Vermont Youth Conservation Corps

From the Huffington Post:

Bernie Sanders: What’s Wrong With America Looking More Like Scandinavia?

Jennifer Bendery

Posted: 05/03/2015 12:29 pm EDT

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that if he becomes president in 2016, he will bring “a real political shake-up” that lifts the nation’s poorest while stemming the proliferation of millionaires and billionaires.

In other words, he said he wants to make America look more like Scandinavia.

During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked the 73-year-old Vermont senator if it’s really possible for someone like him to be elected president. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, announced his White House run last week.

“Well, so long as we know what democratic socialism is,” he said. “And if we know that in countries, in Scandinavia, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they are very democratic countries, obviously. The voter turnout is a lot higher than it is in the United States. In those countries, health care is the right of all people. And in those countries, college education, graduate school is free.”

When Stephanopoulos said Republicans were likely to jump all over Sanders for saying the U.S. should be more like Scandinavia, the senator said he has no problem with that.

“That’s right. And what’s wrong with that?” Sanders said. “What’s wrong when you have more income and wealth equality? What’s wrong when they have a stronger middle class in many ways than we do, higher minimum wage than we do, and they are stronger on the environment than we do?”

Bernie’s Vermont may look more like Scandinavia than Scandinavia does anymore. From the Census Bureau:

Vermont

Want more? Browse data sets for Vermont

	People QuickFacts	Vermont	USA
	Black or African American alone, percent, 2013 (a)	1.2%	13.2%
	American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2013 (a)	0.4%	1.2%
	Asian alone, percent, 2013 (a)	1.4%	5.3%
	Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2013 (a)	Z	0.2%
	Two or More Races, percent, 2013	1.8%	2.4%
	Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 (b)	1.7%	17.1%
	White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013	93.8%	62.6%

Bernie, by the way, is quite a bit less terrible on immigration than you’d expect:

‘This is a massive effort to attract cheap labor.’ Why Sen. Bernie Sanders is skeptical of guest workers.