Link Round Up: Matt Bruenig on why Scandinavian countries aren’t secretly super-capitalist

I adore Matt Bruenig’s work, but he tends to scatter little nuggets of insight in different places, so I thought I’d do a link roundup of his work on why, contra many contrarians, Scandinavia isn’t actually a super-secret capitalist paradise. Matt does tireless work on this stuff and if you want to give him some monetary backing go to the people’s policy project Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peoplespolicyproject

One of the most common arguments for neoliberalism is that There is no alternative. This line has historically been particularly effective in the US because the US has an unusually low level of awareness that other parts of the world are run in different ways. Against this, many leftists and left liberals have held up the Scandinavian countries as an alternative to government as usual. These countries have very low poverty and very high levels of social services.

Historically the right has tried to respond to this argument by arguing that the Scandinavian countries are not really great places to live, often relying on figures taken out of context, like suicide rates. No one really finds these arguments plausible anymore though, so the right has started to increasingly lean on the argument that, contrary to appearances, the Scandinavian countries are actually very capitalist.

Various measures and arguments have been adduced to support the argument that Scandinavian countries are actually very capitalist, for example, measures of ‘economic freedom’ used by the Heritage foundation. However these arguments aren’t very good, as Matt shows in the following pieces:

1. No, Nordic Countries Don’t Have Less Regulation: The way the Heritage Foundation etc. measure economic freedom makes very little sense and certainly isn’t useful as a measure of socialism.

2. Nordic Governments Own 33% of the Region’s Wealth: Scandinavian governments own an average of 33% of their nation’s wealth. The Norwegian government owns 56.4% of it’s nation’s wealth. This is far larger than the corresponding proportion in the US.

3. The State Owns 76% of Norway’s Non-Home Wealth

4. Nordic Socialism Is Realer Than You Think: Scandinavian government expenditure is high. A much greater proportion of Scandinavian workers are employed in the public sector than American workers. Scandinavia has a very high level of workers protections.

5. The Bruenigs: A nice summary of everything in podcast form.