This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 26, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Bernie Sanders and others point to Denmark, Sweden and Norway as countries with policies the U.S. should emulate, but in his new book,

debunking Utopia, exposing the myth of Nordic socialism, Nima Sanandagee argues that the data on Nordic

success is more nuanced.

We spoke last week.

The American left likes to point to Sweden and more recently, as you say, Denmark as models for reform within the United States saying

that Democratic socialism or whatever you want to call it, large welfare states with a capitalist engine running things

is a great model because look at these wonderful outcomes that we get.

Low poverty, low income inequality, relatively longer life spans, and all this with massive

government spending on all manner of social welfare.

Yeah.

So you argue that that is completely misguided.

Some ways the things that they're pointing to are irrelevant

and some ways they're just flat out wrong.

I'm saying that they misunderstand Nordic success.

So the basic is I've been writing on this team for a number of years now and my work has been translated to many languages and it's gaining a lot of international attention and it's doing that because the left internationally is using the Nordic countries

as the main argument for why big government and socialism works.

But the problem is that they don't understand Nordic success.

Look, if you just look at it very simplistic they have a great argument

Because if you look at international rankings of which country is good to live in

Which country has a long lifespan and and so on. The Nordic countries come on top.

...