“Absent race as an issue in American politics, the fiscal policy in the USA would look quite similar to fiscal policies in Northern Europe.” In the social democracies of Northern Europe, families are far more economically secure; middle-class workers there don’t have American families’ worries about their healthcare, retirement, childcare, or college for their kids. But if government tried to secure these essential public benefits for families in the United States, in the political culture of the last two generations, it would signal a threat to the majority of white voters. Government help is
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