The Trump Presidency Nein: Leistung, Korruption und Lugen

Every good country has a welfare state, with most of the best ones having particularly large welfare states. Well that's not quite true, as South Korea and Singapore don't spend a lot as a percentage of GDP and Libya does, but it's 90% true.

 

True.

And even the 2 city states that come on top of the list of free market countries, they do have some socialist programs, more specifically housing in Singapore.

Then again, Singapore is a bit of a free capitalist nanny state. A big trade off between economic prosperity and individual freedoms.


You guys also top the list or come top 5 in terms of economic freedom.


https://www.investopedia.com/financ...economically-free-countries-in-the-world.aspx


https://www.heritage.org/index/

 

Not a strong correlational, probably needs a few more filters (say healthcare, education spending).

Then again this list has France at 24%, I do not think that is right, I have seen list that puts France at 48% of GDP.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.CON.GOVT.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true


https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/government_size/


This Wikipedia list seems more in line of what I have seen before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP

A few Pacific Islands on top that probably get foreign Aid.

Than a bunch of European countries that we would call successful.

But still too many head scratches, like Lesotho or Oman, ect.


But still a coloration perhaps.

 

You might want to recast or repunctuate the quoted sentence? Because I can't make out what it means? Did you mean to include "don't?"

But yes, I agree more or less with the following sentence. What we need as a body politic is get over the notion that any given tweak to things constitutes what I think you mean by 'buying the whole cow." Anything in US politics that might be seen as having an element of collectivity will always be attacked as potentially or even actually eliminating the remaining free market systems in place.

 

The full cow, being full/total public control of the means of production.

Now it being controlled as collectives or governmental, that is another debate.

 

F) ALL OF THEM + MORE!

 

Seems to me that full state control of all production and services is "communism." Socialism is regulatory in production, collective in services-- but both systems justify themselves by serving the populace through those controls. My impression certainly is that the USSR fell more than a little short of really aspiring to or achieving such service.

I suppose a primitive enough system might feel a need to execute traitors, rebels, murderers, but such is not the aspiration of a true socialist state as I would envision it, but rather to remove the most justifiable motivations for such individuals. Sweden is not looking to shrink their population, after all.

I'm not exactly an expert on the subject-- I consider myself a capitalist, though other capitalists make it harder and harder all the time to continue as such. But surely anyone designing a system in advance is not designing it to make life more difficult for its population?

 

Sweden isn't socialist, Bernie. They stopped that in the 70s...and they weren't even doing it for long at that.

 

Communism is the theorized historical era that occurs after a period of socialism has raised production and equalized people thus ending class distinctions. After this has happened the State would "wither away" in the words of Marx.

 

This is valid, but I don't think it presents the full picture.

Getting things right economically doesn't mean just choosing the perfect point on some one-dimensional axis where 0 is mythical libertarian free-market utopia and 10 is fully state-controlled command economy. There are specific ways in which specific types of government economic intervention, economic redistribution, or control of (certain types of production) can actually make capitalism work better, It's these specific complementarities that matter.

 

If any idea of improving public infrastructure came up, you can bet that the GOP would be screaming socialism. If a cure for cancer came up and all we had to do was pay one penny, GOP would be screaming socialism.

The way I see it is that progressives or anyone sane just realized their ideas will be called socialism no matter what and are just taking the sting out of that word.

 

I'm sure there are some who consider public schools, socialism.

 

many go further than that with their rhetoric and general disdain for public schools existing.

I believe a local person running for school board of all things said they are a liberal conspiracy to hyper-secularize our kids (which I am all-for, btw)

 

These kind of economic freedom rankings are pretty useless. That's partly because the organizations that put them out generally choose factors to ensure that wealthy countries end up on the top of the list. But even they were trying to be as fair and honest as possible, creating a simple economic freedom scale is inherently flawed, because (as I said before) the idea of a one-dimensional spectrum from more to less free is not a good way to describe anything meaningful.

Here's an example. Right now we have massive government intervention in the form of tax- funded compulsory primary and secondary education. Think about what an enormous use of state power that is - a huge service industry (educating children) is mostly run by the government, and all parents are forced by law to consume that service.

Now, let's imagine that we got rid of public funding for education and compulsory schooling laws completely, and let the free market take over. But, instead, we create a huge, taxpayer funded fast food burger chain. And, we require everyone to either buy the "free" government produced burgers, or pay for privately made burgers at least once per week.

By doing this, I've arguably moved my country away from socialism and toward capitalism on a simple economic freedom scale - after all, education is a much bigger percentage of the country's GDP than burgers. But that doesn't mean much, because the impact of the change would be to replace a very useful or necessary government intervention with an actively harmful one. So, the scale itself would be stupid.

 

I'm just trying to find an understanding of the terms which will stretch far enough to actually encompass both what is actually proposed and those aspects of those proposals which the Republican party wants to warn me against. It ain't easy and I probably get some of it wrong at this point.

I am familiar with Marx in theory, but the pointing with alarm doesn't really seem to have much to do with it, so I'm trying understand what the alarmed think they see.


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How about "one party state regimes that self-identify as socialist" but really aren't?

 

I think that the date now shows, that they will never be, because it does not work. Again by the historical understanding of socialism, not the confused Sweden is socialist myth.

 

Good point in Education, but worth pointing out, that most do not outlaw private education, yes the Public has taken over the bulk of the "means of production" regarding education (up to different levels) but over all there is still a "competing" private sector in the market for education in most countries.

But your point is very good overall IMO, those rankings should "deduct" from the score if the countries have a big social safety net. Those ranking may look very different if they did so.

 

Mr Kent replying to a question today.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people."