[rayiner]

Are Democrats centrist? One of the things I learn the deeper I dig into how European countries are structured is that they’re more right leaning than American liberals assume. Let’s take Spain. If we adopted Spain’s tax structure, income taxes would go down by about a trillion dollars, while consumption taxes (paid for primarily by middle class and poor people), would go up two trillion dollars. Spain’s abortion laws are stricter than any southern state’s (elective abortion legal only up to 14 weeks). On gay marriage, Spain legalized it about 10 years before, but then the government tried to repeal that law a few years later. The constitutional court ruling permanently protecting gay marriage came just two years before the one in the US. The Spanish minimum wage works out to about 6 euro per hour. Like the US and almost all of Europe, many industries were privatized in the 1990s and 2000s, and unlike the US the passenger rail system is in the midst of privatization.

[dunnevens]

When I say "centrism", I'm thinking of it only as it relates to American politics with no external input. Comparing to other countries would be interesting, but I wouldn't even attempt it. Too many variations, even if limited to western nations. Your example of Spain shows the Democrats would comparatively be on the left on some issues, and on the right on others. Which, amusingly, would average out to centrism of a sort.

[jhbadger]

Spain isn't really the model Americans think about in terms of Europe though. That the country that was literally a Fascist dictatorship until the mid 1970s has some right wing views isn't exactly a surprise. It's Scandinavia that's the model the US left wants to copy.

[rayiner]

Sweden has corporate taxes slightly lower than under Trump’s tax law. It collects 6% of revenue from corporate taxes, versus 9% in the US. It collects much less of it’s revenue from progressive income taxes than the US does, and much more from regressive consumption and payroll taxes. Sweden’s capital gains rate is only moderately higher than the US’s (flat 30% versus 23.8% in the top brackets). There are no inheritance taxes. In short, if the US adopted Sweden’s tax code, taxes on lower income and middle class people would go up much more than on rich people. (In fact, the tax burden in Sweden is almost perfectly flat.) Sweden has school choice including subsidization of religious schools. Elective abortion is legal only up to 18 weeks. Deregulation and privatization are extensive. For example, Stockholm’s metro system is operated under contract by for-profit corporations. Sweden has no ban on fully automatic weapons or high capacity magazines.

These are really fundamental differences, particularly in the area of taxes (and that’s true not just for Sweden and Spain, but most European countries). In Europe, there is an expansive welfare state with lots of benefits for the middle class, but the middle class are also the ones that pay for it, through high payroll and sales taxes. In the US, replacing sales taxes with a 20% VAT (the OECD average) would raise an extra $700 billion according to CBO estimates. Enough to pay for socialized health care and education. But nobody on the left is proposing that. Every proposal focuses on raising taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for middle class benefits.