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FARGO They sure miss the 1950s in the North Dakota Legislature, that's for sure. That halcyon decade sticks in the minds of some as the idyllic days to which they'd like to return, if discussion about a child-care bill in the House of Representatives this week was any indicator.

Mom staying at home to take care of the kids and cook for Dad. Dad coming home from work and Mom mixing him a drink. Dad watching the evening news and reading the paper while Mom cleaned up supper, washed the dishes and took care of the kids. Dad going upstairs to bed while Mom did laundry and put the kids to bed.

Yeah, those are the days North Dakota legislators want to return.

The fact the 1950s were never as idyllic or halcyon as "Leave It To Beaver" and "I Love Lucy" would have us believe is beside the point. It's the fantasy that counts.

Anyway, that decade was referenced several times during debate over House Bill 1540, which dealt with funding to help ease North Dakota's child-care crisis. Child care, or lack of it, was the No. 1 issue many legislators heard about from constituents before going to Bismarck.

North Dakota, like almost every state, lacks affordable and available child care. It is, as smart legislators on both sides of the aisle point out, a workforce issue. If the state is looking to fill its 30,000 job openings, working parents need affordable child-care options. Period.

Fargo Democrat Karla Rose-Hanson put it best, saying child care needs to be viewed as part of the state's infrastructure. It's that critical.

HB 1540 passed on Friday morning, moving onto the Senate. Republicans, as they are wont to do in North Dakota, killed a similar bill Democrats had introduced earlier in the session and re-worked it to claim it as their own. That's the power of a super-majority.

But it's good news Democrats were able to push forward a bill that would infuse $66 million into child care. It obviously got plenty of Republican votes to pass.

The bad news? Watching the pre-vote comments by conservative Republicans like Dan Ruby, Scott Louser, Jeff Hoverson, Mike Schatz and Donna Henderson as they urged fellow representatives to vote against the bill.

How the sausage gets made in a legislative body is never pretty. Pull away the facade that those making laws are all thoughtful, intelligent people with the best interests of the citizens in mind and, well, the fat and gristle being stuffed into the casing gets nasty.

Take these particular righties.

Please.

Here's a nugget from Ruby, of Minot: "If it's taking your whole check for daycare, then you either need to get a job that pays more or it's better for you to not be giving it all to ... why are you working?"

Is that what they call compassionate conservatism?

From Schatz, from New England: "Many mothers want to raise their children themselves rather than have the government raise them."

Does he know the bill doesn't establish government daycare centers, but instead provides money so families can afford to pay for private daycare?

Also Schatz: "I believe this bill is in the same blueprint as President Biden's agenda and originated with Sen. (Elizabeth) Warren."

What?

From Hoverson, also of Minot: "This idea of the government becoming involved in child care is a well-meaning idea, but that it's also a very leftist, socialist idea. That's how socialism works."

So farming is also a very leftist, socialist idea?

See, the snag with being so dedicated to the "socialism" bit is that you end up being against everything. Because "socialism."

Child care assistance? Socialism.

School lunch assistance? Socialism.

Giving away money to private schools? Sociali-

Oh, wait. Scratch that. Being opposed to socialism is a flexible ideology.

And that's the problem with governing by ideology instead of practicality. North Dakota has a child-care crisis. Democratic legislators recognized that and tried to find ways to help remedy it. Obstinate others would rather insult working women, cry socialism, or both.

If only a Republican could introduce a bill hurtling North Dakota back to the 1950s. They'd find that to be a better solution.

Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He's been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.

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McFeely: In ND legislature, the sausage is particularly gross - INFORUM

I want to start off by saying that I feel very fortunate to attend Oberlin College. I am so grateful for the academic, networking, and lifelong friendship-building opportunities afforded to me during my time on this campus. As a graduating fourth-year, Ive been thinking a lot about these opportunities and how I will deeply cherish them forever.

That is to say, I do not write this piece to bemoan that which I identify as a shortcoming of the Colleges Economics department, but aim to enact change as one of my parting acts as I look toward my fast-approaching graduation.

I recently learned that some departments, such as the Jewish Studies department, arose from student activism. This serves as proof, in my mind, that the College has historically listened to students academic concerns and has consequently enacted change accordingly.

As an avid watcher of the show Gilmore Girls, one of my few expectations upon my arrival to campus was that I would feel like I could learn anything I ever wanted to learn in these hallowed and historied halls like Rory did in her early college days. However, there was one thing I wanted to learn about here but didnt have the opportunity to: the varied types of world economies.

I came to college hoping to major in Politics and minor in Economics, expecting that this combination of departmental study would afford me context as to the broader economic and political realities that shape our ever-changing world.

After taking Introduction to Economics remotely, in the fall of 2020 I quickly realized that this would not be the case.

While, as someone who enjoys statistics and statistical modeling, I appreciated Intro to Econ, a more apt title for the course would have been Introduction to the U.S. Economy. But thats a semantic qualm.

My primary concern is that there are very few courses offered in the the Economics department that focus on non-U.S. economies, and those that do focus on economies beyond our borders do so in one of two ways: exploring the ways the U.S. economy might interact with other economies through trade or exploring the weak institutional frameworks tha[t]could explain a low growth trajectory, as in the case of ECON 310, Economic Development in Latin America.

I would love to have learned about socialism and anarchism, for example, in the same way as we did capitalism in that first Economics course. I later received an education with regard to socialism and anarchism in the Politics department in the course POLT 252 Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchism: Perspectives on States, Markets, and Justice. In that course, I learned about the varied global economies and read theory pursuant to all three types of economy.

However, as it was a political theory course, we did not engage in statistical modeling of any sort. Id advocate for a course such as this one to be taught in the Economics department so as to engage the graphical element deeply present in Economics research.

I spoke with College second-year and Economics minor Ben Rapkin to hear his perspectives on the department.

Many of the professors are incredibly talented and skilled in their field and in finance and their contributions to academia, Rapkin said. Just because its skewed in a particular lens or with particular focuses that doesnt by any means invalidate much of their research.

According to Rapkin, this particular lens comes from the professors backgrounds as well as the current state of U.S. academia.

Just because our nations organized with a certain amount of governmental intervention doesnt mean that in the set of assumptions that they research under and they look at that their mathematical models arent perfectly valid, Rapkin said. It is just an issue of number one, undergraduates are not at the level to really have those discussions and two, many of them just are not focused on socialist organization and comparing that to capitalism.

Rapkin initially wanted to major in Economics, but ended up minoring in the department after finding that it was not as interdisciplinary as he would have liked.

My big issue with the Econ major its really shared by a lot of undergraduate economics programs and put simply, economics is a really complex hard science, Rapkin said. Its trying to describe how pretty much everything in the world can be better, most efficiently done. But a lot of undergraduate economics is very light on math which is understandable. However, even the upper-level classes dont really include a lot of math, which makes it so that any discussion we have is forced onto some very simplistic models that often dont really describe what happens in the economy.

Rapkin also spoke to the limitations of the departments U.S.-centric curriculum.

For most of the courses it was very much focused really all of them, Ill say was really focused on the U.S., Rapkin said. The Econ department leans to a focus on micro[economics]. And so in those classes, it doesnt so much matter which countries specifically, but when we looked at some of the macro[economics] classes such as intermediate macro or public economics those classes both focused very heavily on U.S. economics and how our economy functions as a whole. They didnt really look at a lot of case studies of other countries with different organizations.

Oberlin College, a school that presents itself as academically progressive, seems to fall behind other Economics programs in its failure to include global economies. Other colleges and universities, though, have modeled this inclusive departmental design.

For example, the University of Chicago, which is often recognized as having one of the top Economics programs in the United States, includes The Economics of Socialism in its department, as well as a course titled Labor Markets: A Global Perspective.

Further, the University of Maine offers a Marxist and Socialist Studies minor, which culls an interdisciplinary catalog of courses in economics, philosophy, art history, and more. Harvard University even offered a course titled The Economics of Socialism in its Economics department in the spring semester of 1940.

Our History department doesnt study just U.S. history and our Politics department doesnt exclusively study U.S. politics or, rather, global politics as they relate to the U.S. So why, in 2023, hasnt the College adapted its Economics department to address economies beyond the U.S.?

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Economics Department Overly U.S.-Centric, Should Offer Courses in ... - The Oberlin Review

One of the great delusions of our day is that Scandinavian countries are socialist and so America should be socialist too. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and others of the ultra-Left repeatedly claim that Norway, Sweden and Denmark (sometimes they include Finland and Iceland too) are prosperous because they are socialist.

Lars Rasmussen knows better. As Danish Prime Minister, he declared in 2015, I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

A market economy is a capitalist one in which property is largely private and prices are free to reflect supply and demand. It is synonymous with free enterprise. In a socialist economy, by contrast, government owns or controls the means of production and heavily regulates and redistributes everything else. We sometimes call that a planned or command economy because the plans of market participants are bulldozed by the commands of those in political power.

The Heritage Foundations annual Index of Economic Freedom is one of two excellent sources for comparing how capitalist or how socialist a country is. The US, which showed up among the top ten (freest or most capitalist) for years, now ranks #25 in the latest (2023) Index. Denmark and Sweden are more capitalist than America, at #9 and #10, respectively. Norway comes in at #11. Nearby Finland, technically not a Scandinavian nation, checks in at #12. The worlds socialist countriesCuba (#175), Venezuela (#174) and North Korea (#176)are at the other end of the scale; and not by coincidence, they are also among the very poorest.

The other go-to source is the Fraser Institutes Economic Freedom of the World Index. The methodologies and categories of the two indices differ somewhat, producing in turn some differences in country rankings, but the findings are broadly similar: In Frasers most recent Index, Denmark is #10, Finland is #21, Norway and Sweden are tied at #37. Iceland, like the other four a Nordic nation, ranks #19. At #6, the US does better in the Fraser Index than it does in the Heritage Index.

Type Scandinavia socialism or Nordic socialism into the search engine at FEE.org, and youll find numerous articles that address the misinformation on this topicarticles not authored by charlatans, demagogues and class warriors who deploy obsolete data, but thoughtful and well-researched pieces by actual economists and native Scandinavians who know what theyre talking about.

The allegedly socialist countries that seem to work do so not because of the socialism they have but because of the capitalism they possess in abundancestrong evidence that the freer economies are, the better off the people are. Go full socialism and you get a miserable basket case such as Venezuela. The fact is that while Nordic nations dabbled in welfare-state style socialism a half-century ago, they learned some lessons from the resulting stagnation. They reversed course. They are now among the freest, most capitalist countries on the planet according to both the Fraser and Heritage Indexes.

Ive said it before and Ill say it again: Socialism devastates an economy until some form of capitalism is allowed to rescue it. Thats the story of such places as post-war Japan, Hong Kong, and Germany. I can think of no instance in all of history in which capitalism produced economic disaster that socialism subsequently remedied. It just never happens, and that should be totally predictable. Socialism offers no theory of wealth creation; its nothing more than crackpot schemes for the concentration of power and income redistribution, robbing Peter to pay Paul for Pauls vote.

Free markets and small government made Sweden rich, explains Swedish economist and Cato Institute fellow Johan Norberg. The experiment with socialism crashed us.

In another revealing article Norberg quotes a top Swedish official:

Voicing a conclusion of people across the political spectrum, the Social Democratic Minister of Finance KjellOlof Feldt stated That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didnt work.

Nima Sanandaji, author of Scandinavian Unexceptionalism, tells us that Nordic societies did not become successful after introducing large welfare states. He writes,

They were economically and socially uniquely successful already in the mid-20thcentury when they combined low taxes and small welfare states with free-market systems. Over time, the generous welfare states of Nordic nations have created massive welfare dependency, gradually eroding the strong norms of responsibility that undermine the region's success. This, combined with the growth-reducing effects of a large state, explains why Nordic countries have gradually, over the past decades, moved towards less-generous welfare, market reforms, and tax cuts.

The Economistmagazine described the Scandinavian countries in 2013 as stout free traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies. They are amongthe easiest countries to do business in. Through tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization, theyve dismantled much of the socialism that nearly ruined their economies.

The claim that socialism is alive and doing well in Scandinavian countries is shameless propaganda, hopelessly wrong and out of date. Those who make such ridiculous claims betray their real agenda of government control by never telling you these facts: 1) Sweden has a 100 percent nationwide school voucher program for schooling instead of the costly, underperforming socialized education system we have here; 2) None of the Scandinavian countries has a nationally-imposed minimum wage law; 3) Scandinavian countries all have lower corporate income tax rates than the US; and 4) In these nations, property rights, business freedom, monetary freedom, and trade freedom are strong, as Sanandaji points out. The same folks hawking Scandinavian socialism never tell you to check out those Fraser and Heritage indexes either.

For more on this topic, see Socialism: Force or Fantasy, especially the recommended readings at the bottom. Dont miss this additional and very important point: So-called democratic socialism is at war with itself; the longer and deeper that any nation pursues it, the more the socialist aspect squeezes out the democratic part. Whenever they come to power, democratic socialists steal not only your stuff but anything they can get their hands onelections, the media, the schools, your children, even your vocabulary.

The Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland have generous welfare stateswhich they have purposely been reducingbut its not socialism that pays the bills. As always, capitalism pays the bills that socialism piles upthat is, until, as Margaret Thatcher put it, the socialists run out of other peoples money.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Clickhereto sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

I have my own way of expressing that same truth: The only thing socialism does for poor people is give them lots of company. Or, Socialism irons out the business cycle by eliminating the boom part.

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Dont Call Scandinavian Countries Socialist - Foundation for Economic Education

The successful development of China and Laos is the success of the socialist cause as China and Laos are both socialist countries under the leadership of their respective communist parties, and share the same ideals, beliefs and pursuits, Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, told Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Saleumxay Kommasith on Monday.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, called on the two sides to implement the strategic consensus reached by the top leaders of the two parties and countries, carry forward the traditional friendship, deepen political mutual trust, and synergize development strategies to lift bilateral ties to a new level.

He noted that as a socialist country, China is willing to work with Laos to firmly support each other in safeguarding their core interests, oppose external interference and containment, strengthen governance exchanges and deepen practical cooperation, Wang added.

He also mentioned the China-Laos railway, saying the two countries should fully leverage the role of the railway as a model and bond, and speed up the building of the China-Laos Economic Corridor, so as to bring benefit to the peoples of the two countries.

"China is ready to work with Laos to uphold ASEAN centrality, uphold open regionalism, safeguard our shared home, and create a better environment for regional development and revitalization," Wang said.

For his part, Saleumxay said Laos is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in various fields, jointly build a high-quality Belt and Road, construct a Laos-China community with a shared future, and promote the development of the cause of socialism.

See more here:
China, Laos jointly promote the cause of socialism: Senior diplomat Wang Yi - CGTN

There are a number of economic problems facing our society. Income inequality, both within and between nations, is rising to levels seen in the 14th century. The side effects of many industries, such as pollution, exploitation, and other social harms, continue to devastate large parts of the world. And an increasing number of people are having trouble making ends meet while being surrounded by material wealth.

As the debate around these problems and potential solutions continues, it begs the question: Is a capitalist-socialist economy inevitable? A few Big Thinkers have weighed in on the topic.

The current economic system simply isnt working for a lot of people, according to Timothy Snyder, the Levin Professor of History at Yale:

The United States is a country which is among the least equal in the world. According to Credit Suisse, which is a Swiss bank and not some kind of crazy left-wing organization, we are second in the world in wealth inequality after the Russian Federation. In the United States since the 1980s, basically 90 percent of the American population has seen no improvement in either wealth or income. Almost all of the improvement in wealth and income has been in the top ten percent and most of thats been in the top one percent and most of that has been in the top 0.1 percent and most of that has been in the top 0.01 percent, which means that not only are people not moving forward objectively, but the way they experience the worldand this is very powerfulis that other people are on top.

That the economy isnt working for everyone isnt a new idea. Still, according to author Anand Giridharadas, the notion that markets would fix all has been pushed even when the evidence against it is at hand:

There is a way in which American elites, and this is not just a couple of greedy hedge fund billionaires, the American intelligentsia also has been complicit in a false story. Rich people and wealthy corporations spent a generation waging a war on government, defunding government, allowing social problems to fester and allowing their own profits to soar.I was sitting in Michigan in Econ 101 and I remember getting this lecture on how all this stuff was for the good and we would be better off. And right around us, all around us in Michigan in 1999 the state was falling apart.

Dr. Ioannis Yanis Varoufakis, former Minister of Finance for Greece and currently a left-wing member of that nations parliament, told Big Think that the failures of our current system affect everybody:

We have billions of people working like headless chickens, driving themselves into depression and going home and crying themselves to sleep at night if they have a job, or consuming antidepressants and becoming obese and seeing shrinks if they dont have a job. In the end, we have a joyless economy. Even those who are extremely powerful, in theory, the haves of the world, are increasingly feeling insecure. They have to live in gated communities because they fear all the have-nots out there that envy their wealth. In the end, we have developed fantastic means of escaping need and escaping want which we are not putting to good use because, in the end, we are developing new forms of depravity and deprivation and universalized depression, psychological depression, which is incongruent with our fantastic advances at the technological level.

So, now that were discussing alternatives to neo-liberalism, what options are on the table?

The current economic system favored by most industrialized countries is the mixed economy. This is best described as a capitalist system with elements of a planned economy thrown in. Its nothing new; versions of it predate Rome. The question being debated in most countries is not whether there should be a mixture of markets and state intervention but rather what that mixture should be. Today, we are in an era where freer markets and less intervention are popular approaches, but this is a fairly new development.

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A few decades ago, even capitalist countries employed planning. For example, in France, the government guided the market-centered economy through the use of indicative planning, a type of economic planning in which the government sets general targets and priorities for economic development but does not directly control the production and distribution of goods and services. This policy was in effect for decades now known as the Thirty Glorious Years. Similar policies existed in Japan and India.

In the Nordic countries and China, the state owns or controls a large share of many enterprises. In Norway, the oil industry is owned by the government and actively invests in other companies. While state ownership has declined in Scandinavia, the various national governments still own many businesses across many industries. In the southern United States, the federal government still owns and operates the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Even the more market-oriented countries rely on state intervention such as regulation, welfare, and macroeconomic policy to correct market failures. Moving to a model with more intervention would be fairly easy in terms of policy implementation. Weve done it before, it is merely a question of if we want to again.

Most major economies today are operating on a blend of capitalism and socialism. Given the problems many industrial economies face today, a reevaluation of which blend we are using may well be in order. Dr. Varoufakis party calls for market socialism. John Fullerton has pushed for a re-imagination of how we approach economics and recently wrote a book on regenerative economics. Wendell Pierce, an actor and businessman, considers himself a true capitalist while also calling for increased social services, such as improved public education.

Whatever we pick, wed do well to remember the words of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: It doesnt matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.

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Is a capitalist-socialist economy inevitable? - Big Think