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Lefty vs. The Left
January 29, 2013 | 61 comments
Another Perspective
Stockholm Syndrome
Obama champions the Scandinavian view of wealth.
In the spring of 2006 I had an opportunity to travel to Sweden, the land of my mother’s birth and home to her side of the family. It had been at least ten years since I had seen any of Mom’s relatives, and I felt a great deal of excitement and anxiousness leading up to the reunion. After landing in Gothenburg, I made my way over to my aunt’s modest apartment located in a nearby suburb. A handful of relations were there to greet me; their faces older, but instantly recognizable from my childhood.
I was especially happy to see my cousin, who was about 19 at the time and living at home. I would turn 21 at the end of the week and was glad to have a peer and not just doting older relatives to show me around. The long time spent apart and our closeness in age made for easy conversation. It also helped that my cousin, like many younger Swedes, is extremely proficient in English. Our exchanges covered a wide range of issues (girls, American cinema, and the local drinking age were popular subjects). On one occasion, however, my cousin asked me how I thought our countries most differed.
Sweden is, of course, a fairly socialist state. According to CNBC.com, it boasts the second highest income tax in the world. I explained (with the pompousness of an over-read, snot-nosed college kid, I’m sure) that the U.S generally favors lower taxes than most of Europe. The thought process being that entrepreneurs and investors, if allowed to keep a greater share of their profits, will be more inclined to take considerable financial risks like starting a business. In Sweden I argued, there are fewer incentives to keep making money beyond a certain point because such a large portion is taken by the government. While the American system may not provide as many services as Sweden, it does offer economic freedom and greater opportunities to become wealthy.
I noticed a curious expression cross my cousin’s face.
“You see, Michael,” he began, looking for the right words in English, “In this country being rich is not such a good thing.”
I cocked my head as if though I had water stuck in my ear.
“It’s just that if you make a lot of money,” he continued, “people think you may have done something wrong. They suspect something. Do you understand?”
I didn’t really. And at the time I probably dismissed the notion as just another Scandinavian quirk, like eating meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy (a delicacy since made world famous by IKEA). I didn’t often hear that kind of talk in America — at least not from somebody who wasn’t sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt and Birkenstocks.
Though I brushed it off at the time, my cousin’s insight into Swedish thinking seems relevant in today’s political climate. These days, it’s almost taken for granted, on the left at least, that wealthier Americans must be hiding something. Either they don’t pay enough (or any) taxes or they simply don’t deserve credit for their financial success. Nothing has done more to perpetuate this narrative in the United States than President Obama and his liberal supporters.
For the better part of the past year, Team Obama has made the “the other guy’s too rich” line their main selling point. TV spots routinely feature “average” voters talking about how Romney can’t relate to their problems because he’s too wealthy and detached. Obama surrogates are even more direct. Stephanie Cutter called Romney a tax cheat; Harry Reid exclaimed — falsely as it turns out — that Romney didn’t even pay taxes for ten years. Given the president’s laundry list of economic failings ($5 trillion in new debt, 47 million on food stamps, persistent unemployment, etc.) deflection makes good political sense.
But does President Obama personally distrust wealthy people? I don’t think so. He and his wife are plenty well-off themselves and it’s no secret that Obama enjoys carousing with the ultra-rich. Heck, the guy recently attended a $40K-a-plate fundraiser at Jay-Z’s posh 40/40 club in Manhattan (the president did draw the line at the 18-foot “champagne tower,” which was covered up for the occasion).
So while the president may not share Sweden’s wariness of the rich, Obama does, in his own words, “believe in redistribution.” Sometimes called “leveling the playing field” or “spreading the wealth around” the process is the same: government takes money from one group and gives it to another. While popular among liberal Democrats, wealth redistribution, in its more aggressive forms, has always received more hostility on this side of the Atlantic than the other. This may be due to the fact that in order to redistribute money, one must first take it from the people who earned it — an act that offends our American belief in personal property and economic freedom.
In truth, Obama’s public contempt for the rich is far more than just a campaign tactic. The president’s entire economic agenda relies on Americans adopting a more European perspective on wealth. Liberals believe — correctly — that Uncle Sam will have a much easier time redistributing earnings when successful people are looked at with suspicion and even contempt. The strategy is twofold: First, paint the Romney types as cheaters (i.e. tax evaders and rule breakers). Second, when you inevitably get some blowback from that, argue that even if the rich don’t outright cheat, they really didn’t earn their wealth anyway. Take for example Obama’s now infamous comments on successful businesspeople: “You didn’t get there on your own” and “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.”
All of us contributed to Joe Blow’s successful business, or so the thinking goes. We are his investors; his partners. And yet, Joe is keeping a big chunk of the profits for himself. Ergo, Joe is ripping us off. Redistribution suddenly doesn’t sound so bad when the money was ill-gained and frankly, belonged to the rest of us to begin with.
While Obama hinges his dwindling prospects on the Swedish economic model, the Swedes themselves seem to be moving away from it. Since my last family visit, the country has undergone some fascinating political changes. In late 2006 Sweden elected a new center-right government, replacing the Social Democratic Party after a dozen years in power. Under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden lowered its corporate tax rate in 2009 and plans on cutting it by another 16% next year. The government is also proposing individual tax breaks for investors in order to free up financing for new and expanding businesses.
If attitudes about wealth are changing in Scandinavia, the president remains committed to his tired class warfare routine here at home. While even socialist nations like Sweden are coming to embrace a tax system that encourages economic growth, our president spends his time berating the same investors who help make that growth possible. Make no mistake, if Obama does manage to turn his languishing campaign around we’ll be hearing the same anti-wealth histrionics for another four years — and we’ll be feeling them too, with higher taxes on “the rich” and new regulations that stall the economy. Yes, a lot has changed since I last visited my family overseas but I’m hoping to return soon. Maybe this time around my cousin will be the one explaining economic freedom to me.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (30) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 10.25.12 @ 7:20AM
Fascinating. We also have Swedish family back in the family tree, and perhaps that is where my youngest sister gets her wide streak of belief that every dime in the world rightfully belongs to her.
Von Mises Jr| 10.25.12 @ 9:28AM
Christine Lagarde earns $467,940 in compensation after taxes plus $83,760 in expenses. Barry Obama earns about the same and is alleged to have a $35M estate waiting for him in retirement in Hawaii.
Socialism is theft. Since theoreticians and faculty lounge lizards could not hold a job in the private sector with all their screw ups, socialism is their only path to personal wealth.
So these people are not pure and benevolent gods and goddesses. They are corrupt and greedy scum. They have been stealing from the producers since the end of serfdom. It resulted in the Failed French Revolution, collapsed USSR, Nazi defeat, Castro's Cuba and people eating freaking bugs and shoots of grass in North Korea.
Let's call a spade a spade. I am tired of the sanctimonious bullshit.
Tom Kyba| 10.25.12 @ 1:42PM
Absolutely on the money VM.
(no pun intended)
Stan Redmond| 10.25.12 @ 4:43PM
Good point. Liberals tend to go in to teaching, politics, and social services where they have huge control over the lives of other people (AKA power hungry) because they can't get a job anywhere else. Face it, government offices are affirmative action facilities to give jobs to people who are losers. Conservatives tend to value hard work and mind their own business.
Bill8472| 10.25.12 @ 9:39AM
What's the problem with Swedish culture that they are suspicious of people who do well? What's with that?
Somehow, if you prosper, you must have done something questionable in order to get ahead? What kind of mind set gives you that value?
You have to be low on the social scale in order to be good and virtuous?
No wonder Sweden has a high suicide rate.
Alej| 10.25.12 @ 10:00AM
Sounds like the population of Sweden resembles more a "hive" than a "society."
Terrible Ted| 10.25.12 @ 1:02PM
If only the Sedish society souded as good as "The Hives."
Seek| 10.25.12 @ 7:26PM
Great band! Someone out there has taste.
PolishKnight| 10.25.12 @ 9:52AM
Having been to Sweden, I'll say it's an interesting place and has a lot of good things going for it including that it's full of Swedish people. But the left there has knee-jerked adopted American leftist dogma about diversity and my friend told me that non-white criminals referred to Swedes as "kittens" (exceptionally easy to rob) and that since the Swedes didn't possess firearms and were a matriarchal culture, robbing and assaulting people was exceptionally easy.
Next door, the police report that all rapes in Norway are committed by non-whites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWWrpv-pbuc
When I hear people tell me that American spends twice as much per capita on healthcare compared to national healthcare schemes in Canada or Britain, I observe that about half of our spending is already nationalized (medicaid/medicare) which means that our medicare system spends about as much as these countries but ONLY covers the elderly. In other words, even if we converted over to a national healthcare system, we're still not going to reduce healthcare costs. If anything, the private healthcare system that covers everyone else is doing a pretty amazing job handling the excess costs of medicare and other expenses.
JP| 10.25.12 @ 10:34AM
It is far easier to manage a nation of 9 million who live in 3 metropolitan areas than a diverse nation of 310 million spread across some 60 metroplexes, rural farms, and ranches.
You made excellent points concerning Medicare and Medicaid.
PolishKnight| 10.25.12 @ 11:23AM
The dishonesty (as usual) of the left is to compare the "per capita" costs of socialist healthcare systems and "America" per capita costs implying that the per-capita American healthcare costs are all "capitalist" healthcare expenses.
Medicare/medicaid STINK not only because the costs are skyrocketing but from what I've read, it's not even fully funded. Doctors often feel they are not being paid enough to take such patients and dump the costs on the private healthcare insurance market (or the uninsured who don't declare bankruptcy.)
Seek| 10.25.12 @ 12:05PM
Rapes and assaults in Sweden are almost exclusively committed by Arab Muslims. Why their government let these animals into the country is beyond me. Combating these primitives is a job for Lizbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Bill8472| 10.26.12 @ 9:22AM
Remember, she took a bullet to the head and was lucky to survive that.
JP| 10.25.12 @ 10:31AM
Sweden like most of Scandanavia enjoys a few things that we do not:
1)A largely urban homogenious society that is concentrated in a few metropolitan areas
2)An export driven economy that depends upon well educated citizens who all share a strong work ethic.
Being concentrated in just a small number of large cities allows the government to create a more streamlined form of government, which in turns leads to more efficient government and infrastructure. This efficiency carries over into businesses which allow Swden to export far more than they import. The excess cash then flows back into the nation in the form of generous entitlements and social spending (pensions, education, and healthcare).
Sweden demands things that our own Progressives would never allow: everyone attain a high level of technical skills; rigorous competition to enter the best techical colleges and liberal art schools; high level of job performance without regard to seniority; and rigorous rules in banking and finance with a focus on long term monetary stability and national cash flow.
The Swedes may still play the socialist game. But they do it on their own terms. Unlike Britain and France, Swedish policymakers and their citizens alike are hard nosed and results oriented.
PolishKnight| 10.25.12 @ 1:41PM
Perhaps the most damning thing against marxism and socialism isn't that, in theory, it's a great system but rather the "means" to get there involve destroying the very "ends" they hope to achieve. To retain power in the USA and in Europe, leftists have destroyed any positive gains they hoped to sell to the working and middle class. Any worthwhile social cause they've glommed onto, such as environmentalism or helping the poor, they warped into a political agenda that they ultimately made worse (instead of reducing pollution with "biofules", they actually waste gasoline and raise food prices to boot, for example.)
But even in Sweden, socialism is a cancer killing their society from within. The left there to gain individual power will take it down (see my youtube URL). In the end, socialism is all about gaining political power and that's all they care about. They'd import terminator robots to kill off humanity if the terminator robots voted Democrat in the next election...
Stan Redmond| 10.25.12 @ 4:47PM
Sweden is also not bordered by a nation that encourages massive waves of illegal immigrants to mooch off the welfare system. Does Sweden actively recruit Norwegians to illegally cross their borders and sign up for welfare?
JP| 10.25.12 @ 10:40AM
I would also like to point out another Nordic Miracle - Norway. Norway, 25 years ago was in deep trouble economically. It was at the point (late 1980s) that the Norweigen people and their politicians took a page of Ronald Reagan. They reduced their entitlements and taxes and made an effort to re-forge their economy around energy. Today, Norway is the 5th largest energy exporter in the world (ahead of both Kuwait and Canada). Norway currently has close to $900 billion in cash reserves (enough to pay-off the entire Greek debt). Additionally, Norway along with Sweden has one of the highest standards of living in the world.
The other decision Norway made was to stay out of the EU. In this regard both Sweden and Norway were very "unsocialist."
PolishKnight| 10.25.12 @ 11:26AM
It's worth observing the 'success' of scandanavian socialism can be summed up as:
1) Have lots of natural resources (and unlike Obama, utilize them!) and a low population (few undocumented immigrants on welfare, but that's changing!)
2) Be geographically isolated. Makes 1) above easier to achieve.
3) Have a NON diverse population with an electorate that cares about each other rather than a bunch of special interest groups out for themselves and favoring corruption.
The left is telling us that the Balkans is the model that the world should aspire to. Or the Middle East (without the oil.) Insanity. And they get away with it by being limosine liberals and living in purple suburbs.
Liberty4x4| 10.28.12 @ 11:30AM
What a lot of Americans do not understand that these European socialist cradle to grave countries do not have to contend with the enormous outlay for military expenditures. Why? Because the good ole USA does the bulk of the military protection for them. Aren't we wonderful? Maybe that is why we can't have all their bliss.
Stan Redmond| 10.25.12 @ 8:26PM
"Entitlements" are still extreme in Norway. However, they keep their coffers full with OIL MONEY. They are pumping oil onshore and offshore everywhere. They are the "Kuwait" of Europe. With a population smaller than most American states they can afford the generous benefits they give out.
PolishKnight| 10.28.12 @ 9:43AM
If the USA's population had remained the same as 100 years ago, we'd be in a similar circumstance. With the right's blessing, millions of immigrants enter the nation either as temporarily cheap, unskilled labor (which then goes on welfare after 20 years along with their legal alien children) or as H1B's to lower the cost of skilled technical labor. Big business then gripes that young people don't want to get "STEM" degrees (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) but under the circumstances, who can blame them if they want to get a business or law degree to get one of the higher paying positions as executives or upper level bureaucrats?
If these immigrants then turn around and want to rob and pillage the houses and businesses of these crony capitalists and take their children and sell them off into slavery, I might just whistle and look the other way...
Petronius| 10.25.12 @ 10:42AM
The American concept of wealth is acquired in kindergarten where the kiddies are told to share their toys and play nice. And few ever outgrow a 5 year old's ideas about what is "fair", which is a melding of material equality and absolutism. This bedrock of Marxism then becomes the hallmark of the slacker and hence, a cultural cancer, and the default position of all who would readily accept it than engage life, because there lies inequality and risk. The Swedes jettisoning their Binkies are still on the margins and beginning an experiment in economic liberty. But the sand box mentality has been the impacted pustule on our body politic far too long. The obsessions of the pedestrian goobs with the life styles of their betters precludes them from improving their own. That's why my neighbors will vote for Obama to take it from me. The words Earn and Value are meaningless to them and those who live in the world of "have" and "Get".
PolishKnight| 10.25.12 @ 1:45PM
There's a wonderful children's book, written by a Democrat, called "Why mommy is a democrat" that explains in childlike terms about "sharing" toys and helping each other but unintentionally, demonstrates why their values are fake and shallow. Without realizing it, the author demonstrates that men are secondary to the party since "mommy" is shown in every scene (as a weird looking squirrel) while Daddy is absent in the Daddy book. The mommy squirrel supposed "shares" toys (which is really a party for kids) but retains control and ownership of them while evil republicans in the background exclude people (why doesn't "mommy squirrel" invite them in? Of course, the left limosines away from their special interest vote groups.)
Marxism mocks religion and especially Christianity when it really hijacked the core values of Christianity (charity and caring for others) and then turns around and scapegoats political minorities for populist purposes.
Petronius| 10.25.12 @ 4:03PM
And there are still a few copies of The Little Red Hen which have yet to be discovered and destroyed.
Gr0w1er601| 10.25.12 @ 11:56AM
"...a Che Guevara t-shirt and Birkenstocks...". Priceless!!
JD| 10.25.12 @ 12:26PM
In many, many ways, the Left has redefined good and bad. What's bad is good, what's good is bad. Their redefinitions are so pervasive that many on the Right have even come to echo them.
John II| 10.25.12 @ 3:50PM
" Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"
--Isaiah 5:20.
The reckoning is nigh.
Just sayin'.
topcat52| 10.25.12 @ 4:54PM
Those who didn't understand 1984 are doomed to live it.
Bill8472| 10.26.12 @ 9:26AM
Sadly, if the left has its way, even those of us who understood 1984 (and Darkness at Noon) will be doomed to live it. That's the great wrong being done; those who want collectivism asked for it, those who wanted individualism are denied it and subjected against their will to what revolts them.
PolishKnight| 10.28.12 @ 10:44AM
Many leftists I know are getting to double dip. They are limosine liberals enjoying the best of both worlds and snidely remarking that the working class whites can suffer the consequences of their policies (which they deserve for not being grateful for being "helped") while living in suburban sprawl and blaming their conservative neighbors for their "SUV's" (nevermind that their own car uses gasoline or coal to get its power.) Man-hating feminists and collective socialists marry conservative men who pay the bills (I see this all the time.)
But then again, a lot are not and I refer to them as "Lebowsky's". They live in their mothers' basements and don't have girlfriends or the feminists wind up alone and childless and die out which is why they cheer on non-whites taking over the Democrat party. They're Marxist Shakers.