Krugman, Clinton, Sanders, et al. have a backward and primitive view of government. For them and for their fellow Hobbesians, the Middle Ages never really ended, and the role of the sovereign is to distribute benefices and issue decrees. Unhappy with your wages? Petition the prince to decree that they shall be otherwise, and dare any gimlet-eyed economist to point out that the imperial tailor is skimping on the ermine.
(Actually, even people in the middle ages weren’t quite as naive as are Krugman, Clinton, Sanders, et al. In Europe, at least, such naiveté didn’t arrive en masse until the 16th century.)
Sanders is right: America would benefit hugely from modeling her economic and social policies after her Scandinavian sisters. But Sanders should be careful what he wishes for. When he asks for “trade policies that work for the working families of our nation and not just the CEOs of large, multi-national corporations,” Social Democrats in Sweden would take this to mean trade liberalization—which would have the benefit of exposing monopolist fat cats to competition—not the protectionism that Sanders favors.
Alex Epstein explains that the planet has never been cleaner for humans than it is today. A slice:
To master nature, we’ve drained swamps, reclaimed land, cleared forests, built roads, constructed glass and steel skyscrapers. We’ve irrigated deserts, developed fertilizers and pesticides, linked oceans — all of it in humanity’s incredibly successful effort to create a safer, cleaner, more habitable world. And we did most of this using machines running on cheap, plentiful, reliable energy from fossil fuels.
