In breaking news, the winner of the Time Magazine readers’ poll for Person of the Year is Bernie Sanders with “a little more than 10% of the vote”. That was nearly double the second place winner, Pakistani girls’ education activist, Malala Yousefzai and nearly triple the vote garnered by Pope Francis and President Obama. Lately I’m having some interesting, if not downright fun conversations with Bernie Sanders fans.

Bernie, as he likes to be called, also calls himself a Democratic Socialist. That sounds like an oxymoron to me. As per Wikipedia, Sanders is “a self-described socialist and democratic socialist” and that “Sanders favors policies similar to those of social democratic parties in Europe, particularly those instituted by the Nordic countries.” During the CNN presidential debate for the Democrats, Sanders said, “We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

OK then, let’s look at Sweden. Progressives like Bernie and his followers love to point to Sweden as a model for socialized healthcare. Well it just so happens that Sweden has been hard at it to privatize healthcare. According to an article that appeared in January of last year in the Swedish publication, “The Local”, the headline read, “Swedes buy insurance to skip long health queues”, adding further, “One in ten Swedes now has private health insurance, often through their employers, with some recipients stating it makes business sense to be seen quickly rather than languish in national health care queues”.

Imagine that, from zero to ten percent in a few short years. Here’s more, “It’s quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks’ time rather than having to wait for a year,” privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio on Friday. “It’s terrible that I, as a young person, don’t feel I can trust the health care system to take care of me.” 

Got that? A socialized healthcare system cannot be trusted. As an aside, back in 2000 the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency ranked the US healthcare system 37th in the world. However, when it came to the responsiveness category, the US was number one. France was ranked number one overall because it was, well, socialized - the end user did not have to pay directly for the services. The WHO is clearly biased in that regard. And by the way, the WHO never repeated the survey because it confessed that it did not have confidence in its methodologies.

In 2012, the Guardian, a British publication had this to say, “Despite its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of the health service. Their success is envied by the centre right in Britain.” I don’t think the Guardian would know what “rightwing radicalism” was any more than Bernie Sanders and his followers would, but I think you get the point. I’m still trying to untangle the phrase “for-profit free schools”.

Here’s something else to consider about Sweden. According to financial advisor Frank Holmes, “All across Sweden, cash—the physical kind, not cash in the bank—is disappearing.” He goes on to say that Swedes have embraced mobile systems - but “that’s not the concerning part”. He says, “Cash’s demise appears to be orchestrated by Sweden’s central bank, which of course stands to benefit from the switch. In a purely electronic system, every financial transaction is not only charged a fee but can also be tracked and monitored. Plus, taxes can’t be levied on cash that’s squirreled away in Johan’s sock drawer. Since July, interest rates in Sweden have lingered in negative territory, at -0.35 percent, forcing accountholders to spend their money or else see their balances slowly melt away. Negative rates can also be found in Denmark and Switzerland, where they’re as low as -1.25 percent.”

A cashless society would mean that you could not withdraw your money as cash and that you would have no choice but to do business with a bank. The bank can then pay “negative interest rates”. In other words, they can charge you interest to park your money there and there would be nothing you could do about it. As Nick Giambruno over at Casey Research notes, a cashless society is a totalitarian’s dream come true. As far as I’m concerned, forcing a consumer to do business with a big corporation is, well, corporatism. Aren’t Democratic Socialists supposed to be against that?

But don’t expect Bernie Sanders followers to be able to process this information. I’ve found that they laugh, shrug and walk away. But there is something that does get a worried look from a Bernie fan. You see, there is no diversity in Sweden. For example, the black population in Sweden is less than 2%. The Swedish government refuses to publish statistics concerning this, but estimates put the black population at around 1.5%. Which is considerably higher than that of Vermont, where Bernie lives - having emigrated there from Brooklyn in New York City.

While Swedes have been passive with regard to their cashless transformation, they have rebelled against immigration. According to Reuters, “After escaping war, asylum seekers in Sweden now face arson attacks”. That’s the headline, the story is about refugee shelters burned to the ground by angry Swedes. And Swedes are literally up in arms over the Middle Eastern refugee crisis in their country.

The Gatestone Institute posted an article with this headline on their website: “Sweden: ‘No Apartments, No Jobs, No Shopping Without a Gun’ “. The subheading continued, “The Swedes see the welfare systems failing them. Swedes have had to get used to the government prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes.” The article referenced a double homicide by an immigrant at an Ikea.

It also elicited this online response from an American named Ed, “Relatives of mine from Sweden visited me about 3 years ago. They were appalled at my gun collection. Made fun of me and my wife and called us Paranoid and war mongers. About 6 months ago they started calling me asking me about what rifle to buy then a few days later asking me about shotguns. He never got a gun because they were all sold out in every gun store in the country. Now they are asking if they can come and live with me….”

So when Bernie Sanders and his followers say that the US should be more like Sweden, perhaps they should be careful what they wish for - or rather perhaps they know not of what they speak. As for me, it appears that in some respects Sweden is moving in the right direction. However, they still have a long way to go.