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**JANUARY 11, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Slime-on-a-Rock Cuisine and
Social Democracy
Noma, the world's most pretentious restaurant, in Copenhagen of all
places, to close.
You've probably read the press accounts. Grotesque, grossly
overpriced, fussy food finally reaches its limits. Reindeer penis is one
of the specialties. The tab is typically $500. The restaurant's
creator, chef René Redzepi, termed the business model "unsustainable
<[link removed]>."
Well, mercifully, yes.
There is no better symbol of the wretched elite excess of this era. Noma
is an advertisement for more progressive taxes on income and wealth;
and, as the saying goes, for eating simply so that others may simply
eat. And what's Noma doing in Copenhagen, capital of a nation known
for its modesty, social solidarity, and social democracy?
I actually ate there once, through no fault of my own, as the guest of
the leader of Denmark's Social Democratic Party no less. And therein
hangs a tale.
In my work on the project of housebreaking capitalism, I became
fascinated with Denmark, as a nation that manages to square the circle
of a dynamic and flexible economy with extensive social bolsters and
impressive equality of income and wealth. The secret sauce is a very
powerful labor movement, a long tradition of consensual social
bargaining, and a strategy known as "flexicurity" that makes it easy for
workers to change jobs without losing living standards and, conversely,
easy for employers to move workers and thus stay competitive.
I've written about this for the Prospect
<[link removed]>, for Foreign
Affairs
<[link removed]>,
and in my books. Over more than two decades, I've spent a lot of time
in Denmark. I became friendly with the prime minister who served from
1993 to 2001, a former trade union economist named Poul Nyrup Rasmussen,
who was a truly great man and Europe's last truly socialist prime
minister.
It was a pleasure to go out for a meal with Poul in simple neighborhood
places, with no staff or bodyguards, and see ordinary Danes come by to
shake his hand. It's the way that I imagine democracy is supposed to
be. He would not have been caught dead in Noma.
Fast-forward. I'm on another of my reporting trips to Copenhagen.
Denmark is a small country. I've done scores of interviews there over
the years and I'm slightly famous as an American journalist who takes
Denmark seriously.
My friend Poul is out of office. The new Social Democratic leader, later
to win election as prime minister, is Helle Thorning-Schmidt. I ask her
office for an interview. They suggest dinner, with her and her
entourage, and I'm invited to bring my wife.
It's at Noma, where we discover what my wife calls slime-on-a rock
cuisine. We are both serious cooks, even foodies. But we were
dumbfounded that this is where a social democratic leader would bring
American lefty guests.
Maybe, come the revolution, the entire proletariat will eat slime on a
rock and reindeer penis. Let's hope not.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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