None of this implies however that Friedman and Sanders want the same mixed economies.
Instead, they differ in argument about whom the economies they favor should be mixed in favor of. Friedman wants an economy mixed in favor of the opulent risk-takers he lionizes along with the rest of mainstream media and education. Ignoring worker risk-taking, he evidently believes in shopworn trickle-down theory.
Nevertheless, Friedman's economic class has shown again and again that it is not averse to socialism when the stock markets crash, when their opulent sea-side homes are destroyed by natural disasters, or when national survival demands "war socialism" complete with ration cards and patriotic slogans about sharing.
Sanders on the other hand, wants an economy mixed directly in favor of working classes and the impoverished. Rather than trickle-down, his ideal might be called percolate-up. It's a theory that (in watered-down form) has actually worked throughout Europe in the form of post-WWII welfare states, in Denmark, and (yes!) in the United States under FDR.
Conclusion
So, what's the formula that might deliver the world from the ills of low wages, environmental destruction, and huge income gaps between rich and poor?
In the light of the inevitability of mixed economy, any answer to that question must strike a compromise between economies mixed in favor of the rich and those mixed in favor of working classes and the poor.
The formulation of that compromise would run as follows: "As much market as possible with as much planning as necessary."
Yes, maximize incentives that might motivate capitalists to innovate, produce, and create jobs. That's what Thomas Friedman, Joe Biden, and Denmark's entrepreneurial classes seek.
But also recognize and implement the interventions in the marketplace necessary to ensure the emergence of a world with room for everyone. That's really all Bernie Sanders is after: As much market as possible, with as much planning as necessary to ensure that kind of capacious planet.
In the end, this is not a debate about who or what is more Scandinavian. It's about recovering what experience under FDR and Europe's welfare states have shown is entirely feasible.
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