Doug Henwood is founder of Left Business Observer, host of the weekly radio show Behind the News and author of "Her Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency," to be published by OR Books.

Denmark has entered the U.S. presidential race thanks to Bernie Sanders touting its virtues. And it has many virtues, at least in the eyes of those inclined in a leftward direction.

In terms of health, education, living standards, productivity and happiness, it is doing better than the United States.

While its educational system lags behind that of its northern neighbor Finland — at least as measured by the international tests administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) — it scores high on most social indicators. It has the most equal distribution of income of 31 countries covered by the O.E.C.D., and the second-lowest poverty rate. The U.S. is third-highest on both measures. Denmark's rate of greenhouse gas emissions is less than half ours. Its life expectancy is longer than ours, and its infant mortality rate substantially lower. Yet when measured as a percent of gross domestic product, its health spending is a third less than ours.

Danes enjoy high incomes, but have to work substantially fewer hours to earn them: an average of 1,438 per year in Denmark compared with 1,788 in the U.S. But that’s not because they’re languishing in unemployment: 73 percent of adult Danes have a job, compared with 68 percent of Americans.

Denmark also ranks at or near the top on surveys of population happiness, with Finland, Sweden and Norway close behind, and the U.S. well down in the upper middle ranks. Its suicide rate is 20 percent lower than ours.

That’s all very nice, but surely innovation must be stifled by Denmark’s admittedly high tax burden. But it’s not. Denmark spends a higher share of G.D.P. on research and development than the U.S. does (though not as much as Sweden). The share of its labor force employed as researchers is 70 percent higher than ours. (Sweden and Finland comfortably exceed the United States on this indicator too.) Internet access is much higher in Denmark than the United States — 92 percent of Danish households are wired, compared with 72 percent of the United States, and a larger share of connected households have broadband.

But, as Hillary Clinton pointed out, this is not Denmark. Which it isn’t. So what did she mean? She didn’t elaborate, but generally when people make this sort of argument they’re saying that Denmark’s population is ethnically homogeneous and ours isn’t. That’s a partial truth: Denmark does have a smaller share of foreign-born among its population than the United States (although Sweden and Norway are higher). I suspect that what people really mean when they say this sort of thing is that racial fissures, notably black/white ones, are a substantial obstacle to the kinds of the generous social programs that Denmark and its Scandinavian neighbors are famous for.

Clinton, like any good moderate, prefers that social spending be targeted on the poor. Her complaint that free college tuition would cover Donald Trump’s kids is a perfect example of this (as if his kids wouldn’t be eligible for free public K–12 education). Social benefits in the Scandinavian countries are generally universal, which makes them more expensive, but also almost universally popular.

Targeted programs, however, make it easy to pit one segment of the population against others — takers vs. makers. It’s easy for working- and middle-class taxpayers to resent public spending on those poorer than themselves, since they don’t feel much benefit from it. But imagine a world where everyone got free college tuition and medical care and decent income support should they find themselves unemployed or disabled. That might have something to do with why Danes are considerably happier than we are.



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