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Originally Posted by Motion
Figured some of you might find this interesting.
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I find it nauseating. Written by a punk who cannot distinguish between Economic Theories and Economic Systems, like the majority of the people on this forum.
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Originally Posted by Motion
With about 9 million people to deal with it may be easier for a Sweden to manage the system they have.
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I guess so, with so many Swedes committing suicide.
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Originally Posted by Neuling
The size of the population as such doesn't matter much if things are in the same proportion.
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Yes, it does matter. It's called "Economy of Scale." Look into it.
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Originally Posted by Neuling
If the two countries being compared are at the same level, have similar economic and administrative structures, etc., there will be a close relationship between population and GDP or similar indices.
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That isn't necessarily true. The GDP of Texas is greater than the whole of Europe.
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Originally Posted by Moth
What the dewy eyed Leftists and and stern Rightist can never comprehend is that the Scandinavian countries are blessed, or cursed depending on your POV, with a rich culture of consensus. A level of consensus that is certainly lacking in the USA and even in Canada and Europe. Japan does not, but nobody ever seems to advocate emulating them.
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With a population of 4 Million, a consensus is not that difficult to reach, even more so with a homogeneous population. You don't seem to understand that those are Nation-States, as opposed to a State.
There is a tremendous difference.
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But Scandinavian countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway and Sweden - aren't socialist. Don't take my word for it, look at what else the socialists say.
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That is a blatantly false statement, which destroys his whole thesis. Those countries are Socialist, because the governments own all [major] enterprises in whole or in part. That is what distinguishes Socialism from Communism.
A Communist State, by definition cannot allow foreign ownership of Capital, which is what Norway does, where its State-owned enterprises are vested with Marathon (US), British Petroleum (UK), Hunt (US), Shell (the Netherlands), et al, and those are just the state-owned oil companies. Socialist countries do not, of course, interfere with the shoe-repair man, or the hot dog vendor or the local corner market or other small businesses that require little or no Capital and do not have large revenues.
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But it didn't work. Even with the enormous sacrifice of all standards of human rights, communist countries did not outproduce capitalist nations.
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While this statement might be true in part, the author is ignorantly oblivious of the fact that the US and UK blocked the ascension of East Bloc currencies to the world market. That means that the Soviet Union had no choice; it had to sell its oil in US Dollars because no Western banks were permitted to hold Russian Rubles or trade in them.
That created a serious impediment, even more so as the price of oil declined, and with it, the Soviets revenues from the sale of oil on the world market. To illustrate how bad things got, at one point in the late 1970s, the Soviets let their wheat crops rot in the fields, because it was more cost effective to import wheat from the US than it was to divert oil to the Agricultural and Transportation segments of the economy.
The Soviet Union, and in fact all East Bloc States were also heavily politically corrupt, which exasperated the financial and economic conditions considerably.
In fact, the Soviet Union and all East Bloc countries effectively devolved into a Mafia State, where the government equated to the National Commission headed by the 5 Families of New York and New Jersey, and subordinate governmental elements were akin to Families and their Capo-regimes.
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Socialists are taking back what they said about the wonders of Russia and are now disqualifying the USSR because the state owned all of the businesses - not the people.
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That would be a reasonable conclusion. While Marx and Engels were long on theory, they were short on practical application, and never really discussed in any detail how Communism was supposed to work.
Communism was practical up to the 19th Century, but in the modern world it really has no place. Seriously, why would I even want people, like those on this forum, voting about financial and economic decisions? These people are stupid.
Who would give me $9 Million to research and develop MP3 Players? Sure, you say you would, but that's only because you know what an MP3 Player is. Perhaps one or two people would. Most of you wouldn't, and your parents certainly wouldn't approve and neither would the old skins running around in their motorized wheel chairs.
You got vacant factory space sitting idle, are you going to vote to allow it to be used to make shoes, or make televisions?
Good luck on that.
No matter what, you could never educate people to a point where even the majority could execute sound economic decisions, and so you'd always be mired in squalor.
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If that's such an important criterion, you can not brand Scandinavian states as socialist because there is no collective ownership of businesses there either.
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Another false statement. Socialism permits foreign ownership of Capital, Communism does not.
And those enterprises the State does own or control are owned by the collective, and if they don't like how the government is performing, I suppose than can elect other people or change the government until they get one that works for them.
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Members of the right who wish to call Obama's welfare state policies "socialist" may wish to calm down their rhetoric. Someone with that definition of socialism would be forced to include the Scandinavian countries, and that would imply that socialism works.
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This is a red herring. Taxachew****ts has 2 Million more people than Norway, 1 Million more than Denmark and Finland, and 2 Million less than Sweden, but can't seem to implement a health care system or other socialist services without bankrupting the State.
That might be the result of culture, as the author pointed out early, but culture is not something that can be changed over-night. It would take about 3 generations to eliminate the "entitlement" culture currently running amok in the US. That would be about 80 years at least.
Socialism can work on small scales, like the Scandinavian States, but 308 Million people isn't the same thing as 4 Million.
If Americans were so stupid as to be unable to understand that each State in the United States is a country; a sovereign entity unto itself, then perhaps each State could implement programs similar to the Scandinavian States and be somewhat successful.
However, that is not what the liberals in the US want. They want to abandon the federal system of government in favor of a unitary system like France or Romania. In reality, the US is only a quasi-federal system. It actually functions as a unitary state, where edicts and decrees flow from the national government to subordinate political sub-divisions, like
"You will enact seat-belt laws or highway construction and repair funds will be withheld from your State. You will raise the drinking age to 21 or highway construction and repair funds will be withheld from your State. You will offer bilingual programs to non-existent bilingual students or education funds will be withheld. You will do this or these funds will be withheld etc."
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The key to Scandinavian prosperity is free markets. It is not the child of a generous welfare state. Instead, free markets are able to provide a lot of wealth in culture of people who don't seek government as a source of wealth, and that's why the government is able to run a generous welfare state. Time will tell if that welfare state will corrupt the Scandinavian culture.
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Baseless conclusion. All three Economic Theories, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism are compatible with the Market Economic System (aka the Free-Market System). I used to say that no one attempted to marry Communist Theory with the Market System, but I forgot about the Amana Colonies in Iowa. They are a remnant of the glory days of Utopian societies in the US (scattered throughout Indiana, Illinois and Iowa). They were not a Communist State, but they were a Communist entity, a community. They had the Amana Corporation, which manufactured the Amana Radar Range, a microwave oven sold on the market in beginning in the mid-1970s. That would be an example, but that is a small community, not a State with 308 Million people. I don't know how successful they still are or even if they still produce the Amana Radar Range, but that was company owned by the collective, ie the community, those residing in the Amana colonies, and by the employees of the company.
There are many Socialist States that employ the Market System, yet not all are successful. Spain and Greece certainly aren't, and neither was Italy (and how many people remember the devaluation of the Italian Lira?).
As a "former newspaper editor" the guy is a moron, or a clever propagandist and disinformation artist. He needs to study the words "compare" and "contrast."
One compares two things that are similar, but contrasts two things that are different. One cannot compare the US to the Scandinavian countries, rather one can only contrast, since they are vastly different, not only in population, but the fact that they are Nation-States, instead of a State, and numerous other differences, such as immigration law etc.
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