Socialists in America says they want they US to be more like Scandinavia and not like Venezuela despite the fact that both are nominally socialist or social democracies.
However, having a goal does not mean you can meet that goal, I am sure no one involved in Venezuelan politics ever meant to impoverish the country, starve its people, and cause a mass exodus. What they say they wanted is the same as all socialists want, a better life for the poor and a more equal society. Venezuela was a relatively rich country for much of the 20th century but it was very unequal, split between poor mestizos and the richer whites who ran the oil industry and were accused of running the government and ignoring the poor. When the socialists first took power they took money from the oil sector and used it to help poor people. At first it seemed to work and the lives of the poor improved. However, the oil sector suffered and people started to complain. These people were replaced with political loyalists and the oil sector got worse. Declining oil prices and lowered output from the poorly run oil company meant less money available for the government’s social programs. The government responded by printing more money to keep the social programs going. This caused inflation, which the government blamed on greedy store owners and passed laws to keep prices down. This meant that stores could only sell items for less than they bought them for and massive shortages ensued. People starve because food is unavailable and die because medicine is unavailable. Yet the government continues its failed policies and blames enemies domestic and foreign for what is happening.
Contrast this with Sweden. Since the Great Depression Swedish politics has been dominated by the Social Democrat party which got between 44.6% and 46.2% of the vote every year between 1936 and 1985 and had 44 years of uninterrupted power. Despite this dominance they ruled with an emphasis on consensus and invited input from the two other parties on major decisions. Because of its neutrality, Sweden was able to trade with both sides during WW2 and emerged a rich country with its infrastructure intact. It was the 5th richest country in the world in 1960, trailing only the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Luxembourg. They used this wealth to create one of the most extensive welfare states in the world. They were able to keep the social spending going until 1990 when growth had slowed so much that they had fallen to 13th wealthiest and the deficit ballooned to 15% of GDP. A real estate bubble burst and Sweden went into a deep recession with GDP falling 5% in two years and total employment falling by 10%. The Swedish government acted decisively to shore up the banking system and then reform its economy and welfare system. It capped government spending, It liberalized rules for retirement homes, childcare centers, and private schools. It changed the retirement system from a defined benefit system to one that incentived working longer. They still have very high taxes compared to the US, except for the corporate tax which was significantly lower until the US changed it rate earlier this year. However, they are now ranked the 15th most economically free country in the world ahead of the US. The Swedish economy since the reforms has been one of the best performing in Europe and this growth along with the savings from the reform have allowed them to fund a relatively generous welfare state.
Which society is more like the United States, Venezuela with its history of inequality, racial division, and the inability of its government to admit mistakes and to make changes, or Sweden with its history of consensus government, homogeneity, and ability of its government to quickly and decisively make needed reforms regardless of the party in power?
While the US is nowhere near the basket case of Venezuela economically, it is much closer to them in many respects. The US is a violent, unequal society, split by race and by partisanship. The federal government, by design, is very difficult to make large changes. It has two parties more interested in blaming the other than actual governing and neither party seems to have no interest in admitting mistakes and fixing them. A great example is Head Start, it was started in 1965 to help poor children achieve academically. In 2000 the government commissioned a ten year study to assess how it was achieving those goals. The study found that Head Start had no lasting positive impact on student academics. Since that study funding has increased from 5.2 billion a year to 9.8 billion a year, and there has been no serious effort to either reform or end the program. Most Democrats want to expand the program to include all children and the Republicans just voted a 200 million dollar increase in the budget. Another example is the Medicare doc fix, a program that was supposed to rein in the US’s highest in the world healthcare spending. It was passed during a spasm of budgetary responsibility, the medical lobby then went to work and got the spending cuts delayed every year for 17 straight years under both parties and then repealed. Interest on the national debt is forecasted to reach 1 trillion dollars a year in a little over a decade and yet there is no serious movement to either rein in spending or raise taxes on anyone other than the rich. There is no political will to make changes to programs that are popular with a large enough section of the voters.
Were any of the democratic socialist’s agenda passed, Medicare for all, job guarantee, free college, etc the deficit would increase so much that taxes would have to increase dramatically for everyone. These taxes would lead to a dramatic slowdown in economic growth, putting further strain on the ability to pay for the government spending. After a decade or so a crisis would come such as what Sweden faced in the early 90s or what Venezuela faced a few years ago. Politically it is much more likely that the US would then try for currency manipulation and price controls rather than fundamental government spending reform. It is unlikely to every get as bad as Venezuela but it would go in that direction.
That is why although Socialists and democratic socialist in the US say they want to move the country toward Denmark, what they would actually achieve is to make the country more like Venezuela.
Yet again, America (the great?) is incapable of doing anything that has been done somewhere else…
I’m… convinced?
Block of text is unreadable. With paragraph line breaks I’ll try reading, but my eyes can’t handle that.
I think it’s another debate about guns.
I didn’t read the OP, too many words too close together.
But, Venezuela and Sweden have fundamentally different forms of government and economies.
Venezuela has a socialist economy, meaning most (if not all) major industries are nationalized.
Sweden has a capitalist economy with a democratic government that has built a generous welfare state.
SWEDEN IS NOT SOCIALIST, can we please put that myth to rest?
Socialists in America says they want they US to be more like Scandinavia and not like Venezuela despite the fact that both are nominally socialist or social democracies.
However, having a goal does not mean you can meet that goal, I am sure no one involved in Venezuelan politics ever meant to impoverish the country, starve its people, and cause a mass exodus.
What they say they wanted is the same as all socialists want, a better life for the poor and a more equal society. Venezuela was a relatively rich country for much of the 20th century but it was very unequal, split between poor mestizos and the richer whites who ran the oil industry and were accused of running the government and ignoring the poor. When the socialists first took power they took money from the oil sector and used it to help poor people. At first it seemed to work and the lives of the poor improved. However, the oil sector suffered and people started to complain. These people were replaced with political loyalists and the oil sector got worse.
Declining oil prices and lowered output from the poorly run oil company meant less money available for the government’s social programs. The government responded by printing more money to keep the social programs going. This caused inflation, which the government blamed on greedy store owners and passed laws to keep prices down. This meant that stores could only sell items for less than they bought them for and massive shortages ensued. People starve because food is unavailable and die because medicine is unavailable. Yet the government continues its failed policies and blames enemies domestic and foreign for what is happening.
Contrast this with Sweden. Since the Great Depression Swedish politics has been dominated by the Social Democrat party which got between 44.6% and 46.2% of the vote every year between 1936 and 1985 and had 44 years of uninterrupted power. Despite this dominance they ruled with an emphasis on consensus and invited input from the two other parties on major decisions. Because of its neutrality, Sweden was able to trade with both sides during WW2 and emerged a rich country with its infrastructure intact. It was the 5th richest country in the world in 1960, trailing only the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Luxembourg. They used this wealth to create one of the most extensive welfare states in the world.
They were able to keep the social spending going until 1990 when growth had slowed so much that they had fallen to 13th wealthiest and the deficit ballooned to 15% of GDP. A real estate bubble burst and Sweden went into a deep recession with GDP falling 5% in two years and total employment falling by 10%. The Swedish government acted decisively to shore up the banking system and then reform its economy and welfare system. It capped government spending, It liberalized rules for retirement homes, childcare centers, and private schools. It changed the retirement system from a defined benefit system to one that incentived working longer. They still have very high taxes compared to the US, except for the corporate tax which was significantly lower until the US changed it rate earlier this year. However, they are now ranked the 15th most economically free country in the world ahead of the US. The Swedish economy since the reforms has been one of the best performing in Europe and this growth along with the savings from the reform have allowed them to fund a relatively generous welfare state.
Which society is more like the United States, Venezuela with its history of inequality, racial division, and the inability of its government to admit mistakes and to make changes, or Sweden with its history of consensus government, homogeneity, and ability of its government to quickly and decisively make needed reforms regardless of the party in power?
While the US is nowhere near the basket case of Venezuela economically, it is much closer to them in many respects. The US is a violent, unequal society, split by race and by partisanship. The federal government, by design, is very difficult to make large changes. It has two parties more interested in blaming the other than actual governing and neither party seems to have no interest in admitting mistakes and fixing them.
A great example is Head Start, it was started in 1965 to help poor children achieve academically. In 2000 the government commissioned a ten year study to assess how it was achieving those goals. The study found that Head Start had no lasting positive impact on student academics. Since that study funding has increased from 5.2 billion a year to 9.8 billion a year, and there has been no serious effort to either reform or end the program. Most Democrats want to expand the program to include all children and the Republicans just voted a 200 million dollar increase in the budget.
Another example is the Medicare doc fix, a program that was supposed to rein in the US’s highest in the world healthcare spending. It was passed during a spasm of budgetary responsibility, the medical lobby then went to work and got the spending cuts delayed every year for 17 straight years under both parties and then repealed. Interest on the national debt is forecasted to reach 1 trillion dollars a year in a little over a decade and yet there is no serious movement to either rein in spending or raise taxes on anyone other than the rich. There is no political will to make changes to programs that are popular with a large enough section of the voters.
Were any of the democratic socialist’s agenda passed, Medicare for all, job guarantee, free college, etc the deficit would increase so much that taxes would have to increase dramatically for everyone. These taxes would lead to a dramatic slowdown in economic growth, putting further strain on the ability to pay for the government spending. After a decade or so a crisis would come such as what Sweden faced in the early 90s or what Venezuela faced a few years ago. Politically it is much more likely that the US would then try for currency manipulation and price controls rather than fundamental government spending reform. It is unlikely to every get as bad as Venezuela but it would go in that direction.
That is why although Socialists and democratic socialist in the US say they want to move the country toward Denmark, what they would actually achieve is to make the country more like Venezuela.
To be fair, it looks like it was paragraphed, but the spaces between paragraphs were removed. That can happen for instance if composing in Wordpad which displays spaces between paragraphs by default but doesn’t actually insert them.
Anyway, one-word rebuttal to that wall of text: Canada. It’s a country with many historical, social, and cultural similarities to the US, but with a much more Scandinavian style of social welfare and social solidarity – for example, universal health care, a strong social safety net, and both contributory and non-contributory public pension schemes. This was achieved apparently without becoming just like Venezuela.
So the OP sounds to me a little like the early 60s pronouncements from conservatives, spearheaded by Ronald Reagan, about the horrors that would be unleashed by Medicare if it were ever enacted: “… we will awake to find that we have socialism … one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” :rolleyes:
Apparently Medicare would be the beginning of turning the the US into a version of the Soviet Union (that was the boogeyman then, today it’s Venezuela), the onset of communism, and the End of Days.
TLDR.
Dude, you wanna know the real reason “socialism” isn’t a dirty word in America any more? It’s that for 40 years the Conservative movement has branded everything they are against as “socialism”. Minimum wage? Socialism. Medicare? Socialism. Civil rights? Socialism. Clean air and clean water? Socialism. Uncontaminated food? Socialism. Roads? Socialism. Hospitals? Socialism. Puppies and kittens? Socialism.
So after 40 years of this, the youths of America have a different idea of what “socialism” means than old fuddy-duddies like you and I do. We think it means the chocolate ration being raised again and a boot stamping on a human face, forever. They think it means hospitals and civil rights.
When you have a sustained 40 year media campaign to redefine a word, don’t be surprised that the meaning of the word changes.
Canada is geographically close to the US but its polity is more Swedish. It has 10% the population of the US which responsive system of government. Like Sweden it made significant economic changes in a short period of time in the early 90s. It cut government spending by 20% over 5 years from 1993 to 1998 and its debt to GDP ratio when from 67% in 1994 to 31% in 2008 and has stayed there for a decade. It ran a government surplus for 11 straight years.
I don’t recall seeing this in the latest edition of Socialists in America Quarterly-from where did you get all this?
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for a long time. Everybody wants to compare the US to countries like Germany, UK, France, Sweden, etc.
Doing that is nothing but American arrogance. Who do we think we are? We’re “white trash with money” to paraphrase a country singer. It is much more accurate to compare the US to countries like Mexico, Brazil, etc.
Socialism works best when everyone agrees that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. That’s very difficult to do in a society fractured by division. The US has always been more libertarian than Europe. We believe much more strongly in the rights of the individual. There are lots of reasons for that, but suffice it to say that it’s true. The US generally feels that the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of the state unless there is extremely good cause. You can prove this to yourself by googling ‘Eminent Domain’ and then ‘Compulsory Purchase Order’. The first is the terminology the US uses for government requiring the sale of private land and the second is the terminology the UK uses. The first will get you pages of people ranting about government overreach and communities banding together to stop such purchases. There are literally whole organizations in the US that are designed to frustrate eminent domain. In the UK, you’ll get some definitions of what it is. You can also see it in how the US responds to hate speech.
What this means is that the US is tremendously tribal and fractured. We’ve learned to live with it, but it’s still true. At our core, Americans hate other Americans. Even socialist hippy Americans hate other Americans. We are very, very tribal and divide ourselves into ‘us’ and the ‘other’ very easily. We are mostly able to keep our tribalism in check to run a functioning society, but I doubt we’ll ever be able to rise above merely functioning. Our divides are more than just race. Republicans hate Democrats, Bernie-bros hate establishment Dems, rural people hate urban people, beer drinkers hate wine drinkers, people who listen to rock hate people who listen to rap, blue collar workers hate white collar workers, linesman hate engineers, atheists hate Christians, people with kids hate people with dogs, parents hate their kids, brothers hate their sisters, Yankee fans hate Red Sox fans. We don’t even get along with people who are basically just like us. West Side High School graduates hate East Side High School graduates even when they are demographically the same people. Pawnee hates Eagleton. and the list is essentially endless.
The practical implication of this is that Americans constantly live in a state of either smug satisfaction that they are better than whomever they define the other as or constant fear that the other has it out for them. This does not make a strong foundation for a socialist paradise. My guess is that even if the US version of socialists did take power, they would quickly temper their ambitions. When they sit down and realize that what socialism really means is that their taxes are going to go through the roof to support poor Mississippians, they’ll move the topic to something that is more easily swallowed. Mississippians on the other hand are so paranoid that the money would come with strings attached that would somehow benefit these now highly taxed ‘Yankees’ that they would end up rioting in the streets themselves.
You may joke and say that I’m exaggerating, but I assure you that our mutual antipathy toward one another is a real driving force of American politics. I’ll give you a great example. Part of our school funding is paid for via a mechanism called ‘excess levies.’ These are voluntary property tax increases that a community votes on that goes straight to the school board. Typically prior to the vote, the money has to be budgeted and you know fairly precisely where it goes. To me, voting yes is a no brainer. I pay a couple hundred bucks a year and every penny of it goes to having better schools. I live in a county that has passed the levy for the past 25 years and it shows. Roughly 1/4 of our school budget comes from this levy. Our schools are the best in the state on pretty much every ranking scale. We have three high schools and US News ranked them 1,3 and 13th best in the state. The 13th best is a little rural school with 60 graduates a year and the 1 and 3 both have about 400 graduates a year. Our students have higher rates of graduation, higher test scores and better college outcomes. This is solid and strong evidence that the levy helps and produces tangible educational and economic benefits. In some neighboring counties, they simply will not vote for it. They don’t want ‘their’ money going to kids from ‘other’ communities or they just don’t give a rip about the schools. In the next county over, they literally have a hole in the roof of one of their elementary schools that is currently being covered with a tarp and just in May they rejected their levy again. Americans just hate other Americans and we don’t have a desire to see other Americans succeed unless we’re guaranteed that we will succeed even more.
I think in some ways that’s why we have Trump. I think that many of his supporters feel that the government has always been out to benefit others at their expense. I think that a large subset of his supporters are willing to burn down their own house as long as their neighbor’s goes down with it. They may know that he’s inept, but he’s willing to focus his idiocy on people that they believe are ‘others’ and they’re willing to go down on that ship as long as the others end up going down with them. It’s why his popularity rating has a floor. There are those who honestly don’t give a rip about Russian collusion or cheating on his taxes or paying off porn stars as long as he’s flipping the bird to rich coastals as he’s being handcuffed. Anyway, I digress.
Bottom line is that America culturally is not at a point where socialism can succeed. Unfortunately, I think that we’re also at a point where capitalism is going to fail to succeed as well and I’m not sure where that leaves us.
TLDR: The reason we don’t have universal health care is because if we did, negroes would get it.
Pretty much, but not just black people. Poor people, dirty people, rich people, fat people, thin people, people from New Jersey, people who speak with an accent, our neighbors, our friend that makes .25 more an hour than we do, the janitor, Scientologists, Hollywood stars, people who like to eat cottage cheese, people who exercise too much, people who don’t exercise enough, people that watch soccer, people who let their kids play football, people who think that snow is pretty, people who hate snow, people who live at the beach, people who live in the mountains, white people with dreadlocks, black people who wear loafers, people that use beard wax, people that have both Confederate and American flags flying from the bumper of their truck, vegans. You name it, there are a lot of people that we would hate to have to pay money so they can go to the doctor, even if it means we get to go to the doctor as well.
Not true at all, it may have been true 50-60 years ago when healthcare was primitive and cheap. Now however, the price would be so high that it would mean double income taxes or the equivalent in new taxes. This would precipitate a huge economic crisis which are system of government and culture is not prepared to handle. Because of this constraint we need to be especially cautious of huge new expenditures.
You keep using those words, but I don’t think they mean what you think they do. They are not interchangeable and they do not even refer to the same class of things. They just sound alike.
Venezuela is socialist. Socialism is an economic setting. In theory it refers to common ownership of the means of production and distribution for the common benefit. In practice it tends to be a small government elite owning the means of production for their own benefit.
Scandinavia is Social democratic- It is a **social **setting, where large welfare systems aim to provide equality of opportunity and general welfare. In practice this often means strong welfare programs and heavy investment in growing and supporting the middle class.
These are totally different, despite the names sounding similar. Scandinavian social democracy is financed by a rather ferocious capitalism, and the Scandinavian social democracies are in some ways more capitalist than the US. Venezuela is the opposite of capitalist.
(Also often confused with the above: Democratic socialism. It means getting to socialism by democratic means. Many political parties in Scandinavia started out that way and ended up social democratic, which does confuse the issue a little)
You already pay more in taxes towards healthcare than UHC costs, in spite of enjoying huge economics of scale. And then you pay for privte insurance on top of that. It is because your system is optimized for generating a revenue flow rather than efficiency, and has snarled itself up in an ungody amount of bureaucracy.
Its being sustained by feeding people a kiddies version of how markets work that is to simplistic to actually work in practice, and avoiding any mention of basic health care economics. So people thing less regulation will help.
Dude.
Yes, it turns out that if health care was funded by the government it would mean higher taxes.
But then we could stop paying our private health insurance premiums.
If we spent the same amount on government health care as we do on private health care, we’d be spending the same amount, not more. But, I hear you saying, if we did have government health care the costs would just increase exponentially, because that’s how socialism works. We wouldn’t spend the same, we’d spend more.
As you know, Bob, the United States spends about twice as much on health care as comparable countries do, and has much worse public health outcomes. How is it that France or Germany or the UK or Japan or Canada can spend half as much on the socialist health care and get better public health outcomes than we can with our freedom capitalist system? If freedom capitalism is always better than socialism slavery, then WTF?
I thought America was the greatest country in the world? Are you telling me that America isn’t able to accomplish stuff that France handles effortlessly? What, we’re worse than France, is that what you’re telling me? What, are you chicken to try something France can do?
Completely false. Long term, single payer is cheaper for the government than what we have now. And if present healthcare costs instead went into a single payer system rather than insurer’s pockets, we’d be overpaying dramatically. Is it so hard to imagine that actually negotiating drug prices, collectively bargaining for healthcare costs (no more wild fluctuations between hospitals 2 blocks from each other) and not paying insurer’s zillions of simoleans for having their name on a company reduces costs?
The huge economic crisis is locked in already. I’ll be quite surprised if we don’t go through a crash in the next six months. Saying this would be a trigger doesn’t mean much when it’s already guaranteed because of utter stupidity (and incomprehensible levels of greed) elsewhere in the economy.
A reason I heard was because those countries have less than 1/3 of the population of the US. Scaling their health care programs up to our population won’t work. Anything to that?
Also, other countries with universal health care programs are homogenous, that’s why they work. Which, of course, means “They don’t have black people there screwing it up”