America’s looming presidential election will likely present voters with a clear choice between moving the country further toward a European-style welfare model or bucking the trend of increased public spending. This choice not only has consequences for the economic future of Americans but also for their freedom.
For a while, the success of Scandinavian welfare states seemed to disprove the notion that high taxes, generous benefits, and a large public sector inevitably lead people down the road to serfdom. Indeed, by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Denmark has been hailed as a model state, successfully combining freedom and prosperity with “social justice.” But now, the combination of a debt crisis, an aging population addicted to public welfare benefits, one and a half decades of low growth rates, and increasing competition from countries in rapid development is revealing the dark underbelly of welfarism. As a result, the friendly compassionate face of the Danish state is increasingly being replaced with intrusive measures that were unthinkable just a decade ago. It is not an overstatement to say that the balance between the state and the individual has been shifted decisively in favor of the state. A few non-exhaustive examples may help illustrate how far down Hayek’s road Denmark has gone.
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It was recently revealed that Danish tax authorities have demanded that travel agencies disclose the identities of customers who have spent more than $8,000 on vacations. This information is then compared with their tax returns in order to determine whether such vacations have been paid for with undeclared income. The Danish tax authorities also have the right to demand information from telecommunications companies about when, where, and how Danish citizens have used their mobile phones. Unlike the Danish Intelligence Services, the country’s tax authorities need no probable cause or court-ordered warrant to force the disclosure of such sensitive information. In other words, a suspected terrorist has more legal protection than the ordinary Danish taxpayer. This is far from an isolated example. Currently, 235 different laws and regulations allow various public authorities access to businesses and private homes without a warrant. Public authorities also have full and unhindered access to certain retirees’ financial information, and Danish pensioners have to inform their municipality when they leave the EU for more than three months as well as when they return.
While abroad, pensioners risk being spied on by Danish “control teams,” which operate in countries such as Thailand, Turkey, and Spain in order to investigate whether Danes abroad have undeclared assets. Danes should not be surprised if they are met at the airport by an employee of the Danish Pension Agency who demands to see their boarding card as well as their social-security number. Again, no probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or warrant is required. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Danish municipalities have set up hotlines or websites encouraging citizens to anonymously inform on their neighbors if they suspect them of receiving benefits to which they are not entitled.
Interesting and disturbing stuff, the Danes seem on a Hellenic-like course to ruin--and then we'll see if Oprah does a follow-up on the likely soon-to-be ex-happiest people in the world. Well I doubt it, since that wouldn't play into the vast welfare-state narrative that Ms Winfrey and others wish to foist upon us. Props to the author as well for resisting the siren song of a Hamlet reference (oh, and there were options galore on this one....) Perhaps the first article on Denmark I've seen that has somehow avoided that cliched trap!
This is called "voting with your wallet", and it is the next step after "voting with your feet". Consider that as long as people can just move, they will. Just as concentrations of chemicals move through barriers from where there is too much to where there is too little, so do people move from areas where they are not comfortable to ones where they are. But when the Federal Government makes that choice less favorable, by evening out the pain and benefits, that movement ceases.
That's when people address other means to achieve their results, including deceit. To pay ones' fair share is usually easier than not, but at some point, when people feel the deck has been stacked against them, only a fool will willingly comply with his own destruction. In a country where everyone is a criminal by 9AM each day (if you doubt this, you must lead a very sheltered life, indeed) resistance becomes the noble setting. Minority communities have operated on this assumption for many years. They have been told that the deck is stacked against them (it's stacked against us all, but they don't know that) , so they do what they want, and keep quiet about it. They don't see welfare fraud as a problem, because in their minds, they're just "evening the playing field".
The whole Pigford fiasco is a huge scam, but the lawyers running it are getting rich, using the black community, who are also complicit in the scam. Heads should be rolling, but instead, they are paid even more for their obviously ill-gotten gains.The lawyer running it should be perp-walked. Instead, he goes on TV shows and accuses everyone else of racism. Isn't that a typical Lib trick?
And you're paying for that. You're also paying for all the government agencies who are, instead of watching where your dollars are going, are aiding and abbetting fraud. They're even participating in it. (See Shirley Sherrod. It wasn't her racism that should have gotten her fired, it was her fraud. But it was all quite legal, you see. Or perhaps we should say, legal enough)
At some point, everyone's had enough. People will just take their ball and go home. The pigs will have to leave the trough, once the slop stops coming. Somehow, though, I don't think it's going to be pretty.
I agree with the basic contention; that enlarging the public sector in Denmark will be detrimental to Denmark, but the author makes some rather unfortunate assertions such as.
"For a while, the success of Scandinavian welfare states seemed to disprove the notion that high taxes, generous benefits, and a large public sector inevitably lead people down the road to serfdom"
If you look the a number of other countries, such as Switzerland and Australia, they outrank America in the Index of Economic Freedom, (which is published by the Heritage foundation). These are "socialist" countries, (in the fox news sense of the word) They both have large public sectors and universal health care.
Therefor in my mind the correlation between governments with a larger pulic sector and economic freedom, is utterly false.
Jacob says in the last and most important line of his column, "Welfare, therefore, comes not only at the expense of economic freedom but also individual freedom and choice."
Why are there so many who fail to grasp or recognize this simple, profound, basic truth?
One reason that soft socialism may have "succeeded" (or "resisted collapse") so long in places like Denmark is that Denmark happens to be inhabited by Danes, not by ever more interesting groups and subgroups of Americans.
