DATA, NOT DREAMS

I might scare you by saying that the best way to describe my political beliefs is that I'm a Vienna-style Social Democrat. But wait...hear me out!

Austrian Social Democrats support a well-regulated market economy supported by a strong social safety net that ensures a high standard of living for all. They have been highly successful.

I'm not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and I don't agree with much of what is in their platform. The Austrian Social Democratic platform is very different from the DSA's (see notes, below). But, like Zohran Mamdani in New York, Social Democrats in Vienna focus on the ground game of governing. They do smart, practical things to improve the lives of working people.

That is what I want to help do in Vermont, too.

For example, Social Democrats in Vienna have:

Built world-renowned, award-winning affordable housing with the amenities and support that working people need, often with childcare and doctors' offices right in the same building (so smart!). Government apartments are so good that roughly 60% of Vienna's residents choose to live in some kind of publicly-supported housing, even if they can afford to buy private homes.
Developed a health care system that ranks 17th in the world, is free to all at the point of care (prescriptions cost a small fee), and has the lowest level of unmet consumer health needs in the EU. For comparison, the US ranks 33rd, despite our spending a lot more.

Seestadt Aspern public housing in Vienna

The University of Vienna - it costs $1 per week to study here!

Created a school system with a wide range of academic, career-focused, and trade-focused options, plus nearly-free university tuition. (If you live in Vienna and attend the University of Vienna, you pay $52 a year for the student union fee. That's literally all it costs!)
Guaranteed seniors an income that keeps them above the poverty level.
Made no-cost public childcare available to every family in Vienna.

How do we know that Vienna-style Social Democracy works?

Vienna's mayor and the city council have been Social Democratic non-stop since 1945.*

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Livability Index ranks cities on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Since 2018, Vienna has been rated the "world's most livable city" five times by the EIU.

I lived in Vienna for several years and benefited first-hand from how well it is governed. I hope to bring what I learned to Montpelier.

If you take care of those who need it most, you create safe, livable communities for everyone.

But doesn't all this create higher taxes?

Technically, the tax rate in Austria is a lot higher. But I think this is the wrong question. Instead, I think the question should be: what does it cost to live well?

So let's do a comparison where we don't just look at taxes, but at the full range of basic expenses for a family of four earning the median income and paying for a median-price house in both Burlington and Vienna. You can see that while Vienna's tax rate is higher, the benefits that those taxes provide often net out to more disposable family income in the end.

And that doesn't count the intangible value of the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your health care, child care, university tuition, and retirement are all secure, no matter what. Imagine if we all got to stop worrying about those things? Wow.

Below is an analysis of the numbers.

Cost of Living Comparison between Burlington and Vienna

NOTESHere's the Austrian Social Democratic party's full platform, if you're curious.To reiterate: I'm not a member of the DSA. I'm an Austrian-style Social Democrat because I have lived in Vienna periodically since 1990 and I know how well Social Democracy works in practice. And for the same reason, I don't support much of the DSA's platform. In 1990, the Iron Curtain had just come down and from Vienna it was easy to travel to the east and see first-hand the wreckage caused by government ownership of the means of production and a planned economy. The DSA's platform leans too far toward central planning, in my view. I support enterprise that is regulated by the government to ensure that ordinary people are not exploited.*Fellow nerds, I salute you if you know that the Four Powers occupied and played a role in governing Vienna from 1945-1955. But Social Democrats still were in charge of City Hall during that time.

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