive regulation of private sector businesses, and massive spending on welfare programs. You didn’t have to marry before having children, the government would give you welfare. You didn’t have to take care of yourself, the government would give you free health care. You didn’t have to save for retirement, the government would give you a pension.

The article mentions one country in particular – Sweden. And here is what socialism looked like in Sweden:

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.

When people talk about socialism, they mean more people living off the state than paying into the system.

But socialism can’t last forever. Eventually, the people in the private sector realize that they are keeping less and less of what they earn, and they stop working, or just leave. The article notes that IKEA, which started out in Sweden, moved out to avoid paying the 57% corporate tax rate.

Eventually, and this is the part that Bernie Sanders is ignorant about, Sweden slashed or eliminated taxes across the board, then cut their government spending on welfare, subsidies and gv:

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%.

The top marginal income-tax rate was set at around 50%, a reduction by 24 to 27 percentage points for the majority of the workforce. The proportion of earners taxed at a marginal rate of over 50% dropped from over half to only 17% paying income tax to the central government.

The reforms continued over the following years: in 2004, the estate tax of up to 30% was scrapped. Today, there is no estate tax in Sweden. The abolition of the wealth tax, which had already been cut, came into effect retroactively as of 1 January 2007. The corporate tax rate continued to decline, getting cut from 30% to 26.3% in 2009 and to 22% in 2013. Property tax rates were also cut substantially.

Between 1993 and 2000, social spending dropped from 22.2% to 16.9% of GDP, economic subsidies from 8.7% to 1.8% and public-sector payroll costs from 18.2% to 15.6%.

Sweden might be a little further ahead of some of the other Nordic countries. Over in Finland, they are still climbing out of it, and the massive government spending is so hard for socialists to cut.

Here’s a story from Finland about their government-run health care system – the same kind that Bernie is always bragging about, and telling us how well it works in Finland.

Far-left Reuters reports:

Finland’s coalition government resigned on Friday a month ahead of a general election, saying it could not deliver on a healthcare reform package that is widely seen as crucial to securing long-term government finances.

Healthcare systems across much of the developed world have come under increasing stress in recent years as treatment costs soar and people live longer, meaning fewer workers are supporting more pensioners.

Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected. But reform has been controversial and, in Finland, plans to cut costs and boost efficiency have stalled for years.

The very health care systems that Bernie lectures American voters about are all in decline and failing:

Other Nordic countries have also grappled with the need to cut costs. Sweden is to gradually raise its retirement age and has opened up parts of the healthcare system to the private sector in a bid to boost efficiency.

Denmark will gradually increase the retirement age to 73 – the highest in the world – while cutting taxes and unemployment benefits to encourage people to work more.

If you learned anything from this article, I’d like you to do me a favor. Please share and/or tweet this post, or share and/or tweet the posts from Barron’s and Reuters. We have an election coming up in 2020, and right now, the people are being lied to by foolish socialist politicians who talk and talk about things they have no knowledge about. We need to correct the views of the American people with facts. We can’t make the mistake of electing Democrats who are terrible at health care, and only good at making promises to spending taxpayer money. They have no idea how economics actually works in the real world, and we need to do everything we can to keep them out of power.

 

News

All six Democrat senators running for president in 2020 vote against bill to ban infanticide

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Wil Trump remember how Democrats voted during his re-election campaign?
Wil Trump remember how Democrats voted during his re-election campaign?

Republicans introduced a bill in the Senate to require that doctors must provide medical care to babies BORN ALIVE during an abortion. There were 50 Republicans present for the vote. All 50 supported the bill. But 44 out 47 Democrats present voted for infanticide, including 6 who are running for President in 2020.

Here’s how McConnell introduced the bill: (H/T Pulpit & Pen)

But first, in a few hours the Senate will vote on advancing a straight-forward piece of legislation to protect newborn babies.

This legislation is simple. It would simply require that medical professionals give the standard care and treatment to newborn babies who have survived an attempted abortion as any other newborn baby would receive in any other circumstances.

It isnt about new restrictions on abortion. It isn’t about changing options available to women. It’s just about recognizing that a newborn baby is a newborn baby, period.

This Bill would make clear that in the United States of American, in the year 2019, the medical professionals on-hand when a baby is born alive need to maintain their basic ethical and professional responsibilities to that newborn.

It would make sure our laws reflect the fact that the human rights of newborn boys and girls are innate. They don’t come and go based on whatever the circumstances. If that medical professional comes face-to-face with a baby who’s been born alive, they are looking at a human being with human rights, period.

So how did it go? Well, all the Republicans in the Senate voted for it. And none of them voted against it. The bill failed, though. It failed because 44 Democrat senators voted against it, and it needs 60 votes to pass.

What I think is interesting from a strategic point of view is that 6 of the 44 senators who voted against it are running for President.

Here are the 6, maybe 7, Democrat senators running for President:

  • Cory Booker
  • Kirsten Gillibrand
  • Kamala Harris
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Elizabeth Warren
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Sherrod Brown (maybe)

If one of those candidates ends up being the Democrat nominee, Trump will be able to use their vote on this infanticide bill in debates and in election ads.

And it’s not just these Democrat Presidential candidates – infanticide is now the mainstream view of most Democrat politicians.

Life News reports that more states are introducing legislation to remove all restrictions on abortion:

New York, Vermont, New Mexico and now Rhode Island politicians are pushing radical pro-abortion legislation that could legalize the killing of unborn babies for basically any reason up to birth in their states.

Earlier this week, Rhode Island lawmakers introduced legislation to keep abortion legal and unrestricted if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the AP reports.

It was just New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, New Mexico and Vermont at the end of January.

But in February, Illinois can be added to the list:

“The Democratic supermajority’s proposals now pending in the Illinois General Assembly are the most pro-abortion legislative measures of their type in the country,” said Peter Breen, Vice President and Senior Counsel for the Thomas More Society, and former Illinois House Minority Floor Leader. “The barbaric procedures promoted by this legislation are nothing short of infanticide. These bills go well beyond the recent New York law and would turn Illinois into a third-trimester abortion destination and an underage abortion haven.”

Will Democrat voters get on board with infanticide? I think some of their liberal special interest groups will. But think about how independents supported Trump’s opposition to infanticide in his State of the Union speech. I think that the Democrats are being forced to move their party too far to the left to win another election. All it takes is for pro-lifers to introduce legislation, have them vote on it, and then make the appropriate election ads.

No one can win a presidential by appealing only to their base. It comes down to who wins the independents. Trump is now the moderate candidate on social issues. The Democrats are pro-abortion extremists. They won’t win a majority of independents in a general election. They’ve just slid too far to the left.

News

Who is better on health care? Republicans (Ted Cruz) or Democrats (Bernie Sanders)?

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I noticed that the Democrats are trying to focus on health care in the 2018 mid-terms, so I thought I would re-post a debate on health care between Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. I think debates are always a good idea, because you have to listen to both sides. If you can’t watch the full debate, there’s a good article summarizing the main points further down.

Here is the full video:

It’s 90 minutes long. No commercials. This was basically a debate of similar substance to the William Lane Craig debates, where actual economic evidence was continuously produced in order to show who was telling the truth, and who was just trying to be popular by saying what people who are uneducated at economics want to hear. In short: there was a clear winner and loser in this debate, and it was clear all the way through, and was reinforced over and over every time evidence was produced. The person producing the evidence would turn his back on the camera, and return to his podium to get the evidence. That person won the debate by being grounded in reality.

Also, the questions were excellent, especially from the small business owners who were impacted by Obamacare. The moderators were biased towards Sanders, but not excessively.

For those who cannot watch, there is an article at the Daily Signal.

Full text:

In a prime-time debate on CNN this week, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, discussed “The Future of Obamacare” in America. Cruz, a leading critic of the law, used the moment to outline the law’s failures.

Here are four things Cruz said about Obamacare:

1) “Now, nobody thinks we’re done once Obamacare is repealed. Once Obamacare is repealed, we need commonsense reform that increases competition, that empowers patients, that gives you more choices, that puts you in charge of your health care, rather than empowering government bureaucrats to get in the way. And these have been commonsense ideas.”

2) “Indeed, I don’t know if the cameras can see this, but in 70 percent of the counties in America, on Obamacare exchanges, you have a choice of one or two health insurance plans, that’s it … It’s interesting. You look at this map, this also very much looks like the electoral map that elected Donald Trump. It’s really quite striking that the communities that have been hammered by this disaster of a law said enough already.”

During one of the more powerful moments in the debate, Cruz held up aHeritage Foundation chart showing viewers how many counties in the U.S. have access to only one or two insurers under Obamacare. Additionally, only 11 percent of counties have access to four or more insurance providers.

3) “Whenever you put government in charge of health care, what it means is they ration. They decide you get care and you don’t. I don’t think the government has any business telling you you’re not entitled to receive health care.”

The U.S. should not envy other health care systems, especially Canada and the United Kingdom, Cruz said. He referred to a governor from Canada who came to the U.S. specifically to have heart surgery.

4) “That’s why I think the answer is not more of Obamacare, more government control, more of what got us in this mess. Rather, the answer is empower you. Give you choices. Lower prices. Lower premiums. Lower deductibles. Empower you and put you back in charge of your health care.”

Obamacare is burdening Americans. The average deductible for a family on a bronze plan is $12,393, according to a HealthPocket analysis. According to aneHealth report, the average nationwide premium increase for individuals is 99 percent and 140 percent for families from 2013-2017.

I really recommend you watch this debate, because it these things were done on a weekly or monthly basis, then people would be able to think critically about what they are presented with from the mainstream media, Hollywood elites and liberal academics.