Why the U.S. will never be like Norway

There’s little doubt that life is better in the Nordic countries as explicated in the video linked below. “Happiness” indices far exceed those of the United States. The social policies that yield such results are pretty straightforward: high levels of unionization, economic socialization, and health / education / welfare expenditures — within the context of a relatively egalitarian social ethos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybZ0PLz_pl8

So Bernie Sanders was right to suggest that we could make life better for almost all Americans simply by emulating the social democratic paradigm of those countries.

I don’t think it will ever happen. What’s rarely mentioned when talking about the enlightenment of the Nordic countries is a subtle and under-appreciated factor: an egalitarian ethos flows from a communitarian sensibility.

The conditions of the Nordic countries are conducive to a strong sense of “we.” The populations are small and homogeneous. There are fewer people in Norway, Finland, and Denmark than there are in the state of New Jersey. Sweden has slightly more.

The U.S. is too large, too far-flung, and too diverse to embrace “democratic socialism.” Well-off white people living in the suburbs don’t want to hear that their taxes are being raised to pay for social welfare programs that will benefit people of color living in the cities. There’s not enough sense of “we.”

Another factor is that consumption standards are less oppressive in the Nordic countries. American affluenza standards are burdensome for those aspiring to sustain an American middle-class lifestyle. The top 10% in this country live so large (McMansions, private schools, exotic vacations, restaurant dining, etc.) that the middle 60% who strive to emulate them have to work very hard to get anywhere close. Their strain and stress leaves them feeling less than magnanimous. It makes them inclined to be conservative when it comes to “tax and spend” governmental policies. They have a sense that their tax dollars go into huge vats somewhere in Washington, DC and eventually get allocated to god-knows-what benefiting nameless “others.” This attitude is not deserving of disdain or contempt. If there’s fault, it lies with the untenable social context.