Why can’t the U.S. build a social democracy like those in the Nordic countries? Progressives have wistfully asked this question for more than half a century. Why can’t Americans enjoy universal health care, free college tuition with generous universal student grants, universal pre-kindergarten education, and 18 months of paid parental leave? Why don’t policymakers just tax the rich and usher in the social-democratic utopia?

The inconvenient answer is that they can’t. Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are not quite the utopias that American progressives claim. Key aspects of their economic systems would be unpopular and unworkable in America.

[Well … Minnesota comes close. I kid, I kid! The authors stick mainly to the economic arguments, but there are important sociological differences too. During the period in which “Nordic” nations built their social-democratic ‘utopias,’ their countries were much smaller in both population and geographic size, as well as much more culturally and ethnically homogenous. The introduction of mass migration into the EU destabilized what remained of these socialized utopias as diversity turned out to bring more problems into Utopia than progressives want to admit. — Ed]