Analysts such as Daniel Schatz of New York University suggest that Nordic success has its roots in cultural rather than economic factors. With a combined population roughly equal to the greater New York City area, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark developed “remarkably high levels of social trust, a robust work ethic and considerable social cohesion.” The Scandinavian pays a price for such cohesion, sacrificing diversity for security, accepting the known rather than gambling on the unknown as in the more competitive United States. Given the sharp debates and wide divisions that characterize American politics, it is doubtful that Americans would imitate such a Nordic model.

American socialists prefer to emphasize the benefits rather than the costs of Denmark’s bountiful welfare system. Danish mothers enjoy 18 weeks of guaranteed maternity leave at 100 percent of their pay. Danish students leave college with no debt. Everyone is covered by a national health-insurance system. The average Danish worker has five to six weeks of paid leave. Yet, compared with Americans, Danes have less disposable income and purchase fewer cars and other consumer goods. Bernie Sanders’s idealistic version of Danish “socialism” is far from the pragmatic reforms of Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen in the 1990s, when his government gave employers the flexibility to hire and fire workers easily without excessive regulation or litigation.

Bringing Denmark’s economic system to the United States would require a wide range of social benefits paid for by significant taxes on the middle class and the poor alike and the creation of a massive bureaucracy to administer and monitor the welfare system. Imagine the Veterans Administration on steroids.