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Look at all that diversity! You may as well list the 10 countries with the most white people. Actually, lets see..
Denmark: 93% white
Norway: 89% white
Switzerland: 96% white
Netherlands: 82% white
Sweden: 84% white
Canada: 79% white
Finland: 96% white
Austria: 91% white
Iceland: 97% white
Australia: 91% white
With all this Occupy Wall Street protesting going on, it seems that these people are advocating a more socialist government. But, has socialism ever worked over the long term, to the point that it would be better than capitalist U.S. policy? Can someone give me examples of successful socialist countries that have lasted for the LONG TERM and/or will likely last for the LONG TERM? Should the U.S. envy other socialist countries? Does it really work better as these Occupy Wall Street people believe it would? Honestly, it seems like the Tea Party of the left.
Enlighten me.
Define socialism.
Is it China ? USSR ? Or is it Germany, Switzerland, Norway ?
I'd say the last three are doing just fine, especially considering the difference in size / population / natural resources vs the U.S. and in case of Germany, the devastation brought by the war plus the successful integration of East Germany. They certainly have very nice quality of life in all these countries.
And talking of Norway - they are an oil producer. Almost 60 years ago their political parties made a pact - to put half of the oil revenues into a special fund that will be used to soften the economic transition for the future generations once the Norwegian oil reserves dwindle. They have never reneged on that agreement, regardless of who was in the office. Now think of our politicians. Wanna puke yet ?
And we are being robbed blind by the Wall Street, and by our fraudulent medical system (I am talking about crazy costs of medical care and prescription drugs, the quality is decent... Not the best, as you'd expect at this price, just decent). By our government that's preaching free trade but only one way, goods in money out.
Do I want a system here like the USSR had ? Hell no. But then it wasn't really socialist but communist.
There's no pure capitalism as there's no pure socialism. Every developed country, US including, is a mix of both. The modern Western European democracies have more socialist trends, but from what I observed they also tend to better control their politicians due to the differences in their election laws, so this kind of offsets the socialist tendency to have bigger government. We have fewer socialist tendencies but we still have big government and because of our winner-takes-all election system we don't have much control over the only two real parties we have. The US is no longer the society of upward mobility it used to be, the costs of a good education are getting too high for many, there's little safety net, and what's there tends to reward the lazy lifetime leeches instead of helping people who will use that help to better themselves. Perhaps it's time to start from scratch.
With all this Occupy Wall Street protesting going on, it seems that these people are advocating a more socialist government. But, has socialism ever worked over the long term, to the point that it would be better than capitalist U.S. policy? Can someone give me examples of successful socialist countries that have lasted for the LONG TERM and/or will likely last for the LONG TERM? Should the U.S. envy other socialist countries? Does it really work better as these Occupy Wall Street people believe it would? Honestly, it seems like the Tea Party of the left.
Enlighten me.
Well, by socialist do you mean purely socialist? Because arguably, that's never really existed, and the ones that were closest to that were born of incredibly authoritarian regimes that set themselves up to be overthrown.
Now, socialist policy exists all over the place. It's in the US, it's in Europe, and it was in the Soviet Union. Some of it worked well, some not so much. Now, we can say that the USSR didn't last, but it did quite well when it was around, being the most influential nation (along with the US) in the world for half a century. It had a booming economy. Life in the USSR wasn't always great, but it wasn't a miserable hell hole 100% of the time either. It did eventually collapse, from all sorts of different reasons, some of which attributed to it's socialism, but plenty for more complicated reasons.
As for others with lasting ability, look at countries in Europe. Norway's doing pretty well for itself for the most part.
Is it perfect? Of corse not. But that argument sounds as if we're trying to say that the US and it's "capitalism" is. And it's not.
I found the perfect balance. More time for me, less jobs for you. As a business owner, when the amount of money taken from me is too much I then stopped investing to grow the company that could have resulted in hiring more employee's. I really don't see a point in working harder to make more money when such a big chunk is taken from me.
You keep posting this and yet it makes less and less sense each time.
Is voltswagon government owned or a capitalist company?
Are German autoworkers Union socialists by choice or slowly introduced in their re-education ?
Comrade...
Is voltswagon government owned or a capitalist company?
Are German autoworkers Union socialists by choice or slowly introduced in their re-education ?
Comrade...
"Voltswagon" eh ?
What you describe is called Communism.
Germany has strong socialist policies. One of the two major political parties is Social Democrats (SPD), part of the European Socialist Alliance in EU. They started as a Marxist party back in the XIX century but gradually shifted closer to center. Their main opponents are Christian Democrats, a center- right party which is on some issues to the left of our Democrats. Both parties usually form the bulk of the government and together / alternating had been steering German politics since after World War II. Seems to me that Germany is doing just great, they actually have a well functioning export economy instead of outsourcing everything to China or Mexico. And that's after absorbing a dysfunctional country it's own size less than 25 years ago, which not very many societies would be able to do without suffering some major economic setbacks.
Too many people think in absolutes i.e 100% capitalism = good, 100% socialism = evil. Actually, the US is mostly capitalistic but has many forms of socialism, which just means that collectively (or through government) we produce something. The US military is a form of socialism, as are highways and street lighting. Police are a form of socialism, as are emergency services. The best healthcare systems in the world are based on socialism, as are the world's favorite airlines, but they operate within capitalistic economies.
Capitalism is (imo) the best system for creating wealth and lifting people out of poverty, but it does need to be regulated. I think that any form of regulation is often confused by dimwits as socialism or "the govment telling me what to do"
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