Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders gives his victory speech in New Hampshire on Feb. 9, 2016. Photo: AP/J. David Ake)
Since Pope Francis is very critical of capitalism, I suppose it’s fitting that he had a special meeting with America’s crazy-Uncle-in-the-attic, Bernie Sanders. With my sixth-grade sense of humor, I confess that my initial instinct (perhaps motivated by the famous line from Animal House about “a wimp and a blimp“) was to write about “the Pope and the dope,” but I’m going to be somewhat mature and instead share some excerpts from a very good column by Charles Lane, an editorial writer for theWashington Post.
Here’s some of what he wrote before Senator Sanders’ departure.
Democratic socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will depart soon for the Vatican… In keeping with Pope Francis’s call for a “moral economy,” Sanders has said he’ll discuss “how we address the massive levels of wealth and income inequality that exist around the world, how we deal with unemployment, how we deal with poverty and how we create an economy that works for all people rather than the few.”
While inequality should be a non-issue (assuming income is earned honestly), it is very desirable to reduce poverty and boost wealth for the less fortunate. As such, Lane suggests that the Vermont Senator read some of the research from World Bank economist Branko Milanovic.
…real income went up between 70 percent and 80 percent for those around the world who were already earning at or near the global median, including some 200 million Chinese, 90 million Indians and 30 million people each in Indonesia, Egypt and Brazil. Those in the bottom third of the global income distribution registered real income gains between 40 percent and 70 percent, Milanovic reports. The share of the world’s population living on $1.25 or less per day — what the World Bank defines as “absolute poverty” — fell from 44 percent to 23 percent.
And here are the most important passages.
Was all this progress because of big government? Nope, people were lifted out of poverty because the power of government was reduced.
Did this historic progress, with its overwhelmingly beneficial consequences for millions of the world’s humblest inhabitants, occur because everyone finally adopted “democratic socialism”? …To the contrary: The big story after 1988 is the collapse of communism and the spread of market institutions, albeit imperfect ones, to India, China and Latin America. This was a process mightily abetted by freer flows of international trade and private capital… The extension of capitalism fueled economic growth, which Milanovic correctly calls “the most powerful tool for reducing global poverty and inequality.” And he’s no supply-sider, but instead a left-leaning critic of modern economic orthodoxy — as his new book, “Global Inequality,” makes clear.
The final sentence is worth highlighting. Mr. Milanovic is not a libertarian firebrand. And since Charles Lane is an editorial writer at the Washington Post, it’s safe to assume that he isn’t an advocate of small government either.
For what it’s worth, they’re probably both supporters of something akin to the Nordic Model, which allows for a large welfare state and high tax rates, but otherwise is very sympathetic to free markets (i.e., open trade, light regulation, stable money, strong property rights, etc).
In other words, if we created a scale or a spectrum, there would be a big difference between the crazy left and the rational left. And the socialists and totalitarians would be in their own category.
The flags of the Nordic nations represent the rational left. I’ve put the Greek flag next to Bernie Sanders to represent the crazy left.
I actually had a hard time coming up with an example of a genuine socialist (i.e., government ownership of the means of production) who wasn’t also a totalitarian, but eventually settled on Clement Attlee, the United Kingdom’s misguided post-WWII Prime Minister who nationalized industries.
And Hitler and Stalin obviously are representatives of the totalitarian left.
I’ve placed Obama and Clinton on the spectrum based on what I think they actually believe, not what they say. So even though Hillary and Bernie are singing from the same nutty song sheet, I suspect she’s exaggerating her leftism and he’s downplaying his.
P.S. Returning to our original focus about which policies actually help the poor, Bono also understands that there’s no substitute for free markets.
P.P.S. My goal, of course, is to help rational leftists understand that free markets are just one ingredient in the recipe for prosperity. We also should have small government.
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