Maybe We Should Take Socialism Seriously
A new White House reports points to the well-known failures, but it doesn’t rebut demands for a better social safety net.
That was then.
Source: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group Editorial/Getty ImgesWhen President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers released a 55-page report called “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,” many economists scoffed. But the report is important, because it shows that big, systemic economic issues are again being considered. And it provides an interesting jumping-off point for those important discussions.
Two decades ago, it seemed as if capitalism had decisively won the battle of ideas. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the grinding poverty of Mao’s China and communist Vietnam and North Korea clearly demonstrated that the most extreme versions of socialism were disastrous. But even in non-communist countries, attempts at regulation, nationalization and redistribution suffered big setbacks. The License Raj, a system of heavy-handed business regulations in India, was repealed, and the country’s growth leapt ahead. Privatizations and other market-oriented reforms in the U.K. helped the British economy make up ground it had lost. Sweden made its fiscal system much less progressive, and North European countries deeply reformed their labor market regulations.