# Shooting for Sweden, Hitting Venezuela **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 7, 2018, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952 "2018-09-07T16:46:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/21 "2018-09-07T18:53:59Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > 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) The wording is not mine. Bernie Sanders came in second in the Democrat primary and he calls himself a socialist. He says this ““In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia” Venezuela is not much more socialist than Scandinavia, only 30% of the economy is nationalized, the rest is private sector that is heavily regulated. The regulations are much more onerous but the actual ownership is still private. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/22 "2018-09-07T18:59:23Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > 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? Mom and pop stores does not outcompete Wallmart. The local coffeshop does not outcompete Starbucks. The economics of scale go the other way. It gets **easier and cheaper** the larger you are. Also, we can observe scaling in healthcare from places like Iceland (300k people) to Finland (5 mill) to Germany (80 mill) to Japan (125 mill). There is no indication it’ll start to work in reverse beyond that. > [@Slash1972](#): > > 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” The US is pretty middle of the road in homogenousness. If that is a word. The US ethnic fault lines just run along a very visible feature, skin color. So nations with different fault lines look homogeneous to US eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/23 "2018-09-07T19:01:53Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The wording is not mine. Bernie Sanders came in second in the Democrat primary and he calls himself a socialist. He says this ““In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia” > Venezuela is not much more socialist than Scandinavia, only 30% of the economy is nationalized, the rest is private sector that is heavily regulated. The regulations are much more onerous but the actual ownership is still private. If you are using a standard of measure that makes you think Venezuelas economy is the same as Scandinavia it should be immediately obvious that you need a different standard. And you should probably not put all that much faith in the terms a politician uses when talking to voters. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/24 "2018-09-07T19:02:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think it’s another debate about guns. Maybe… more like Scandinavia and not like Venezuela … …g…u…n …g…u…n…z… meant to impoverish the country, starve its people, and cause a mass exodus. What I did glean, while looking for “G u n s,” is that the Swedes are smarter than Americans because they have low corporate income taxes. But I thought Trump Made Corporate Taxcuts Great Again. 😕 Too little too late? ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/25 "2018-09-07T19:03:02Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > 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” Sweden has 9 million people. The US has 325 million or so, so about 1/36 of our population. The largest country in the world with a practical and functioning universal healthcare system is Russia. They have 140 million or so. Their healthcare is very cyclical. After the collapse of the USSR, it greatly privatized and the public healthcare became essentially a shell. When Putin took power, he re-socialized healthcare and turned it into a fairly well functioning system. The economic difficulties since sanctions have made it much worse over the last few years. Japan might be a good country to look at. They have a semi-private healthcare system. Most people have insurance, but the government sets the prices that healthcare providers can charge. It’s basically a private system with strict oversight. ---
**Author:** ![etasyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9f8e36/32.png) [@etasyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etasyde)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/26 "2018-09-07T19:07:09Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The wording is not mine. Bernie Sanders came in second in the Democrat primary and he calls himself a socialist. He says this ““In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia” > Venezuela is not much more socialist than Scandinavia, only 30% of the economy is nationalized, the rest is private sector that is heavily regulated. The regulations are much more onerous but the actual ownership is still private. Socialism does not have one definition, and the right is guilty of the most **extreme equivocation imaginable** when it comes to the topic of socialism. Socialism is a _very_ broad index of categories, but the word gets used at every level. When Bernie Sanders says he is a Socialist, he means his policies fall under the extremely broad category of Socialism, _not_ for instance the much more narrowly defined group of ideas called Marxism, which is a subset of Socialism. Now sure, Marx dubbed Communism and Socialism as synonyms (much to the chagrin of the _other_ contemporary Socialists who thought he was an insane, dangerous radical. Think of it in the same way that cats are a subset of animals, but talking about cats does nothing to help you understand sharks. Socialism does not require or advocate the end of private property. Nor does it require or advocate the end of private ownership of the means of production. **A lot of socialists do** , and Marx most definitely did, but just because a lot of animals have fur does not mean _sharks_ also do. So Bernie is a Socialist, Sweden is Socialistic, and neither advocate for the end of private ownership of the means of production. Your measure is broken because you are trying to count the number of hairs on a shark. Venezeula is a lot more _Marxist_ than Sweden. It follows a very different branch of Socialism. Notice the constant talk about “revolution.” Democratic Socialists rejected the Marxian call for revolutionary Socialism. You wont hear a Swedish person walking around talking about “revolutionary ideas” or the “counter-revolution.” They’re totally different branches, like different subclades of a phylogenetic tree. To have any chance of understanding anything anyone on the left is even talking about, you need to understand how they use language (and history - Socialism predates Marxism, and you only seem familiar with Marxism). ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/27 "2018-09-07T19:07:37Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The wording is not mine. If you did not write the words in that post, then who did? ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/28 "2018-09-07T19:07:44Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Sweden has 9 million people. The US has 325 million or so, so about 1/36 of our population. The largest country in the world with a practical and functioning universal healthcare system is Russia. They have 140 million or so. Their healthcare is very cyclical. After the collapse of the USSR, it greatly privatized and the public healthcare became essentially a shell. When Putin took power, he re-socialized healthcare and turned it into a fairly well functioning system. The economic difficulties since sanctions have made it much worse over the last few years. > > Japan might be a good country to look at. They have a semi-private healthcare system. Most people have insurance, but the government sets the prices that healthcare providers can charge. It’s basically a private system with strict oversight. In general, you will find population density have a lot more impact on healthcare costs than the absolute size of the population. We can follow how it scales from small countries to large and there does not seem to be any surprises. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/29 "2018-09-07T19:09:03Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > 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? This ignores individuals. Half of the country would pay alot more in taxes and get no better or worse healthcare. Right now paying more for health care gets you more healthcare, if there was single payer paying more taxes would not get you more healthcare. This means that would have every incentive to minimize their taxes and that means increased dead weight loss. Meanwhile, the reason that other countries have cheaper systems is that there costs have been growing slower for 50-60 years. Changing our system to theirs would not make anything cheaper right away without huge cuts in payments or services. Any familiarity with government in the US would show that huge cuts in payments to doctors or nurses are not feasible and any cuts to services would lead to massive outcry. America is the greatest country in the world, but that does not mean our government is all powerful or even all competent. Governing a huge diverse country with 4-10 times the population of most European countries is a much more difficult job. Just because France was able to dig a tunnel to England does not mean America needs to try. Acknowledging constraints is a much better strategy than pretending they are not there. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/30 "2018-09-07T19:13:00Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This ignores individuals. Half of the country would pay alot more in taxes and get no better or worse healthcare. Right now paying more for health care gets you more healthcare, if there was single payer paying more taxes would not get you more healthcare. This means that would have every incentive to minimize their taxes and that means increased dead weight loss. Meanwhile, the reason that other countries have cheaper systems is that there costs have been growing slower for 50-60 years. Changing our system to theirs would not make anything cheaper right away without huge cuts in payments or services. Any familiarity with government in the US would show that huge cuts in payments to doctors or nurses are not feasible and any cuts to services would lead to massive outcry. > America is the greatest country in the world, but that does not mean our government is all powerful or even all competent. Governing a huge diverse country with 4-10 times the population of most European countries is a much more difficult job. Just because France was able to dig a tunnel to England does not mean America needs to try. Acknowledging constraints is a much better strategy than pretending they are not there. Are you even reading other peoples posts? You already pay more in taxes for healthcare than full UHC costs, while only covering a third of the population. Because your current system is such an unbelievable mess. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/31 "2018-09-07T19:23:42Z")
> [@etasyde](#): > > Socialism does not have one definition, and the right is guilty of the most **extreme equivocation imaginable** when it comes to the topic of socialism. > > Socialism is a _very_ broad index of categories, but the word gets used at every level. When Bernie Sanders says he is a Socialist, he means his policies fall under the extremely broad category of Socialism, _not_ for instance the much more narrowly defined group of ideas called Marxism, which is a subset of Socialism. Now sure, Marx dubbed Communism and Socialism as synonyms (much to the chagrin of the _other_ contemporary Socialists who thought he was an insane, dangerous radical. Think of it in the same way that cats are a subset of animals, but talking about cats does nothing to help you understand sharks. > > Socialism does not require or advocate the end of private property. Nor does it require or advocate the end of private ownership of the means of production. **A lot of socialists do** , and Marx most definitely did, but just because a lot of animals have fur does not mean _sharks_ also do. So Bernie is a Socialist, Sweden is Socialistic, and neither advocate for the end of private ownership of the means of production. Your measure is broken because you are trying to count the number of hairs on a shark. > > Venezeula is a lot more _Marxist_ than Sweden. It follows a very different branch of Socialism. Notice the constant talk about “revolution.” Democratic Socialists rejected the Marxian call for revolutionary Socialism. You wont hear a Swedish person walking around talking about “revolutionary ideas” or the “counter-revolution.” They’re totally different branches, like different subclades of a phylogenetic tree. To have any chance of understanding anything anyone on the left is even talking about, you need to understand how they use language (and history - Socialism predates Marxism, and you only seem familiar with Marxism). As you say, socialism means different things to different people. There are many flavors and degrees of socialism. In America those like Sanders and his ilk, are calling what they want democratic socialism and have praised Scandinavia while criticizing and rejecting Venezuela. However, as I said in the OP it does not matter what the goal is, what matters is what the policies are and where those policies lead. Most mainstream American socialists are not Marxists but social democrats whose preferred outcome is the nordic model. However, the constraints of the US government mean that when their policies cause and economic crisis they would not be able to pivot back to capitalism as easily as the Nordics did. What doomed Venezuela was not their embrace of revolutionary rhetoric but inability to correct their course back to capitalism when the money started running out. Given these constraints it matters less what flavor or phylum the brand of American socialism is, what matters more is how fast America can go back to capitalism. The recent history of the US government shows that the process would be slow and painful. Thus the best course of action is to keep from going down that path at all. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/32 "2018-09-07T19:31:32Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > Are you even reading other peoples posts? You already pay more in taxes for healthcare than full UHC costs, while only covering a third of the population. Because your current system is such an unbelievable mess. I must have missed the post about the magical foreign healthcare dust that will suddenly cause everything to be one sixth the price. Full UHC costs vary by country, Canada pays 4 times the cost per person that Mexico does. Is Canada getting gouged by its healthcare system and why don’t they switch to Mexico’s system and pay one quarter what they are paying now? In order to pay for the US system to go to Medicare for all costs would at least be 3.2 trillion a year and more likely would be 3.6 trillion a year. Any attempt to cut the US healthcare cost by a huge percentage would result in chaos. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/33 "2018-09-07T19:32:50Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > 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. We’ve had proposals for balanced budgets in the U.S. that involve matching revenues to expected levels of spending. Instead, conservatives when they are in power cut taxes, increase military spending, and increase deficits. Every country has its own quirks. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/34 "2018-09-07T19:45:06Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > I must have missed the post about the magical foreign healthcare dust that will suddenly cause everything to be one sixth the price. > Full UHC costs vary by country, Canada pays 4 times the cost per person that Mexico does. Is Canada getting gouged by its healthcare system and why don’t they switch to Mexico’s system and pay one quarter what they are paying now? > In order to pay for the US system to go to Medicare for all costs would at least be 3.2 trillion a year and more likely would be 3.6 trillion a year. Any attempt to cut the US healthcare cost by a huge percentage would result in chaos. Mexicos cost are low because Mexico is poor. Canada is rich and still spend half what you do. One half the price is setting normal, actually. In 2016, Canada spent 4 700 per person, the UK 4200, Sweden 5 400, Japan 4 500, Finland 4 000, Ireland 5 500. Us costs are approaching 10 500. Your public, tax-paid costs are 5 000 per citizen. Thats more than the public plus private costs of the average OECD nation. We **know** what it costs to run a UHC system. It is a totally unremarkable thing in the developed world. We **know it is less than you spend on just the public health care.** This is stuff that was done as a matter of course by Silvio Berlusconis Italy. Also you already spend more than 3,2 trillion! ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/35 "2018-09-07T19:50:31Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > Mexicos cost are low because Mexico is poor. Canada is rich and still spend half what you do. > > One half the price is setting normal, actually. In 2016, Canada spent 4 700 per person, the UK 4200, Sweden 5 400, Japan 4 500, Finland 4 000, Ireland 5 500. Us costs are approaching 10 500. Your public, tax-paid costs are 5 000 per citizen. Thats more than the public plus private costs of the average OECD nation. We **know** what it costs to run a UHC system. It is a totally unremarkable thing in the developed world. We **know it is less than you spend on just the public health care.** This is stuff that was done as a matter of course by Silvio Berlusconis Italy. > > Also you already spend more than 3,2 trillion! Italy spends 62% of what Ireland spends. They have different systems and the costs are different. The US spends alot more than most because it has a different system, changing who pays will not change the system. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/36 "2018-09-07T19:57:48Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Block of text is unreadable. With paragraph line breaks I’ll try reading, but my eyes can’t handle that. Do you even need to read it? The reason Sweden is successful and Venezuela is a mess is that Sweden is a democracy where the rule of law is respected and an openly corrupt official would go to prison, while Venezuela isn’t. The two countries’ economic approaches - which are not the same, but whatever - have little to do with that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/37 "2018-09-07T19:58:25Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Italy spends 62% of what Ireland spends. They have different systems and the costs are different. The US spends alot more than most because it has a different system, changing who pays will not change the system. It will still be cheaper for all. [QUOTE] A recent study said that single payer Medicare for everybody would cost the government A LOT of money. But it would also $2 TRILLION less than the way we do things now. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/38 "2018-09-07T20:03:28Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > Mexicos cost are low because Mexico is poor. Canada is rich and still spend half what you do. > > One half the price is setting normal, actually. In 2016, Canada spent 4 700 per person, the UK 4200, Sweden 5 400, Japan 4 500, Finland 4 000, Ireland 5 500. Us costs are approaching 10 500. Your public, tax-paid costs are 5 000 per citizen. Thats more than the public plus private costs of the average OECD nation. We **know** what it costs to run a UHC system. It is a totally unremarkable thing in the developed world. We **know it is less than you spend on just the public health care.** This is stuff that was done as a matter of course by Silvio Berlusconis Italy. > > Also you already spend more than 3,2 trillion! It’s a simplification. What is going on in the US is that we pay healthcare providers more for their services than in other countries. Our physician and nurses salaries are the highest in the world. Physician salaries especially are incredibly high in comparison to their European counterparts (Why is always the question, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the AMA acts like a cartel in the US and limits the number of practitioners via statute.) Due to the amount that we pay, we’re also innovation centers that effectively subsidize research to the rest of the world. Pharmaceuticals is one of the easiest places to see this. Pharmaceutical companies basically run their development budgets off of the US market. Non-US countries move to generics much more quickly and so US consumers are footing the bill for research costs via higher drug costs. It’s a situation where the rest of the world likes to shake their head at the US paying so much, but they really don’t want to see the US stop paying so much either. In many ways, it’s the US defense conundrum. Everyone agrees that the US spends far too much on defense, but nobody really wants to see the US spend less either. The world likes having a relatively stable democracy that is committed to maintaining existing world borders having not just a big military, but an effectively unbeatable one. In a similar way, everyone agrees that the US spends too much on healthcare, but no one really wants to see a world where we stop spending so much. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/39 "2018-09-07T20:03:33Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > SWEDEN IS NOT SOCIALIST, can we please put that myth to rest? By the definition used by most conservatives and their news sources, Sweden is absolutely a socialist country. Words change meaning, and “socialist” now means “the government spends money in any way I don’t like.” ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952/40 "2018-09-07T20:09:34Z")
[quote=“GIGObuster, post:37, topic:820952”] It will still be cheaper for all. [/QUOTE] The best case scenario in the study is a reduction of 3.5% The recent study also included a more realistic projection that showed costs going up 100 billion dollars a year. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shooting-for-sweden-hitting-venezuela/820952.md?page=3)