The Real Denmark Would Surprise Americans

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen reacted with anger and pride to a recent White House report criticizing the Nordic countries as “socialist.” The center-right politician shouldn’t have bothered: President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers isn’t arguing with him but with Senator Bernie Sanders and other local leftists — about a Denmark that only exists in American imaginations on both sides of the partisan divide.

The Nordic countries, the Council of Economic Advisers report says, “are often singled out as countries with socialist policies and admirable economic outcomes.” Yet, “Nordic country living standards are still at least 15 percent lower than in the U.S. The private and social returns to a college education are higher in the U.S., even while college education is at least as common here. These results are consistent with the basic economic idea that redistribution and single-payer systems have significant costs in terms of reducing national incomes.”