[QUOTE=Priceguy]
No, because of indications that thousands of prostitutes would be shipped in to Germany to cover the increased demand.
Hey, ya gotta let the free market work! 
Rune will take any potshot possible at Sweden, including using twisted op-eds and biased sources. Why he feels this hatred, I don’t know. Considering that the state sponsored racism of his home country is among the worst outside a totalitarian country in the world, I take any criticism coming from a Dane lightly.
As regard to the socialist vs capitalist debate, I think looking at “Public Revenue from Taxes and Social Security Contributions as Percentage of the Gross Domestic Product” gives a fair indication. For Sweden, it’s about 52% according t one source (Denmark is @ 50), and the US about 27 (link). I’ve seen other sources (but couldn’t find one right now) that puts the US @ 37% and Sweden @56.
Welfare state means re-distributing through taxation in an effort to even out differences, if it’s socialism, it’s an indirect form. However, the problem Sweden faces is that not enough people work in the private sector (where wealth is created) - the majority is working for the public sector and a lot of the tax revenue is used paying for publicly employed people, not helping those in need.
When it comes to health care, this means long waiting lists for non-emergency surgery, getting a hearing aid can take up to two years (if you don’t decide to pay for it yourself) and while day care for kids is cheap, in certain places, the waiting list is impossibly long and you have to commute to the day care in addition to the job commute.
All in all, it’s far from perfect, but it’s neither a very socialist place. We have election for the parliament comming up in September and it’s as even between the leftist welfare state proponents and the rightists coalition, that no poll can give any indication right now who will win. Clearly, a lot of people like this system and want to keeep it (though I suspect that the majority of those are public employees who want to hang on to their jobs).
With Bush? Oh yes, we are.
It’s legal in Britain. No law prevents payment for sex. However, operating a brothel (defined as any building housing two or more prostitutes), or soliciting for sex in public, are illegal.
Never forget that the public sector also creates wealth.
I’ve sometimes heard my brother (an engineer) complain that there are too many lawyers in America (on which point I agree) and that this is a bad thing because, “Lawyers don’t produce anything!” No, they don’t produce anything you can hold in your hands, but so what? Neither do retail clerks, waitresses, soldiers, police officers, firefighters – but they all perform valuable economic functions whose lack we would sorely miss. And so do civil servants of all kinds. OK, almost all kinds; I’m more than willing to entertain arguments that society would be better off if this or that particular agency were pared down or abolished. But that’s a matter of details and policy choices. In general, it’s true. I’m a public librarian myself, and if public libraries were abolished I don’t believe for a moment the private sector could or would fill that void. There are private-sector businesses that do something similar – bookstores – and there’s need for both and room for both, but there are important differences between the two. And when I help people meet their daily needs for information, education or entertainment (at no direct cost to the user), I am contributing to the wealth of our society.
So there.
So it’s call girls only?
(IME, BTW, Rune generally comes down harder on his own Denmark than on any other country. On its government, that is.)
Being a public employee as well, after 20 yeas in the private sector, I realize this to be true. Without public road a lot of private companies would have a hard time conducting any kind of business, without schools, training kids for a life as part of the workforce, the companies would have to pay for the education themselves.
However, when the ratio of public to private employees is about 2 to 1, I think the public sector is using too much of the common revenue.
As for your comment about Rune, do a search on his username and “Sweden” and you’ll see that he has a history of slamming Sweden. Maybe my country deserves it, I sure don’t think it’s perfect. However, the quality of his cites are less than stellar.
BTW, here’s a (perhaps biased) cite about Swedes and suicide. Here’s another that seems to thoroughly debunk that myth. Denmark comes in slightly ahead of Sweden.
And I for one find it very hard to believe. In Sweden, there are no tuition costs or other costs of education. There is no way there can be less social mobility in Sweden.
By the way, Charlie Tan: Have you just lurked the last four years or so? I can’t believe I’ve missed another Scanian with your post count for so long.
Remember, also (and this relates to this old thread about whether retirees really place a “burden” on the economy), that government employees (and, for that matter, recipients of government aid) do not simply burn their salaries. They spend them – stimulating the economy, providing work and opportunities for others, keeping the wheels spinning 'round and 'round.
Take it all around, the relationship of the public sector to the private sector is symbiotic, not parasitic. (You could make a case for the existence of some parasites in government, of course – and an even better case WRT to many private businesscritters.)
Check my sig.
Ah. I have signatures turned off. I know you as The Gaspode.
Thought I covered that.
Sorry if it wasn’t more clear.
My bad, I didn’t read all of all of your posts before posting my own.
Of course, the fact still merits emphasis by way of repetition.
What country is ever “satisfied” with occupation by the enemy? They had no choice! They kept their government in order to retain what little control they had. For one thing, they continued to punished anti-Semitic crimes.
When the government did resign in the summer of 1943, it was because the Germans were finally going to ban all of the rebellious things that they and the other citizens of Denmark and been doing during the “light” occupation:
The article contains much more supporting evidence. The greatest evidence of all that Denmark was not at “Axis country” was that they lost only 116 Jews to the Holocaust.
Sorry for the sidetrack, but for a short time I lived in Denmark long ago with people who lived through the war. I doubt their memories were unique. The Danes were very proud of the resistance movement.
I truly don’t know how different other Scandanavian countries are from Denmark, but I was extremely impressed by the work ethic there. Everyone I met – both male and female – worked and took pride in it. I did not see any areas of poverty and I did travel extensively around Denmark. The other thing that was so noticeable was its cleanliness.
Yes, citizens pay an enormous amount in taxes. But prices on merchandize in general were much lower because they weren’t paying the price for a manufacturer to pay for his employees to have insurance. And no one ever worried about health care costs or what would become of their elderly parents. It was amazing. The standard of living seemed to be as high as ours.
I would think that the suicide rate might be particularly high in the winter. For a while it was dark until 9 am and got dark again at 3 pm. For someone with seasonal affective disorder, it would be very difficult to keep the body chemistry in balance during the colder months. You would think that would balance out during the long summer days, but who knows?
Again, my experience in Scandanavia was long ago, but I was enormously impressed with the country and the contentment of the people I met there.
Of course it does. I think we are on the same page in this matter. What pisses me off is so many attack insurance companies for high premiums, when those very premiums are based on what a clinic/hospital charges for services. The hospitals/clinics base fees on what they pay the providers, and the providers all have to carry heavy liability insurance to fend off lawsuits.
I’ll defend the quality of health care available in the US to no end. I’ll also defend to no end the fact that whatever problems we have with health care are not because of the government. With all due respect to those in Canada, France and England, at least you can blame Ottawa, Paris and London.
We have to divvy up te blame between 7 figure income administrators and more lawyers than you can comprehend.
How many hospitals do you have in a 20 square mile area? How much is being paid to the upper eschelon? How many poor folk could be treated for that amount?
I’d love an altruistic health care system that treats everyone that needs help. It pisses me off that a country as rich as we are can’t seem to pull it off. I attribute that to what I mentioned above, but that’s a seperate debate.
One thing to keep in mind is the amount of money spent through public and private funds for health care by Americans in countries other than the US. Please keep in mind if the situation were that bad here, we’d hear daily from activist groups decrying how we’re taking care of others while our own die in the streets.
Again, a seperate debate I’m sure. And apologies if this seems like a hijack.
Putting that in perspective: When Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin, Churchill declared, “If Hitler were to invade Hell I would seek an alliance with the Devil.” (Or so 'twas portrayed in [miniseries – I’ve no other cite than that but it sounds plausible.) But many British and American conservatives saw it just in reverse, and thought of Hitler as a bulwark against Communism. From [url=George Orwell: Part I: England Your England]The Lion and the Unicorn,](]Winds of War[/url) by George Orwell (1941):
As for Americans, consider Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.
I don’t know what force Danish or Swedish conservatism, or fear of Communism, played in those countries’ decisions to cooperate with Hitler to the extent that they did. (No doubt some ScanDoper can fill in the details there.) I think it likely they played some role. But in any case, I would make allowances for the fact that Swedes and Danes – not just the ruling classes, but all of them – were under an even more direct imminent threat from him than the British were.
Just for the record, the signatories of the anti-Cominterm Pact of 1941 were Germany, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Manchuko, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Slovakia, and the Japanese puppet government in China
There’s no doubt in my mind what played on Denmark’s decisions to cooperate with Hitler was the fear of Hitler. The Danes knew that they were an occupied country, and that only German whim kept the Germans from disbanding their government and ruling them directly (and, in fact, Germany would go on to do that). So, under the circumstances, I don’t think you can blame the Danish government for doing what it did.
The Swedes wern’t combatants in the war at all.
True, but that was Hitler’s decision to make, not theirs, and some in this thread have criticized them for collaboration.
Well, I was not suggesting the UK or U.S. ever joined it. But some influential persons in both countries unquestionably leaned that way. As Churchill said at an earlier stage in his career, “Against the Bolsheviks all methods are good.”