Krugman writes: "Wait, you may protest, you didn't see any socialists up there. And you'd be right. The Democratic Party has clearly moved left in recent years, but none of the presidential candidates are anything close to being actual socialists."
Economist Paul Krugman. (photo: Forbes)
The S Word, the F Word and the Election
29 June 19
Guess which party is really un-American.
hat did you think of the bunch of socialists you just saw debating on stage?
Wait, you may protest, you didn’t see any socialists up there. And you’d be right. The Democratic Party has clearly moved left in recent years, but none of the presidential candidates are anything close to being actual socialists — no, not even Bernie Sanders, whose embrace of the label is really more about branding (“I’m anti-establishment!”) than substance.
Nobody in these debates wants government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean. Most of the candidates are, instead, what Europeans would call “social democrats”: advocates of a private-sector-driven economy, but with a stronger social safety net, enhanced bargaining power for workers and tighter regulation of corporate malfeasance. They want America to be more like Denmark, not more like Venezuela.
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