In his book, Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got it Right — and How We Can, Too, sociologist and activist George Lakey describes the ways in which the economies, institutions, and civil societies of Scandinavian countries differ from other wealthy, developed nations, and asserts that the United States is capable of achieving similar results.

He argues that by implementing a number of long overdue shifts in public policy, the US could drastically improve the quality of life for many of our citizens and the strength of our institutions.

Of course, President Trump and many other American politicians would disagree, unifying around the dismissive notion that the US is nothing like the Scandinavian countries, therefore we should not even consider the potential applicability of these policies here.

In reality, this reflexive refusal by U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle to talk about these countries or seriously consider their ideas is a symptom of a much deeper problem.

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. are uninsured and underinsured today, and Republicans have attempted to kick tens of millions more off their insurance.

From 1999 to 2017, over 700,000 people have died of a drug overdose in the U.S. Yet the pharmaceutical companies pushing the pills causing the bulk of the crisis continue to profit to the tune of billions while most cannot afford or lack access to addiction treatment services.

100 people are shot and killed in the US every day, and our federal government consistently fails to regulate the firearm industry or the process for purchasing guns.

We have the single largest police state in the world, with unmatched incarceration rates. A devastating recession hollowed out our middle class, and our government bailed out the institutions that got us into the mess instead of the people who suffered because of their reckless decisions.

Median wages in the US have remained stagnant in the face of steadily rising costs of living, CEO pay has grown at an unprecedented rate — over 900% since 1978, and our government has done nothing to curb the trend.

In 2015, the top twenty-five hedge fund managers made more than the combined salaries of every kindergarten teacher in the country, and paid lower tax rates than most nurses, firefighters, and police officers, under a system that our government designed.

The reality of the situation seems to undermine the most common arguments against the feasibility of the social democracy in the United States. Some say we’re too big, yet we have the 11th highest GDP per capita in the world, and highly developed infrastructure and institutions.

Some say that these policies would represent the state infringing on their personal freedom to an unacceptable degree, yet after decades of being brainwashed to vote against their own interests, they misunderstand that these policies would make them more free by empower them to live a healthier, more educated life and earn a better income. They just lack a leader who they can trust to show them a better path.

The real reason we cannot collectively act to use the resources of the wealthiest nation in the world to invest in our people is that as income inequality has increased across America, so has political spending by elite interest groups aimed at preventing reform and further looting public coffers for their own profit.

Or, as Lakey put it, “the reason the United States has failed to adopt universal health insurance is not because it violates our culture, but because special interests prevented the majority from getting what it was ready for. The same could be said of many Nordic-like policies, which could fit just fine into American culture but were vetoed by special interests.”

The results of a study by political scientists Martin Gilen and Benjamin Page from Princeton and Northwestern, respectively, seem to confirm Lakey’s assertion.

Analyzing “measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues,” the researchers found that “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

We call ourselves a democracy, but in reality we have allowed a handful of millionaires and billionaires to transform our government into an opaquely funded oligarchy.

As human beings, we all want the same thing regardless of whether we live in Norway, Zimbabwe, the United States, or China. We all want freedom; we want to make choices that shape our lives. We want the power and control over out own destiny that comes when we have access to employment, healthcare, housing, and other basic human rights.

Though our politicians might tell us they’re not possible, we could absolutely have all of the policies Lakey identifies, which essentially amount to Bernie Sanders’ platform and those of most “progressive” Democrats — universal education, full employment, single-payer healthcare, higher taxes on the incomes of the top 1%, smart free trade policy, targeted foreign aid, effective financial regulations, flexicurity for workers, and a supportive pathway to citizenship for asylum seekers and family members.

We’re being fooled if we buy the line that the money isn’t there — we would just need to spend slightly less of our annual discretionary budget on defense when we already outspend the next six nations combined, and repeal some of the trillions in tax cuts we grant to giant corporations, millionaires, and billionaires.

The real problem isn’t feasibility, it’s the donors who pull the strings that control the system. The majority of the American people share a common set of values, and the majority believe that we deserve the same quality of life as the citizens of Scandinavian countries.

Regardless, until we can unify around the singular cause of getting big money out of politics by overturning the absurd legal doctrine of Citizens United that speech is money and abolishing corporate personhood, we can’t expect to gain an inch in any of the battles that will bring us closer to a more Scandinavian system of government.