I Stand Corrected...

I've been saying for years...actually decades that "Democratic Socialism"  is Venezuela NOT Sweden, but while Bernie Sanders and others have lauded Chavez, Castro and other Marxist tyrants, even saying, "Food lines are good! In Capitalist countries the rich can by all the food they want, leaving little for anyone else," recently Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (AOC) DID say, "I mean Sweden, Finland and Norway, NOT Venezuela."

Whoops!

OK....I really DON'T stand corrected.
(https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/ocasio-cortez-socialism-norway-sweden-venezuela/)

This is especially for Carlos

Because IF AOC really supports the policies Sweden, Finland and Norway, then she supports policies that are even MORE market-based than our own!

Policies like LOWERING our Corporate tax rates. While Ms. Ocasio-Cortez claims to want to raise the federal corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, the corporate income tax rate in Finland, it's 20%. The rate is 22% in Sweden and 23% in Norway. When you count state corporate income taxes, the average tax on corporate profits in the U.S.  is currently 25.7%, according to the Tax Foundation.

IF she supports the Nordic model, she's also supporting the privatization of Social Security. Sweden partially privatized its social security program in the mid-1990s.

How about eradicating the minimum wage? She's apparently unaware that neither Sweden nor Norway have any minimum wage laws at all, nor that Finland's is 83% LOWER than the current U.S. minimum.

Moreover, none of these countries would dream of something as radical as a "federal jobs guarantee." Finland, in fact, just abandoned its experiment in a related idea called "universal basic income" because of its costs and its adverse economic impacts.

So, while those misguided folks who use Sweden as an excuse to move the U.S. toward "democratic socialism," the Nordic countries she cites have been steadily moving in the opposite direction — cutting taxes, reining in government benefits and freeing up their economies.

In fact, all those countries have become more economically free over the years, according to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.

How about LESS Diversity and MORE School Choice?

Some more inconvenient facts about these so-called socialist paradises that AOC would never endorse:

Sweden, Norway and Finland are among the least diverse nations in the world. Out of a list of 159 countries ranked by ethnic and cultural diversity, Sweden, Norway and Finland rank in the bottom fifth. The U.S. ranks 85.

Sweden also has a school choice program, in effect since 1992, that lets parents take vouchers to public or private schools.

So, it seems I KNOW what Socialism is and it's AOC and those who espouse "Nordic Socialism," who...DON'T.