THE STANDARD OF LIVING SUCKS …
As ultra-liberal college educators glorify Marxist / Leninist utopian theory, Democrat politicians (including presidential candidates) propose socialist policies, and left-wing media compliantly promote both ideologies, we at FH would like to offer for your consideration a sobering reality check.
First, though, it is important to realize that socialism is growing in popularity in the U.S. An August 2018 Gallup poll found Democrats had a “more positive image” of socialism than of capitalism, with 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they had a positive view of socialism compared to 47 percent who had a positive view of capitalism.
Second, let’s define socialism. Here’s how the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) describe their ideology:
We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power, discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability status, age, religion, and national origin, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships. We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population.
Third, as reported in a recent Fox News article, let’s focus on Senator Bernie Sanders — the most prominent, powerful, self-identifying Democratic-Socialist politician with a legitimate shot at becoming President of the United States in 2020 — and how he describes his socialist beliefs and the policies he would implement if elected:
What democratic socialism means to me is having, in a civilized society, the understanding that we can make sure that all of our people live in security and in dignity. To me, democratic socialism is about human rights and economic rights, such as tuition-free public universities, raising the minimum wage and universal health care.”
So what is the best political system for our country — Democratic-Capitalism with a free market economy and our existing constitutional rights or Democratic-Socialism with a centrally managed economy and expanded identity rights?
Let’s review the facts. Specifically, let’s see how the majority of the world’s countries rank by the measures that Senator Sanders says are most important — economic rights, security rights and human rights. And then, once we have all the countries ranked, let’s review which type of political system is best at actually achieving and providing those rights.
FH has created what we call a Worldwide Standard of Living Score that ranks the 148 countries in our study by four independent and reputable indexes noted below:
Human Development Index (HDI) – This is a United Nations measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.
Safety Index (SI) – SafeAround utilizes several public sources to create an index that ranks the world’s countries by safety, taking into consideration threats such as mugging, crime, road death toll, occurrence of terrorist attacks and wars.
Democracy Index (DI) – This index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit measures the state of democracy in all countries. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories that measure pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises each country in one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.
Economic Freedom (EF) – This Heritage Foundation index assesses a country’s economic freedom in four major categories: Rule of Law (property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness), Government Size (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health), Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom) and Open Markets (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom).
FH aggregated country rankings in all four indexes to create its Worldwide Standard of Living Score. As in golf, low score wins. The pdf below lists each country’s index scores and ranks them by aggregate score from best (top) to worst (bottom).
Democracy-vs.-Socialism_FH-SCORENotable countries not included in the study are North Korea, Congo, Somalia, Hong Kong and Taiwan because either their data was unavailable or, in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, they are considered part of China.
The United States’ individual rankings are listed below:
Human Development Index (HDI) – 12th
Safety Index (SI) – 48th
Democracy Index (DI) – 23rd
Economic Freedom (EF) – 10th
Worldwide Standard of Living (aggregated score) – 20th
Each country is also color coded by government type:
Green = Democracy
Red = Socialist (includes communism, constitutional socialism, democratic-socialism, and/or socialist party rule)
Blue = Other
The following bar chart uses the exact same Worldwide Standard of Living Score to rank the 148 countries from best (left) to worst (right). The purpose of this simple chart is to pictorially highlight that 59 of 74 or 80% of countries ranked in the top half were Democracies. Only 1 of 74 or 1.4% of countries ranked in the top half was Socialist.
Based on our worldwide study of indexes including rights measurements most relevant to far-left-leaning politicians, why would anyone ever prefer socialism over democracy?
“No-one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise,” Winston Churchill observed in 1947. “Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”