There is nothing wrong with us Socialists.
What’s wrong with you?
Ahem - if I may ?
Denmark (or Sweden, or Norway) isn’t socialist in the sense that the workers (or, for that matter, the state) have taken control of the means of production. Actually, some of the old state-owned monopolies have been privatized lately - the telcos (bought by an American company, BTW), the ferry lines, parts of the public transportation system etc.
It’s more of a “socialism lite”, in that (murderous) taxes are levied and redistributed in cunning ways, putting just about everyone at least partially on the public payroll. Medicine is socialized (and could work better, BTW), you can actually live off social security, the blue-collar work force is heavily unionized etc. etc.
As long as most people are determined to make the most of their talents, a system like this can work quite well. When too many people start sucking the public teat, it goes downhill fast - because these people can (and do) vote, a once-won privilege can never ever be rescinded.
To touch lightly on the OP: Having a bunch of parties in our parliament means that even the most hard-core communists sometimes get a seat in parliament. Of course they’ll never get a government seat, but they are very good whistle-blowers when the governing mainstream parties start bending the rules. And sometimes they are able to nudge decisions in the right direction - I wouldn’t want them to get at real power, but they have a positive influence, at least some of the time.
even sven:
Thor Heyerdahl is at it again ? (He’s Norwegeian, BTW, but that’s an honest mistake). Give the raft a nudge in the general direction of Easter Island, would you ?
S. Norman
Is that a necessary condition of socialism? No, only of one variety of socialism. There are plenty of non-marxist strains of thought.
Vast overgeneralization and exageration alert.
collounsbury:
OK, colour me confused. The “collective ownership of the means of production” used to be the holy grail of the Socialists I’ve met.
http://www.dictionary.com states:
Of course, if you classify Social Democrats as Socialists, the picture changes a bit.
As for overgeneralization: Obviously, describing an economical system in two sentences calls for oversimplification.
Yet, Denmark at least is rapidly moving towards a situation where more than half of the voters are either directly supported by public funds (pensions, social security etc.) or employed by the public. I’m posting from work, but I’ll be happy to find the stats when I get home.
Plenty of additional people get a little hand-out from the state as well: Parents, tenants, farmers, students etc.
And is calling 50-60% taxes with 25% VAT murderous really that much of an exaggeration ?
S. Norman
I should point out that most Socialist countries that have decent standards of living have borrowed their way into them. Many of these countries are carrying absolutely ruinous levels of debt. What has been saving them is the sustained economic growth that has been going on around the world, coupled with low interest rates.
Canada, for example, had an astounding debt of 71.2% of our GDP in 1995. It’s now down to 55%, but only because our GDP is growing, and not because the debt has been substantially shrinking.
Our budget for 2000 has total government revenue of 160 billion dollars, with 41 billion dollars going to pay INTEREST on our debt.
That’s what our socialized programs has gotten us. We owe 578 billion dollars. 25% of our government’s budget goes just to interest on the debt. What do you think that does to us in terms of world competitiveness? If we reduced our social program spending to match the U.S. exactly, we’d still have to tax our citizens 25% more to pay the interest on our accumulated debt. That’s 25% less that our citizens can spend on innovation, entrepreneurship, etc.
The other ‘social democracies’ are in the same situation. What this means is that while their standards of living may be roughly equal to the U.S. now, they sure won’t be 20 years from now.
Also, countries like Canada are much more sensitive to interest rates. If interest rates jump 2 points, it’ll add about 11 billion dollars to our debt servicing costs, or about 7% of our entire government budget.
We are also very recession-sensitive. Should our GDP shrink at all, our debt/GDP ratio will skyrocket.
Paying off our debt is going to be extremely difficult. The current government’s debt reduction scheme has us paying it off in something like 350 years.
The U.S. has a debt problem as well, but it’s nowhere near the level of most other G-7 countries.
We mortgaged our future - you still have yours.
As far as what I said: the US backed the military regimes that Castro was revolting against. It’s a no-win situation.
They gave money to the right wing thugs in Latin America.
There is still a military base in Cuba that belongs to the US, I believe.
I’m not saying we are directly responsible for their current economy. What I am saying is that in the past, we supported the very conditions that made everyone there so miserable, which is why Castro became so damn popular.
Canada is not a “socialist” country in the sense the OP’s “friends” meant. The existence of public debt or social programs or government boondoggles - and the U.S. has them in spades, just like Canada - is typical of all free market democracies.
The people who protest at universities want SOCIALISM. They want an end to capitalist banks, workers controlling all means of production, no millionaires, mass state control of the economy, universal pay, the whole nine yards. The difference between Canada and the U.S. is relatively trivial; these guys want to be Cuba, not Canada.
suppose you look at the competition between the US and the USSR as a car race. both cars are badly designed and poorly maintained. the cars go as fast as possible and one finally breaks down. the question is how long b4 the other breaks down. the national debt was created by the military competition, star wars nonsense under reagan. the middle class has been shrinking according to some sources, mostly falling out the bottom. the bankruptcy rate has been rising since 1994 according to the economist magazine. the boomers will be retiring soon and the capitalist economists can’t do grammar school algebra.
Dal Timgar
Not really. It’s kind of like the Democratic republic of Kampuchea not really being democratic.
dal_timgar get real. Are you telling me the USA and the rest of the capitalist world are about to collapse like the USSR? Should I start stockpiling groceries?
First, you can’t just declare that two things are analogous, then use that as a premise for the rest of your argument. Well, you can, but it isn’t exactly logical. I say they’re not like cars but that the US is like the bottle of Wild Turkey sitting to my right, while the USSR is like the bottle of Brasso on my desk. Without any logical explanation, I don’t see why my analogy is any worse than yours.
Second, as I recall from some other thread, your argument for capitalist economists not being able to do algebra was based on the fact that they calculate one statistic different than you think is appropriate. A couple self-described “capitalist economists” offered to prove that they could do algebra, but you never took them up on it. Without any evidence having been supplied by you, I don’t see any reason to even consider either of these points as having the slightest validity.
Third, sentences in English start with capital letters. If you’re not going to include even small vestiges of logical thought in your posts, you might want to try at least appearing to understand first grade English concepts. Generally, I skip your nonsense because of this, but this post snuck by me before I could stop myself.
IIRC, the US is also carrying a massive debt, obtained under our “model system for capitalism”. Which is not to say that we’re going to collapse any time soon–just like the somewhat socialized countries won’t.
I’m with Michael Moore on this one: who cares about the National Debt when many Americans can’t balance their own checkbooks?
[sub] this does not make me a raving commie; just a raving liberal who hates to see ridiculous theories tossed about [/sub]
the trouble with grammar school algebra is that it is so simple that it is either obviously correct or obviously incorrect. as i pointed out in my Economic Wargames essay economists have DEFINED DEPRECIATION as capital goods only. automobiles and other durable consumer goods DO WEAR OUT therfore depreciate. my essay is easy to find on the internet. just because somebody types at me doesn’t mean they’ve proven anything. i’ve discussed this with people with PhD’s who agree with me and the ECONOMISTS at my job just don’t talk to me about it. i have e-mailed the essay to over 300 economists by now, got 2 responses. a canadian called me a looney. i sent back, “you’ll never know how much it pains me to be called a looney by a member of a profession that can’t do grammar school algebra.” i never heard from him again. the other sent me what he called a critique. he said depreciation of cars wasn’t ignored i could look it up in a BLUE BOOK. since when do economists use data from a BLUE BOOK to compute the Net Domestic Product?
70 million cars were manufactured during the 50’s, what happened to all that depreciation. i say every auto company could make cars that last 30 years 500,000 miles and sell them for much less than current cars, but in order to do that they would have to stop the styling changes. it’s 30 years after the MOON LANDING, the american emotional fixation on antiquated technology is absurd.
i suggest you conduct an experiment yourself. use the internet to search for the phrase “depreciation of consumer goods”, see what you find.
Dal Timgar
p.s. anyone that wants can ignore mo posts for not putting capital lettrs at the beginning of sentences. i won’t mind.
Whenever third world socialist/dictatorships come up, socialist apologists blame capitalism. Either the US is a capitalist bastard reaching into the country in question depleting resources and robbing the people of their life and labor OR our refusal to trade with them is the cause of their poverty as it denies them a market for thier goods and deprives them of our valuable goods in trade. Some socialists actually make both arguments without a blush. Tolerance for contradiction and double standard is necessary to be an advocate of collectivism in the real world.
merckx
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I fail to see any relevance of depreciation of automobiles to this thread.
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Ecoomists told you you were wrong; congratulations for thinking you know more about their job than they do.
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There’s a reason we capitalize letters at the beginning of the sentence; it makes text less difficult to read.
You can’t even follow grammar school grammer.
People who live in glass houses…
I will ignore dal_timgar’s post, not because of the spelling but because it makes no sense to me or to any reasonable person I know.
I would agree getting into debt is generally a bad way to pay for things but sometimes justified. If it is a question of survival then it makes sense because you expect to survive and pay off the debt (for an individual this might mean emergency medical care, for a country a war, whether hot or cold).
But financing a better standard of living through debt is most foolish for individuals and for countries. To enjoy a cake today you forgo two cakes tomorrow. When tomorrow comes you have to give back two cakes plus you need another one to eat so you buy three cakes in exchange for the promise of returning six cakes in the future… you will go under very fast. The only time borrowing would be justified would be in an emergency from which one has a clear expectation of recovery (for an individual this might mean a short period of unemployment, for a country it might mean a pronounced dip in the economy but both should pay this debt off ASAP).
Borrowing for expenses is foolish. Borrowing to invest is another thing. If you borrow to pay for your education, you expect to earn more money in the future and so, the money spent on education is an investment. But if you take courses which will not increase your earning power, that is an expense, not an investment. If you borrow money to invest in a business where you expect to make more than the cost of borrowing, then it makes sense. If you borrow money to have a nicer looking car, that makes no sense.
If we are going to simplify and use labels I would say liberals would rather borrow for welfare programs and conservatives would rather borrow for emergencies and investment. I guess that makes me a conservative in this regard.
IIRC, economists say that at least some level of debt is actually healthy and beneficial to a country. Not that it makes any sense to me…
So student loans for people who major in philosophy is a bad idea, then?
Well, I’d say that conservatives (in simplest terms) would rather borrow for an enormous military budget, among other things.
Again, I fail to see why the national debt matters at all. At this point, just about every country has a massive one. Granted, it’s obvious that there’s a problem in some places with horrible economies and massive debt that prevents improvements in the quality of life–a number of African and South American nations come to mind, among others. Of course, half of the countries in this situation also have massive corruption, so not having debt would hardly be a saving grace. The US has debt, canada has debt, Denmark has debt…what’s it matter?
dal_timgar, you have now not only failed to support your ridiculous analogy, but have also committed several logical flaws in your last post. I’ll try to hit on a representative sampling of why you get ignored and insulted by everyone who understands logic and economics. And I’m certainly not going to expend the effort to find your essay on the internet, as I have yet to be convinced that you are capable of making a coherent argument on any matter.
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Economic indicators are defined to suit specific purposes. At best they are rough estimates of a mind-bogglingly complex system. Their purpose is to simplify. This is not algebra, it is making judgements as to which data are figured into a statistic. As you pointed out, the people trained in how to make those judgements almost unanimously disagree with you.
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This is not at all relevant to the discussion, except to support my point that nothing you say makes sense.
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It depends what they typed. Putting your fingers in your ears and saying that you still don’t believe is not a generally accepted debating tactic.
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You’re the one making baseless, unsupported claims here, you have to prove things to the rest of us. Economics in general is not wrong just because you disagree with it, with its supporters left to prove its validity to you.
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This is circular reasoning. You claim that economists can’t do grammar school algebra based on the fact that they define depreciation differently than you do. Then you ask them to read your essay on why depreciation should be defined differently. They disagree. You find their arguments wrong to be invalid, because they can’t do grammar school algebra. This argument is completely invalid without assuming it to be correct beforehand.
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You insult the profession you are trying to get to listen to you. While not exactly a flawed argument, it’s not exactly a way to be taken seriously.
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You also include hints of the ad hominem fallacy in here, in that you attack your opponents rather than their arguments. You can’t possibly expect name-calling to win arguments for you, assuming you aren’t in grammar school yourself still.
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When capitalist economists in another thread offered to prove that they could indeed do grammar school algebra, you didn’t take them up on the offer. As they say, “put up or shut up.” If you aren’t going to put this assertion to the test, stop making it.
People do generally stop responding to loonies who insult them (while I’m not going to make the assertion that you are a looney, obviously he thought you were). This shouldn’t surprise you.
It’s perhaps useful in figuring some economic indicators and not others.
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Are you going to provide any evidence for this claim, or are you again going to assume it must be true?
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Does the market want such cars?
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Do you know anything at all about the current state of automotive technology, or the prices and tradeoffs that doing so would entail.
What antiquated technology are you referring to? I mean, really, what the heck are you talking about, and how is it relevant to the tangent you went off on in your post (it obviously has nothing to do with the OP).
Why? I’m not interested in the subject. I honestly don’t care about depreciation of consumer goods, and you have failed to provide any reason (excluding circular arguments) for me to be concerned.
Actually, your straw men are kind of fun to knock down, if only to practice for when I argue with people who respect me enough to write so that I can read what they have to say. In your case, the lowercase text and bad grammar remove any obligation I might feel to show you any respect. You obviously don’t care about my comfort.
Are you going to defend your absurd analogy of the US and the USSR to cars? Please. I want to point out the circular reasoning you used there.
Well, if you found that confusing, try this. Maoist International Movement. Yes, I did say Maoist. No, it’s not a joke.
One of my favorite highlights:
After all, twenty million Chinese can’t be wrong.
One of Niven’s Laws states: No cause is so right that one cannot find a fool following it. A lesser known corollary to that law is that there is no cause so stupid that you can’t find someone to support it.
I even managed to make my 100[sup]th[/sup] post somewhat relevant. God, I need a life.
trusting in authority is central to the whole issue of the system breaking down. an authoritarian system depends on being BELIEVED. i took ECON 101 in the early 70’s, got a B, and did not notice the missing depreciation of durable consumer goods even tho i learned about planned obsolescence in cars while in grammar school. haven’t been to an auto show since '66. after reading THE SCREWING OF THE AVERAGE MAN by David Hapgood i decided there had to be something wrong with what i was taught and decided to read Samuelson’s Economics cover-to-cover to figure it out. since i worked in audio repair at the time noticing “durable” consumer junk being thrown away was part of my psyche. so 5 pages after reading the Net National Product equation it occured to me. what happened to all the consumer depreciation? this is really not a new concept, just a different mathematical explanation of it. some other old farts may be familiar with THE WASTEMAKERS by Vance Packard from the late 50’s.
the economists are TAUGHT an incorrect equation. but like most students, they TRUST IN AUTHORITY. the schools are intellectual lemming factories.
since cars are a product of mechanical engineering and therefore applied physics, and since the laws of physics DON’T CHANGE STYLE changing the cars is a useless manufacturing expense to motivate consumers. since the cars cost more the consumers loose more in depreciation which the economists ignore.
Dal Timgar