Slashdot Mirror
Unlike Most Millennials, Norway's Are Rich (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Best known for its Viking history, snow sports and jaw-dropping fjords, Norway is making a new name for itself as the only major economy in Europe where young people are getting markedly richer. People in their early thirties in Norway have an average annual disposable household income of around 460,000 kroner (around $56,200). Young Norwegians have enjoyed a 13% rise in disposable household income in real terms compared to Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1980) when they were the same age. These startling figures come from the largest comparative wealth data set in the world, the Luxembourg Income Database, and were analyzed in a recent report on generational incomes for the UK Think Tank The Resolution Foundation.
Compare this with young people in other strong economies: U.S. millennials have experienced a 5% dip, in Germany it's a 9% drop. For those living in southern Europe (the southern Eurozone suffered the brunt of the global economic crisis in 2008), disposable incomes have plunged by as much as 30%. Norway's youth unemployment rate (among 15- to 29-year-olds) is also relatively low at 9.4% compared to an OECD average of 13.9%. According to the BBC, this can be attributed to the country's rapid economic growth, thanks largely to their huge oil and gas sectors. "After seeing the biggest increase in average earnings of any large high-income economy between 1980 and 2013, it now leads multiple global rankings for wealth and wellbeing."
Compare this with young people in other strong economies: U.S. millennials have experienced a 5% dip, in Germany it's a 9% drop. For those living in southern Europe (the southern Eurozone suffered the brunt of the global economic crisis in 2008), disposable incomes have plunged by as much as 30%. Norway's youth unemployment rate (among 15- to 29-year-olds) is also relatively low at 9.4% compared to an OECD average of 13.9%. According to the BBC, this can be attributed to the country's rapid economic growth, thanks largely to their huge oil and gas sectors. "After seeing the biggest increase in average earnings of any large high-income economy between 1980 and 2013, it now leads multiple global rankings for wealth and wellbeing."
Turns out it's easy to run a "social democracy" when you're floating on a sea of oil you can sell to the rest of the world. Guess Marx forgot to put that part in.
Maybe they lack momma's basement for carefree gaming into their forties.
Home of The Suki Series
As I've watched how Norway has been doing over the past 15+ years with their wise use and planning of oil revenues it has been clear that the Norwegian government has been planning for the future to ensure the prosperity of their citizens.
Now that technology is unlocking massive amounts of fossil fuels, it's unfortunate that other countries (I'm thinking of my country Canada) aren't following the example and planning for the future in the same way. I know that in Canada, there would be a major fight with Alberta to share tar sands revenue, but it would be nice if the Albertan government at least would follow Norway's approach and provide for their citizen's future.
Good on Norway, hopefully other countries will follow their lead.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The oil & gas sector employed 1% of Norwegians last year (including suppliers). It represented 14% of GDP. However the sector is Norway's largest measured in terms of value added, government revenues, investments and export value (40%). All of the revenue is invested abroad using a SWF.
According to the BBC, this can be attributed to the country's rapid economic growth, thanks largely to their huge oil and gas sectors
So we're to celebrate the fact that Norwegian millennials are rich because they are Raping Mother Earth?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
What are you supposed to learn?
Have large oil and gas reserves and keep your population low?
The first is not something you can control without conquering other countries, and the second will get you called racist or nazi.
The fundamental problem western economies have is that almost all of them have not been producing enough skilled workers (aka, educated children) to deal with their ageing population demographics. They have tried various things, such as dumbing down degrees, introducing welfare for working families, and pouring trillions of dollars of QE money into a succession of bubble investments, but none of these things has fundamentally increased the number of babies being born that turn into the skilled doctors, engineers, teachers etc, that we need to replace the old people who are rapidly retiring/dying.
For example, in the UK, while some people are complaining that any net migration above ~100k is a huge and unsustainable number, nobody ever seems to realise that more than 500k brits die each year because they are old. The birth rate now roughly matches the death rate, but it didn't for a long time, so the UK needs to run a certain level of positive migration if it wants to avoid severe skills crunches over the next decade (of course there are valid arguments to be had that they are not doing enough to train their own youth, and that they are not necessarily getting the right sort of migrants). Essentially what they were doing (stealing skilled workers who they didn't have to pay to raise and educate) was actually quite ingenious, but has been largely rejected by the voters now. This same issue is playing out across Europe and even in the USA now.
At a fundamental level, you can print money, create property bubbles, whatever, but it will not fix the underlying issue that you are going to have a growing ratio of people not working to those that do. The only way you can balance that equation is either for those retiring to consume a lot less, or for those working to transfer more of their money to those who are not. That can be done through taxes, or other rent seeking behaviour, such as property prices, but someone is going to suffer. Unfortunately the older people are a larger bloc and vote more reliably, so for now the ones that will suffer will be younger folk.
The only way to escape this really is to move to a country like Australia that has much better demographics. Or a country like Norway where they can afford to bring in as many skilled workers as they need.
Just like the parrot I'm pining for the fjords.
Meanwhile in Australia, we give away our natural gas practically for free while suffering through insane domestic gas prices. Qatar which is a Middle Eastern shithole, actually collects more tax revenue from their gas exports than we do.
When you grow up and all you have is a shelf populated with "I Participated" tropheys, you are unmarketable. You might know all the rappers. You might be able to do an awesome Photoshop of Donald Trump. And we know you are totally awesome at Call of Duty.
But face it. You are basically soft and lazy and clueless and so glued into the consumer-industrial complex that you can't take a bowel movement without consulting Facebook first.It's time to man up, cupcake. Join the armed services. Join the Marines if you are man enough. Look at your skinny weak arms. Look how winded you get just helping mom carry in the groceries. Look at David Hogg's little girl arms and child's "fist" and missing chin. Sad.
Join the Marines and you will become a man. It's either that or working at Micky Ds, or giving blow jobs to transients in urine soaked bus station restrooms.
The lesson is that every Norwegian citizen is deeply invested in the oil industry, and their investments are paying off well.
Ken
I really hope that report's definition of "household" or "disposable income" is way off of what my definition of them are, because that seems not only off, but ridiculously off. Unless they exclusively consider a household to be a house filled with surgeons and psychiatrists.
But I'll never know, since I don't care enough to go read the report to find out.
One point to make, though, is that the majority of Norway's taxes is not tied to income, but spending. Want to buy a car? Here, have this, only 100% added in tax (not a joke). Want to drive to Oslo for work? That'll be $10 for for the toll, thank you very much (though they're changing that now, adding dozens of tolls inside the city center). Like a bit of whiskey on a Friday night? No problem, only 80% taxes added. Want to save a buck? Go for wine, only 60% taxes on that.
It should also be added that we'll soon all be in deep shit now that the oil industry is declining. Our welfare costs are through the roof, and without oil there's no way to sustain that. Hopefully, I'm old enough to be dead before it all comes crashing down.
Article glosses over reality. We got lucky with oil. Government was not wiser than starting spending money before money arrived. Now the entire economy depends so much on oil that the oil price fall resulted in 50000 job losses in oil industry plus unknown numbers in services. This in a country with a population of about 5 million, smaller than about 10 US cities.
Oslo is a bubble surrounded by reality and unemployment. Far from all are rich. Structurally the economy is in trouble and politicians lack education or real life work experience and are busy selling out the country to EU. Reality is that we are in trouble.
Helly Hansen - Active Wear
Voss - Water
Ken
That help explains why Norway is the happiest country in the world.
we're to celebrate that the people of Norway have not self-lobotomized and have not declared war on the basic element upon which all life on Earth is based: Carbon.
Energy sector jobs, particularly those based on carbon, have historically been one of the greatest wealth generating sectors. The abundance of carbon-based energy supplies were one of the big driving forces in the rise of the industrial west, which lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and improved the heath and general welfare of entire nations. No "renewable" energy source has such a record; those expensive and unreliable "boutique" energy sources are primarily good for virtue signalling and fostering the political corruption that comes from fighting over government subsidies - each has its niche (solar, for example is great on Earth-orbiting satellites, and off-grid living in low latitudes) but they cannot be used as primary power sources without being backed-up by ready-on-demand nuclear or carbon-based generation.
I guess if we don't want our young people becoming economically wealthy from oil and gas, we can encourage them to be drug dealers or pimps...
Unlike Most Millennials, Norway's Are Rich
When your country is floating on an ocean of oil that is not surprising. Here is another fact that may surprise you, most Saudi Millennials are also rich.
Exactly. People that own natural resources shouldn't be allowed to profit from them.
What are you supposed to learn?
Invest fossil fuel revenue in free education, generous unumployment insurance, generous parental leave, domestic companies outside of the fossil fuel sector? Also: high minimum wages.
America may not be awash in newfound oil, but the USA is a wealthy country that keeps creating wealth. Take an American company like Apple, awash in cash. The CEO gets $3 million base salary + $9 million for meeting his numbers for a total of $12 million. An Apple Genius (often a millenial) makes $15/hr and may get $10 off an Apple device for their perk.
In your judgement, is Tim Cook is worth the same as 400 Apple Genius in terms of contribution to the company and wealth creation?
In the USA wealth is not evenly distributed and any gains flow to the top 10% as seen in Tim Cooks performance bonus.
How to fix it?
Last I checked, the economy is booming and in the USA there are more jobs than workers available. It is time to use your social media skills to get organized and get a fair wage for your contribution, unless of course you think you are worth 400x (times) less than the CEO of your company.
Who should organize?
Apple Geniuses
Big Box Store Works (Home Depot, Lowes, Menards, Best Buy, Walmart, SamClub, Costco, Target)
Fast Food Workers (Taco Bell, McD;s, BK)
Dollar Store Workers
Convenience Store Works
Department Store Workers
Everyone has to do it together, or it won't work. No single company can have a competitive advantage with cheaper labor. However, most CEO's in a competitive sector like fast food can't raise wages without raising prices or cutting staff, because their competitors can still run cheaper. The entire segment needs to band together and demand higher wages/benefits.
Millennials! Pay Attention. There has never been an better time to organize and get your piece of the American pie, or you can just settle for the crumbs.
The question you have to ask yourself is what value do you contribute to the company in which you work?
This worked at the turn of the century for AutoWorkers and it could clearly work again.
https://youtu.be/vrw_WRhUfog
We're also running a total population Ponzi scheme at unhinged levels, to cover up economic issues.
. For lack of a better word, we're raping the young of a future here.
Speaking of Canada:
Quebec would not only be able to balance its budget, it would also be able to start repaying its debt and be free of it in just a few decades *IF* only they started selling the oil that is known to exist there.
If *they*re not going to meet the demand, the world's other oil producers will be more than happy to. So, Quebec is only depriving itself of huge amounts of revenue. Meanwhile, they insist on having the federal government keep catering to their every whim. Which it'll keep doing so long as we have premiers that originate from Quebec.
how is that relevant to anything ?? Most companies anywhere are small....
Please read what the word *socialist* means : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... aka the Bolsheviks
Googling the string "Norwegian brands" and then posting a couple doesn't magically make them relevant, or actually heard of.
Meanwhile, I'm not into fashion, but my girlfriend certainly is: do you think I should buy her one "Helly Hansen" dress for Christmas? I guess it would probably cost less than 1/10th of the Prada bag I bought her last year, it sounds like a huge bargain. Or she might dump me one minute later...?
I'm not talking about your local drug dealers, heroin addicts, and so on here, but rather the entity that steals the most from us: Government. Governments do things in the most terribly inefficient ways as there is no incentive to compete. The solution to these problems are obvious to anyone who understands basic economics. Eliminate the welfare and nanny state. When people are able to fend for themselves they have to actually think about the best approaches and take actions that lead them to profitable outcomes. When the government takes over there is always someone who profits, but its rarely the claimed group. New Hampshire for instance has done very well even without the wealth and resource extraction simply with a low rate of taxation. Unemployment is way lower than Norway and there is a lot of wealth to go around alongside a comparatively low cost of living. New Hampshire isn't perfect- as there are still "high" property taxes- but there are no income taxes or sales taxes. New Hampshire can do better- but it needs to eliminate the wealth redistributions programs. Public schools, state police forces, and entanglement in the federal system. If New Hampshire declared independence and eliminate government schools the people would be seriously wealthy. The small percentage of impoverished people could easily be taken care of through increased charitable contributions from the newly wealthier people. From education to housing to food. Without burdensome regulations the costs could easily be covered. It is actually possible to house someone for less than $3,000 per person near indefinitely, but the bureaucrats won't allow the building of cheap houses.
Now take the stats on Norwegian families living in US.
Hint: their income is higher here than over there.
It helps a lot that Norway has a small population. Those gas and oil reserves go a long way. And they get to export nearly all of their gas, since they use hydroelectric for most of their power. Canada probably is in a good position to do similar, but most of the rest of Europe is not quite in the same position.
Are you parents really richer?
What codes were followed building their houses? Energy-efficient insulation, appliances, HVAC, windows? Lead-free paint?
Did their cars run on reformulated gas? Did they have EGRs, air bags, catalytic converters, gas mileage requirements? Did they used solvent-free paint?
Was their power produced by coal, without scrubbers or NOx reduction?
DId they have subsdised Affordable Care? DId they have anything better than aspirin?
Did they have internet, GPS, surveillance cameras, NSA, bitcoin, war on drugs?
DId they pay higher taxes? Did they have 90% fewer pages of tax code? Did they have to pay for bloated college administrations? Did they have to pay for the TSA, ICE, EPA, DOE, SNAP, etc?
Were they able to fight multiple wars by running up the national debt? DId they have a local SWAT team?
What was the minimum wage?
Stop whining, millennials, you have got all this stuff in lieu of cash.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Look at the Netherlands, sitting on a big bubble of gas... or used to, before they sold it all for fire-sale prices back in the 70s and gave the revenues away to the dole. Then the economy slumped and they had to break all sorts of social security promises because the dole payments weren't sustainable in a down economy.
Norway, by contrast, put it all up in a piggy bank called a sovereign wealth fund. Using the money wisely is where this wealth is coming from, and the fact it orignially comes from their oil and gas resource extraction is relatively unimportant.
And therein lies the problem.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Norway does not have a minimum wage.
Smelly Hansen - Active Wear
Voss - Water
FTFY
> more jobs than workers
And people are now being forced to work which is slavery. African-American unemployment its lowest since slavery.
And no way Cook is worth 400 salespeople. Those 400 people help Apple more than a single person every could.
No, you idiot I kinda want to add, here in Sweden and in Finland and in Denmark too we also have not free but publicly funded education, generous parental leave and a blend of companies and also a mixture of government control and private companies if you want to add that as well.
Also neither Sweden or Norway have any minimum wage.
Even though we in Sweden, Finland and Denmark have all those other things you mention it's unlikely we have the same outcome as the Norwegians, at-least not here in Sweden thanks to massive shit-immigration instead ruining things.
But thanks for playing. But that isn't the reason and Norway just as Sweden likely already had all those things before too. Except minimum wage which we haven't had and don't have.
The difference between Norway and the rest of the Nordic nations is their oil and gas wealth which is stored into a fund which secure pensions and I think also other welfare things onward. In the 80s they found their oil and they have become richer because of the oil and gas not because of the stuff you likely are politically interested and make up is the reason they have become richer.
The oil and gas wealth is the difference.
Lots of European nations including the southern ones do have the other stuff you mention but clearly not the same development as Norway.
The thing to learn if anything is that if you sit on massive natural wealth resources don't let a private company and a few rich people get it all and the profits basically for free but rather invest it wisely into stock and only take some of the profits so that it can benefit everyone and last ~forever.
The one thing Norway have done differently is to wisely invest their money from natural resources and use it to fund their welfare / redistribute the profits to the population (in this case also by being able to have lower taxes than what we do in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, because here people have to WORK to generate all that money going into parliament spending and welfare.)
Find a valuable resource, give the gains to your people = they get richer. Amazing how that one worked? ...
If you read that wiki entry, you will learn that there's nothing in there that is incompatible with a market economy.
In fact, to quote the Prime Minister of Denmark himself (from the same article): "The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish."
Market economies and socialism are a perfectly compatible. In fact, you could say that one does not work without the other.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please go to Norway and try buying some food, so you find out how much it costs.
When I was there some years ago, I was shocked at the prices.
I paid 22 euro - some years ago - for a not-very-good burger and small fries.
How much you earn means nothing at all.
Only how much you earn *and* how much things cost, combined, lets you know how well off people are.
Helly hansen is for if you venture out of your basement. Nordic semiconductor is for if you stay in your basement and build radio connected devices. (As given to all British schoolkids as the "microbit" project)
Yeah, this, rather than the socialist and welfare approach which kinda all of Europe share but it's clearly not making people richer in the rest of Europe.
The only "great" insight story here is that if you invest the profits from your very rich natural resources into stocks and redistribute a small enough part of it to your people (in this case by being able to keep your generous welfare while still having lower taxes than others which offer the same) they get richer!!
If you spend it straight away you get less from it than if you invest it and don't use up too much of it.
And if you let private global companies take the gains from it and only charge a small tax on them they the people get less of the benefits and just a few people get huge benefits from it.
Yay. Surprising!
Mean-while here in Sweden the taxes for ore or minerals or whatever for a mining company is 0.1%.
If I remember correctly Helly Hansen winter coats have been rather fashionable here in middle and northern Europe around the 90's. But it's not like they've got no competition there. From the top of my mind I can name Jack Wolfskin (Germany) and The North Face (USA) as strong competitors.
Wrong. Norwegians make it extremely difficult for non-whites to move there.
Aaaaand... this is what happens when you use the Common Sense and you stop following all those anglo-austrian ridiculous theories about managing a country wealth.
When a country's wealth is managed with the evolution and welfare of its population in mind, rather than with making the richest people more rich hoping they will "give jobs" to the rest of the people, it happens that such country have sane, healthy and wealthy young generations. Sane, healthy and wealthy young generations that will keep investing in the society, will have the wealth and the time to create companies and businesses (they have indeed the time and the wealth to do so because they aren't struggling with money and wasting their lives working for 7 dollars an hour saving for visiting a dentist). Therefore, the people is able to have children, and the wheel keeps moving on and on.
Western societies, following those absurd and suicide economics dictated during decades that says you have to fuck yourself and struggle with money working like a donkey because God, The Market or whatever else says so... have fallen into the inevitable decadency of having already several generations that were wasting their lives working like donkeys for subsistency (or even worse: going to absurd wars) instead of making the society actually evolve with their workforce and talent well spent.
It is called Socialism. And yeah, as everyone can see, it doesn't involve "gulags" nor food tickets nor dictators with a moustache. It doesn't mean either you can't fund your very own company, have your brand new BMW in the garage of your very own house. It only takes Common Sense, and avoid having the main resources of your country (oil, wood, minerals...) in the very only hands of Mr. Burns-like billionaires, who are in fact only parasites sucking the common wealth.
Socialism, motherfucker. Socialism. The best, fairest and more evolved organization a human society can have.
Norway carefully used their assets whilst the UK pissed their oil wealth away. Africa is currently flogging all their mineral assets to China on the cheap to benefit a few bent politicians and supercar salesmen. Like the modern day Ant and Grasshopper!
I'd really need to hear what your definition of socialism actually is to square it with the notion being compatible with (or as you later suggest required for) a market (I'm assuming you mean a free one, or one that is reasonably so) economy. Otherwise I suspect you're guilty of choosing your definition of socialism post priori so that you can find one that doesn't look like a miserable failure.
Private exchange doesn't make sense if you have communal ownership. Maybe you're envisioning something like all private companies being employee owned (i.e., you can't hold stock if you don't work there and if you work there you must hold stock) but I don't think that's ever been tried. It's almost like a guild system, only with multiple competing guilds. This system also says nothing about personal income tax or social safety nets either as you could just as easily use this system regardless of how that's handled.
The only other thing you could possibly mean is that everyone acts as a capitalist agent, but the government takes most or all of their earnings. Essentially you seem to have private exchange in name only up since as soon as you make an exchange whatever benefit you gained from it becomes communally controlled. I suppose that works if you have a group of people that like playing free market just for the sake of playing free market. It would be a bit like playing Monopoly endlessly, only with real money that you never get to keep since just goes back in the tray. I don't know if there's a group of people on the planet weird enough to play by those rules. Maybe if the group were entirely self-selecting, but to suspect it on a population level for any ethnic group is suspect at best.
to to?
to to?
Is that troo?
You haven't heard of any Norwegian brands because Norwegian industry exports very few consumer products, apart from seafood. It exports—among other things—oil, gas, lumber, aluminum, nitrogen, artificial fertilizer, ships, ship handling systems, petroleum prospecting and drilling equipment, subsea equipment (including ROVs), telecom equipment, automotive components, rocket engines and components, satellite components, and believe it or not, ammunition and high-tech weapon systems (including many used by US forces: sea-to-sea and air-to-surface missile systems, integrated sensor systems, remote weapon stations and more).
McDonald pays $16-$19+/HR in Norway
I'm guessing it's not something like North Korea or Venezuela, i.e. different to yours.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Socialism is by definition incompatible with Nordic Social Democracy model. We categorically reject all main cornerstones of socialism, and instead go for market economy with high taxation that funds the baseline income level and services.
We do have socialist in every Nordic state by the way. They're the marginal far left parties, rejected by overwhelming majority of the populace. Here in Finland for example, far left openly socialist Vasemmistoliitto holds between 5 and 8% of the vote, and is a minor party. They also have some communists in their party, but their leadership generally denounces communism and sticks to socialism. I can provide citations for that as well.
It would be very helpful if wannabe far leftists from across the pond would stop insulting our countries, our politicians and our ways of life by maliciously branding them as "socialist" for their own political purposes. Have your class war if you want, but leave us well out of it.
They make sure all the unhappy people die as quickly as possible. Those that fit into their system remain happy with strong biological ties within their country and succeed in alienating the people that move towards suicide. The suicide statistics may also be related partially to bankruptcy, which is less forgiving in Europe when compared to the US, though their bankruptcy handling has improved since 2013.
Helly hansen is for if you...
... cannot afford anything decent to wear.
Nordic semiconductor is for if you...
... can actually find any relevant devices with their chips inside.
1) Would rather like to hear this directly from Millennials from Norway. Anyone outside is just speculating that their lives are truly better because of this stat. Sure they survey results could be accurate however I would still like to hear it first hand.
2) Size and population. Norway is about as big as the State of Florida (USA) but with 5.2 Million people compared to Florida's 20.5 million. Not to mention that Norway's population is living in the southern end. So infrastructure is probably a lot easier to deal with and maintain. So I am sure that if one compared the population size and how much they are taking in from fossil fuels. I would venture to guess that they have a great numerator vs denominator situation since they only have 5.2 million people to share the proceeds. If they expanded to 20 - 30 million and the density of population was much more dispersed, I would venture to guess this number would drop in similar ratio. Basically the more mouths you have to feed and more infrastructure you have to take care of across more terrain, costs are going to go up. So they have a great balance right now.
3) Hey Sweden! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ_285hGXW0
Yes Proles, please organize. Nothing will spur the deployment of automation like a union mob.
I may post more in-depth later. For now I can't stop giggling at all the right wingers here who after years of screeching "that's socialism' every time anyone breathed a hint of a word in favor of a social safety net who ar now trying to walk that back and claim "That's not socialism at all!"
*GIGGLE*
You're forgetting that due to Quebecois, it's legal to secede from Canada. If the push you're suggesting would come to shove, Alberta would likely secede from confederation.
Shanghai moron Bill also claims public education, clean water, the interstate highway system, etc aren't socialist but capitalist - because he's a moron who flip flops on that to suit his argument of the moment.
And yet Norway has compulsory military service to for all medically fit men and women between the ages of 19 and 44. There are some exceptions for higher education but you are judged stringently. Can you imagine the NEET liberal left realizing to get these kinds of benefits in that country... they have to serve their nation? PFFFT. In 2014 they added women to achieve "gender equality" but it has been around for men for decades.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2793994/no-longer-just-job-boys-norway-extends-compulsory-military-service-medically-fit-women-aged-19-44.html
> Also: high minimum wages.
Shows how much you know. Norway has no government mandated minimum wage.
In your judgement, is Tim Cook is worth the same as 400 Apple Genius in terms of contribution to the company and wealth creation?
Yes. That "Genius" can be replaced by literally tens of thousands of IT people here at /. alone, let alone across the US. Tim Cook has shown an extraordinary talent for supply chain management and operations and his decisions directly affect 100,000 people. Paying him 400 times what the "hipster Geek Squad" member makes is quite understandable.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
our ruling class has paid close attention to how Norway's working class works together, doesn't fight among themselves and ensures everyone has food, shelter and healthcare and made sure we don't do the same. We've got an extensive network of social wedge issues that keep us divided and at each other throats so we don't ask too many questions. We've also got a constitution that limits the effects of democracy, or as many would put it, "It's a Republic!".
Oh, you meant the working class. Yeah, we haven't learned a God damned thing. We voted for a bitchy oligarch with a penchant for outsourcing instead of the guy that wanted to give us health care and then when we realized we didn't like her we voted for a guy who sits on a golden throne/toilet as our populist champion.... Does of us that did vote anyway. We're not paying a lot of attention really.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
At one time only hikers and mountaineers would know they existed, along with maybe a few outdoor photographers who used their pop-out mitts.
For some reason the brand became sort of trendy with the chav element at one point.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We're talking about the American definition of socialism though which boils down to "not shitting on the poor". As the poor are only there because they didn't work hard enough, any state support is equivalent to the actions of murderous dictatorships past and present and carrying military grade weaponry about day to day is the only way to prevent those slackers from trying to take that well earned money away from you by force.
Here is one for you.
Nordic Semiconductor. Their bluetooth 4.+ chips were in 80% of the products registered with FCC in 2016.
Only partially true. There's no generalized minimum wage. It depends on the field.
That's always the argument against raising wages in the States. If we raise wages companies will just raise prices and you won't make any more money. Now, I know enough to know this is bunk. Inflation can be controlled so long as productivity is going up, and here in the States we've doubled in in 40 years while wages for low end employees have droped 20-30% in real dollars (seriously, I made $6/hr at a jack in the crack in 95 which was equal to $10 today. These days they start kids like I was off at $7.25-$8).
I guess what I'm really asking is, what do you say to people who tell you we should keep wages low because it'll mean lower prices and an overall better life. It needs to be pithy, because the folks you're arguing with have been told this repeatably by large Political Action Committees with a vested interest in keeping wages low.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That ignoring the AGW alarmists is a good thing for our kids? But, no, that's pretty much impossible, right?
So, why is it okay when Norway does it, but the height of evil when we do it?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Depending on how you want to define socialism, you can get a pretty broad collection of countries. In the long run I suspect that Marxist ideologies tend to result in countries like North Korea or Venezuela, but not all socialist systems are necessarily Marxist ones. I've simply never heard of any country which has tried what might be coined as "free market socialism" and it's not something that would have a lot of overlap on the Venn diagram with other forms of socialism.
I'm just curious what the hell it's supposed to mean as the examples I give above seem odd. The first doesn't seem as though it would be what most socialists would consider a socialist system. The second seems to work, but it's still strange. It would essentially be everyone working for state owned (but not necessarily state run or centrally planned) companies (and free to choose their own line of work) and free to purchase as they choose, but only after the government uses a 100% (or near enough) tax rate to give everyone the same amount of money to engage in commerce as they will. I just don't see that being particularly stable if people can immigrate and emigrate freely. Maybe it works if the country doing it is a very tight cultural group such that people are very reluctant to leave and it's not welcoming to outsiders so most don't want to join.
The Gen Xers did alright and the boomers made out like bandits, but the Millennials are screwed. They're not getting pensions, their 401ks get eaten up by fees and the periodic stock market crashes brought on by weak regulation and risk free bail outs and their student loan debt means they can't start life until their 30s. Meanwhile outsourcing + H1-Bs means they're in intense competition for decent jobs so they worked much, much harder than their parents and grandparents for much, much less.
.com and house bubbles masked the ill effects of supply side economics until 2008 when it all came crashing down). With control of the government came control of media (Sinclair media's been allowed to buy up all local stations).
The right wing in America (who's defining feature is a pro-corporate bent that wants low wages, lax environmental regulations and lax worker protections) knows this. They're currently in control of all branches of Government (the Democratic party moved the Overton window to the left so Clinton could sail into the Whitehouse and got away with it when the
The question is, Americans may be ready for Democratic Socialism but will they get it? The ruling class has so much wealth and power now they can bury the will of the people. It's been shown a 2-3 week ad blitz is enough to change the public's opinion on anything. Hell, we can't get more than 60% of the population to agree that healthcare is a right and thanks to our political system that gives extra voting power to rural states (a Montana voter has something like 42 times more voting power than a California thanks to our Senate) and the effect of "swing states" I'm not sure any of this matters.
It literally doesn't matter how much evidence you have that Democratic Socialism works. The people opposed to it have unlimited money (we gave it to them) and the last two generations are very much in the "I got mine, fuck you" school of thought. Maybe when those people start dying. Hell, we (mostly) got gay rights. Then again the new SCOTUS might shoot all that down...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I see everybody is crediting Norways socialism while ignoring that its evil fossil fuels that are driving the wealth. I thought fossil fuels on did bad things.
Unfortunately the only thing the Trump pseudo president baby can babble is "but the Refugees" destroy Europe :-/ I have to say, things are pretty good here in Berlin, Germany, Europe. Actually I avoid traveling to the USA for all the crime, shootings, TSA and such, ... Instead I now travel more in Europe, France, Spain, Czech, Poland, and all the other nice neighbours we got. Together we are stronger!
I don't care what US far leftists are desperately trying to sell as socialism in post-Venezuelan world. I'm talking about what it actually means.
alvinrod challenged:
I'd really need to hear what your definition of socialism actually is to square it with the notion being compatible with (or as you later suggest required for) a market (I'm assuming you mean a free one, or one that is reasonably so) economy. Otherwise I suspect you're guilty of choosing your definition of socialism post priori so that you can find one that doesn't look like a miserable failure.
Private exchange doesn't make sense if you have communal ownership.
Social democracy isn't socialism. Hell, even socialism isn't socialism.
Theory be damned, socialism in practice is a philosophy that holds societies ought to provide the essentials for life (food, clean water, shelter, education, health care) for all their members, regardless of their income level, as fundamental rights. The definition of "pure" socialism-as-economics isn't really even worth discussing, because there is no such functioning economic system in existence. And there won't be, ever, as long as human beings are fallible creatures.
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common. Worker-owned companies can and do thrive in hyper-capitalist America, as long as their underlying business models are realistic and responsive to their markets.
Yes, you can build a wall of rhetorical purity around the term - or you can simply acknowledge that social democracy is the modern face of socialism, and it is not failing (at least, in the Scandanavian and Benelux countries) by any objective measure.
Life is complicated. Much too complicated, in fact, to be adequately modeled by rigid, ideological absolutes ...
Check out my novel.
You can gripe all you want, Anders Breivik, but the fact is that what you have is socialized medicine, socialized education, socialized welfare system, socialized retirement, and highly regulated corporations.
That's socialism, bro.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I use the dictionary definition:
Well, the income tax rate in Denmark is just over 60%, so it fits that definition, too.
Denmark. Denmark plays by those rules. More than 60% of income in Denmark goes to taxes. Last time I checked the definition of "most", 60 percent meets the definition.
Face it: The happiest countries in the world are the countries that have struck a balance between socialism and market economies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Meanwhile outsourcing + H1-Bs means they're in intense competition for decent jobs so they worked much, much harder than their parents and grandparents for much, much less."
At least you mention this important issue. Illegal aliens from Latin America have forced down wages for low income earners, like construction, farm work, etc. H-1bs are forcing down wages on middle class workers. This has been observed happening in the real world. Get rid of the foreigners, and the wages will go somewhat up. It is the rich whom are lobbying for foreigners (Zuck, Gates, etc.).
Norway is probably the only oil-producing country on earth that managed to share oil revenues among citizen. Most of the time oil is a curse for the people, resulting in corruption, kleptocracy and dictatorship.
What? Why didn't the oil/gas CEOs get all of it?
One of the big reasons Norway's millenials are doing so fucking well is that unlike, say, in America, they don't offshore all their jobs to India for a fifth the price and they don't import labor from India for skilled jobs at even remotely the same pace.
America could be doing just as fucking well except most of our millenials are in some form of tech or support and all of those fields are frequently offshored. It's hard to be competitive in America when there are people in India, Romania, China, and Singapore willing to do those jobs for less than you pay (out of necessity because of where you are required to live for your job) for groceries in a month.
We're also running a total population Ponzi scheme at unhinged levels, to cover up economic issues.
. For lack of a better word, we're raping the young of a future here.
Oh, so you have Baby Boomers too (or some equivalent)? That's sad to hear.
Invest fossil fuel revenue in free education,
That's a tax and spend government policy, nothing is free. If education were free then it would not require petroleum revenue.
generous unumployment insurance,
Also a tax and spend government policy.
generous parental leave,
I'm guessing also tax and spend.
domestic companies outside of the fossil fuel sector?
Tax and spend.
Also: high minimum wages.
Not tax and spend but not a burden on the economy if there is cheap oil to tax, and people can afford the higher wages because they see government subsidized education, parental leave, and unemployment insurance.
Oh, and it's easier to afford these things for a government that relies on it's NATO treaties to defend them against potential invaders instead of spending that money on funding their own military.
I'm sure that having enough hydroelectric power to provide 98% of their electricity demands helps. It's easy to sell petroleum products real cheap when you don't have to burn it for lights and cooking. Places like Saudi Arabia might have a lot of cheap oil but without something to keep the lights on then they are living in grass huts instead of high rises made of concrete and glass.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Even with that definition, I think there's a bit of a sticking point on what exactly is meant by "regulated". I'm not sure how much you'd appreciate your grocery shopping choices (i.e., your personal exchange) to be regulated by the rest of your neighbors. Do they get to pick what you're having for supper or what products can be sold at the grocery store?
Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean by "regulated" as unless you're thinking in terms of what is typically meant by government regulations. You can have those kind government or even community (think HOA) regulations without socialism so I don't believe that's a useful description.
Also, you'd need to plot out all of the countries and measure happiness and to what extent their governments are market socialist. Otherwise you can explain Norway, Denmark, etc. being happiest because Scandinavians are just happy people among a large set (for example, lots of good looking blonde women would make most people happy) of other explanations. China and Viet Nam are more classic mixed economies, but I don't know where their blend of market socialism lands them on the happiness axis.
My guess is that if you do a multivariate regression, there are other factors with more explanative power. I'm not even sure if you could do this kind of analysis as there aren't enough examples of what you'd probably classify as your brand of socialism to perform the kind of statistical analysis you'd need. But without doing that, you can't make that claim. Otherwise someone could just as easily point out some other ridiculous correlation and say that their reason must be correct. Let's pick something particular insidious such as lack of black people to illustrate the point. And before anyone jumps all over that, I don't believe (or have any good reason to believe) that would be the cause any more than market socialism.
Regardless, I suspect that if you tried to join the Socialist party in just about any country, the idea "capitalist economy with extensive social programs" would not be the platform of the party or one that they're likely to accept. It's no more than I would expect "drug induced orgies" as a form of worship to be a mainstay position of any Christian church so I probably wouldn't try to tell congregations that I'm Christian and slide that idea by them. The point is that if your point of view is going to be seen as heresy at best by the mainstream of that group, you may just want to characterize yourself as something else. Hence the term "social democrat" that gets used.
"Albertan" government? Nobody from Alberta calls it that. You aren't from there.
Social democracy is the model it can also be referred to as.
A mixture of state intervention (free education, free/ low cost health care etc.) and a regulated market economy. It is what Australia and NZ would refer to their systems as, even the right wing parties adhere to it as it would be political suicide to disestablish it.
Undercutting and weakening it is another thing however.
No one in NZ is conscripted/ coerced into being a doctor.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
we allow ourselves to be swindled out of it.
I was reading the SMH yesterday about your electricity 'reforms'. Way to go Australia! What a dumpster fire that has turned out to be, as bad as your thieving banks.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
Until you realize that 22% of Norwegian GDP is pulled from the ground, their model would not work here as we only generate 7.6% of our GDP through oil and the greens want even less of it going forward. We should stop comparing ourselves to norway, we don't generate money in the same way.
The decisions of Bin Laden affected millions, how much should we have paid him?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's not what socialism means. Not at all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let's not forget Norway is by far one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in. Those 460,000 kroner (around $56,200) won't last nearly as long as you think.
And therein lies the problem.
Especially when the Supreme Court and one of the political parties is dedicated to destroying unions
literally escorted
Not by law ...
https://www.lifeinnorway.net/n...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You may have heard the saying "Australia is the Lucky Country" and like many people you may think it means things are great, which they are.
However, the real meaning behind that saying is that we are lucky to enjoy the standard of living we have in spite of the morons running the place.
Although to be fair, to get those gas projects built, the developers needed a lot of money and so they signed large-off take agreements with major customers in exchange for the money to build them. They were being built at a time when gas prices were low, which is the reason why those countries are buying "practically for free" - they stumped up the cash to develop the projects.
Collectively as a nation we are as stupid as our leaders. We place far too much value on real estate, which is an unproductive asset that actually costs money. We should instead be saving and investing in businesses, which generate wealth.
>
Market economies and socialism are a perfectly compatible. In fact, you could say that one does not work without the other.
Oh shit, The angry old white men aren't going to like this...
you just put everyone dependent on 1 asshole rather than a hugr distributed sewer system (reek squad).
Back when DEC and HP and Sun were the computer imdustry, we didnt have these kind of IT problems. Tim Cook is making an industry of bastard doctors who preach a religion of IT job security. No productsbcan be sold, only a service contract; no different than meds, problems are managed to a product life cycle. fucking genius, no. lame! If his were the 80's computer industry, all these bums would be couch surfing and doing lawn service, but instead they manage throngs of IT as job security, like a welfare system; they dont say they are unemployed, they "work" as IT and pay their tithe to the deities that honored their title
credential. Not everyone deserves a job, we need results not janitor unions. American computer industry was liquidated through 90's and 2000's for IT cubicle workers. The one sto blame are INTEL and Microsoft, but collectively the blame is characterised as jewish treachery.
That's socialism, bro.
Call it what you want - The result is some of the happiest, healthiest, best-educated free people in the world, with 80%+ less crime than the USA. If that's "socialism" I think many, many Americans would happily take it.
What value is contributed by a worker at APPLE/GOOGLE/FACEBOOK/TWITTER/ABCNBCCNN ... zero (0) thats the contribution ... since the companies produce ( damned near ) nothing of value.
Hell..I live in California and almost 50% of my income goes to taxes (Federal + State + St Sales Tax)
You have no idea what medical school / a doctor's education looks like outside of the USA, do you? Go look at Italy / UK / German standards and compare to ours. Keep in mind pretty much the rest of the 1st world has better health outcomes than the USA.
A million deaths. He paid, but unfortunately just once.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I was reading the SMH yesterday about your electricity 'reforms'.
I was reading the Weekly World News about President Bat Boy's illicit offspring with Marilyn Monroe on Mars. That's about the same level as the Sydney Morning Herald.
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common.
For some things - such as utilities and public parks, I agree it makes sense. HOWEVER, too often people want communal ownership AND communal control over those resources - and that breaks down quickly. Direct democratic operation really doesn't scale well at all; could you imagine having hundreds of thousands of people voting monthly on decisions made by your local utility? Best to think of it as a corporate model - the corporation (utility/park) is owned by the people (the shareholders) who empower control over the corporation to a small group. And review the performance of the group every few years. In other words - a republic model of control, rather than a democratic (mob rule) method.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
See here. We're below population replacement rates. In fact it's one of the things that is freaking out a lot of (right wing) voters since it's immigrants that are replacing them. The actual (economically) right wing aren't so freaked out since the immigrants tend to be socially right wing because they hail from deeply religious countries.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know, you are welcome to send in more than your minimum required taxes. You can overpay your taxes and donate, if you'd like to set an example of 60% tax rate being good and wholesome...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
not quite as well as they could have, but they made a serious go at it. The went from a third world hell hole to a first world nation in about 50 years. But when the price of oil tanked that was kind of that. The sanctions didn't help either (and I have no bloody idea why my country is sanctioning another country that has not attacked us or our allies... It honestly feels like we're attacking them for being socialistic... ).
John Oliver has a pretty good piece on it. I think if they'd had another 50 years to stabilize they could have weathered it (or if those aforementioned sanctions didn't exist and they could get some aid in).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So everyone owns the grocery store, but most people don't get a decision about how it's run? That sounds a bit like another political ideology that was opposed in the 1930s and 1940s...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The US has socialized medicine (Medicare, Medicaid, and ~45% of all healthcare spending is by the Federal Government), socialized education (free K-12 throughout the US, and highly subsidized/free universities/colleges in many places), socialized welfare (SNAP, Welfare, etc) socialized retirement (Social Security) and highly regulated corporations (SEC, FDA, EPA, IRS, etc). I guess we're socialist, too, comrade!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
They arenâ(TM)t on the euro AND not part of the EU.
It's "the Alberta Government, Eh" - amirite?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
his developers and designers are underpaid compared to him but in my opinion he consistently blocks them from providing user upgradable/repairable machines that the customers have been begging for - losing to many of these people to pcs
Nothing would make me happier than to work for a boss *and* work for a union. At least the boss pays me. The union wants me to pay them! Unions are like dinosaurs - not many of them around because their time has long since passed.
When we're at our best, we are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is socialism, and many Americans would love to see it happen here. And it will.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And that my friend, is why California is most desirable state to live in, and we have a bigger population than any other state in the US. Because it's nice here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I live in California, and I pay about the same tax rate as Denmark. And it works. This is nicest place I've ever lived.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, dumbshit. Socialism doesn't require government ownership of the means of production and distribution. Don't they teach fucking anything in school any more? Did you drop out before taking one world history course?
You are welcome on my lawn.
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned OR REGULATED by the community as a whole
YOUR definition of Socialism. Means of production, distribution, and exchange owned ... by the community as a whole. YOU used that as what socialism is, and that means everyone owns the store. But in typical fascist (for that is what socialism leads to) manner, only a select few get to determine what happens with that grocery store.
Dumbshit.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
BS. You're retired, you pay nowhere near 60% of income in taxes. I'd be surprised if you pay over 30%. But feel free to pay another 30%...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We're talking about the American definition of socialism though which boils down to "not shitting on the poor".
I'm American, and I'm pretty sure that should be "not shitting on the poor a lot, but some".
Oil & gas accounted for 14% of GDP last year, thanks. That money is placed in a SWF and invested abroad. The budget is financed using ordinary taxes (75%), with contributions from the SWF's gains.
I'm retired, but my income still puts me in the top bracket. And, my wife isn't retired.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You missed a pretty important word in that quote of yours: Welfare. Welfare is not socialism.
I'm fairly sure quite a few CEOs out there deserve at least the same.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hell, we have massive amounts of oil and gas profits, as well, but it's all going to the very top. The Koch Bros. are doing very well for themselves, but ask yourself: is it better to have 1 billionaire, 1000 millionaires, etc? There's diminishing returns, of course, but the overwhelming evidence shows the economy does best when you have a bell-curve of wealth distribution, with the extremes being the extreme minorities. Our current economic policies heavily favor wealth accumulation in the highest brackets, which does no one but that one person any good, and is the recipe for a return to feudalism. That's assuming that's not the ultimate goal. All these neckbeards, thinking that but for the yoke of regulation they'd be captains of industry? Nope, they'd still be basement dwelling retards with zero motivation, ability, or dare I say, the creativity to actually be something in any economic world they can envision.
You haven't been around that long, so I'm going to indulge you with a response. Of course social welfare programs are part of socialist systems. Where did you get the idea that they are not?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"The moment you conscript (yes) a doctor or teacher, and Require society to pay them a set wage, you'll find that they become in short supply, especially when considering the rest of the market is more or less open and free."
Except, of course, that's EXACTLY what happens in basically the whole of first world with the exception of USA without the ominous results you predict. By the way, even in USA, that's what happens to military personnel, which your country doesn't seem to be in short supply, either.
But, of course, don't let reality get in the way of your very well built rationalizations.
"Do they get to pick what you're having for supper or what products can be sold at the grocery store?"
Yes, at least, up to a point. In most countries there are in place one regulation or another regarding, i.e. the ability to sell (or not) tobacco, alcohol and/or prescription drugs.
"I suspect that if you tried to join the Socialist party in just about any country, the idea "capitalist economy with extensive social programs" would not be the platform of the party or one that they're likely to accept."
Where are you from? I say this because that's exactly what any Socialist party in any European country would support: "capitalist economy with extensive social programs". Maybe it is "communist party" what you are looking for, not Socialist. And even Communist parties, starting on the late 70's early 80's, had strong factions embracing what was called "eurocommunism" which is, basically, that: "capitalist economy with extensive social programs".
I think you should review your sources.
So?
It's not that hard, the explanation was already given: a country with relatively high taxes that are used to provide (for free or a small fee) services that benefit the population at large. Mainly safety, education and healthcare. You get to keep the money you make in transactions, just not all of it. Everyone is OK with this because they value an equal society where no one is "left behind" more than a society where its acceptable if some people don't make it and others make it many lifetimes over
So, socialism is a good thing. That's my point.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not really. The social safety nets were first introduced by von Bismarck, a very conservative monarchist. There were meant to suppress socialism and because it was a christian thing to do. This is why it is so ironic when the modern German christian conservatives try to dismantle them, showing that they are neither.
The USSR, on the other hand, had no general welfare programs except for a constitutional right to a job.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Even though we in Sweden, Finland and Denmark have all those other things you mention it's unlikely we have the same outcome as the Norwegians, at-least not here in Sweden thanks to massive shit-immigration instead ruining things.
Why are you so negative about immigration? If anything, emigration to America has improved the lives of Swedes on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a century. One point three million Swedes emigrated to America starting in 1638. This not only improved the emigrants own economic situation, but also that of those remaining in Sweden. Major changes in Sweden were brought about because the 1907 Swedish Parliamentary Emigration Commission started social and economic reforms in Sweden in order to reduce emigration. It did so by "bringing the best sides of America to Sweden."
Today, without immigrants, our Scandinavian social welfare system would have broken down. Collectively, we don't produce enough children to replace ourselves. In Norway, there are a lot of Swedes working everywhere, not to mention people from almost everywhere else in the world.
I'm an immigrant myself, from Canada, where I grew up in a Scandinavian ghetto. Immigration is a cheap way for a country to get professionals. With specialist education, I feel I have made a contribution to Norwegian society, not just professionally, but because my insights are slightly different from those of the native population. I see problems not just through a Norwegian lens, but also through my Canadian lens.
Both my children are born in Norway, but are EU citizens through my wife, their mother. My daughter lived, worked and studied in Norway, Canada and Sweden, and worked in Denmark, before heading off to USA. Ditto my son in Germany and Poland, before returning to Norway.
Rather than complaining about immigrants, I would encourage you to immigrate, and to try living a life through a different lens. Hopefully, you will find the experience enriching.
I would also encourage you to have your DNA tested. Both my wife and I had surprising results with small amounts of Siberian and native American DNA, in addition to moderate quantities from southern Europe as well as the expected northern Europe. The world is a melting pot. At some point your genes emigrated from Africa, and took a long time coming to Sweden.
Direct democracy doesn't scale? Someone better tell Switzerland!
It's also how most companies work on regards to all shareholders. Many people have shares, but the board decides.
But, of course, you already invalidated yourself saying the magic word.
You do come of a bit obtuse, but assuming you really don't understand : all markets are regulated even in the USA. Things like health and safety regulations stop things like lead getting in our drinkwater.
Social democracy! = communism
Everything will make sense if you stop trying to make them mean the same way thing.
Except this is not what socialism meant up until 1989. How many socialist republics were there in eastern Europe in 1989 ?
Redefining words much ?
You are redefining words, this is not what socialism meant for 150 years....
" The definition of "pure" socialism-as-economics isn't really even worth discussing..." -- yet there have been thousands of books in the 19 and 20 century that did exactly this. Not to mention the practical applications in USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, Estern Europe, China etc etc etc.....
Basically you want to sweep under the rug ("not worth discussing") the failures of your religion...
While i love democracy and Switzerland...you make no point, Switzerland is a small country.
Meet the bolsheviks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party)
Meet the east germans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Socialist Unity Party of Germany)
Meet the chekoslovaks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic)
Meet the north koreans: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind... Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Meet the romanians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Socialist Republic of Romania)
And you think that by changing the name to "social democratic" you are changing the meaning ? Like the democratic republic of Germany i'm sure...
Please get of from your high horse...
What you and your kids did/do was/isn't immigrating, but basically moving around between countries/in areas with roughly the same (cultural/religious) mindset with (at least for your kids) a fall back option (you(r money)) being available.
THAT IS NOT SOCIALISM !!!!!!
My country currently has: socialized medicine, socialized education, socialized welfare system, socialized retirement. AND YET WE NO LONGER ARE Socialists, thank god the food lines are gone.
Genocide is a good thing, because genocide means disneyland, because i said so.
Unlike shitty plutocratic schemes such as the US or - in parts - Germany, Norwegian law says the wealth collected by natural resources belong to all people of Norway and that companies mining those resources have to employ an official company philosopher that thinks about and then decides upon how the gained wealth is put to greater good. (Seriously.)
Seems to work, wouldn't you say?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What in the world are you on about?
There are private practices in all these countries. There isnâ€(TM)t even anything that says you have to be a government employed doctor after the country pays for your education. You donâ€(TM)t even have to stay in the country.
As for salary, some countries like Lithuania have very poor pay for doctors and dentists as part of their socialistic system. But the Nordic countries still have doctors and surgeons being paid very well for their time. And even better, you donâ€(TM)t have an army of idiot doctors checking each room just to add an hour to their billing because theyâ€(TM)re buried under student debt.
There is no indentured servitude or slavery. No serfs. Itâ€(TM)s a competitive market and doctors can job hop freely to increase their income just like anywhere else.
There are even things like serving as a doctor in backwoods places like Longyearbyen which pays very well and entirely tax free to make it so that you can be damn near rich within a few years of graduation and move back to civilization.
But Iâ€(TM)m guessing you have some picture in your mind which makes you think that socialism is some sort of forced work or labor. Soviet Socialism was not socialism. It was simply sold that way.
I was raised American and I am now in Norway. I am on a 5 week long vacation traveling first class by train with my wife, kids and a niece. We have been to Hamburg, Brussels, Paris and London and weâ€(TM)re continuing on tomorrow... and itâ€(TM)s thanks to socialism that I can market myself in a free market socialist economy and do this.
Oh and I happily pay 50% income tax on a BIG FAT salary and bonuses.
Though... you probably know better. You heard about it on Fox News.
Googling the string "Norwegian brands" and then posting a couple doesn't magically make them relevant, or actually heard of.
That tells us more about you being ignorant and uneducated than those brands not being well known.
And why would a brand like Ferrari, Sony or Apple point to a country being successful? If you are totally uninterested in luxury cars or consumer electronics, why would you know of the companies you mention.
And there are cases of the opposite. If you are into diamonds you would know about De Beers. But does that company mean that South Africa as a whole is a country where the population is living in comfort and wealth?
Stop with the obsession of those brands, you have mentioned them several times in this discussion and they mean shit.
He hasn't heard of Norwegian brands because he is ignorant, uninformed and uneducated. Even if Norway had a lot of brands catered towards end-consumers he wouldn't know they were Norwegian if you hit him on the head with them.
He believes Ferrari is what made Italy great.
When you're so retarded, you don't even know what was someone's platform, but you attribute his name to beliefs you don't like, because that's a last refuge of an ignorant extremist who got caught peddling garbage.
P.S. By your ridiculous redefinition of words, almost every state on the planet is socialist already, because they have all those things. Even in Africa, most states have some socialized medicine, some socialized education, some socialized welfare system, some socialized retirement and some highly regulated corporations.
Just like we do here.
So we have now established that your measuring stick of "socialism" doesn't actually measure anything that is relevant to socialism.
I'm not sure how much you'd appreciate your grocery shopping choices (i.e., your personal exchange) to be regulated by the rest of your neighbors.
The product I buy off the shelf meets regulations for food standards so I don't get poisoned, packaging so I know what I'm buying, regulations for financial exchanges so one company can't dominate the shelf and build a monopoly, when I go to the checkout the financial transaction is again regulated which is why I can buy a stick of gum on my debit card without some stupid surcharge, even when I am asked how I want to take my goods home the process is regulated to discourage the use of a plastic bag which legally has to cost money and manages to reduce waste in the process.
I think the real differences is, my neighbours and I have a common interest. Maybe you just have bad neighbours.
I'm giving you the US right's definition of socialism which is offering any government support to "freeloaders" such as people who can't afford medical care. My previous post is 100% sarcastic.
What is the difference in cost between Tim Cook and the second best alternative? What would be the loss in productivity?
Boards of directors are only in favor of races to the bottom when it comes to other people's salaries.
Well, your choice. I prefer to live in a country where I won't die of lack of affordable health care. The funny thing about this is that the US has one the most expensive health care systems in the world - and also had one of the most expensive ones before Obama care, just to make this clear - and is still incapable of providing basic healthcare for all of their citizen. People pay less in taxes for working healthcare elsewhere than you pay for less functional private healthcare and Obama care. Right here in Portugal clinics open with English language service so people from the US can get their teeth fixed. It's pathetic that you even defend your model!
I have no idea what you think you are talking about but no and also I have no kids.
Also there's a massive difference between immigrants and types of immigrants.
The shit we get to Sweden is shit.
1/4 of the Swedish population left for the US in a short time back in the 19th century but clearly not my ancestors. Anyway there was unlikely any 3/4 taxation on work income which provided for others in the US of that time so they weren't much of a burden.
"I was raised American and I am now in Norway."
Welcome :)
Bernie Sanders held up "Scandinavian socialism" as a model that the U.S. should follow. Are you saying that he was holding up something that doesn't actually exist, and/or that he is a wannabe far leftist?
Just trying to understand, in the spirit of quelling class wars.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
By your insane re-definition, US is socialist.
You have to pay for education in the US...
You are a coward and a doctor. That had to move out of the United States to make more money that you don't even deserve I just read that you charge your patience an hour after they leave your office so you can have more money in your pocket! You took the oath mean United States to help the sick! I guess that doesn't mean anything to you as long as you have money in your pocket that you're getting literally illegally. You are at the lowest of the low. I understand you have a family but charging these poor people that are sick more money or their insurance more money 1 hour after they have left your office you are one SOB! You are not fit to be a doctor you are cheating people and I believe he don't even give them the right help that they need! And I'm not afraid to sign my name to this I will not sign it and I will not sign it anonymously! And I will repost this so everybody knows. I don't know if it's will do any good but it does good for my soul. Have you ever thought about your soul I guess not! You are a liar and a cheat! You have no ethics at all! No standards for yourself and your children what can I example decent for them! Think about it. Children mirror their parents! What a great way to mess up your children's heads!
Because the immigration we get is shit.
America is a different country, Swedes emmigration to America was at a different time, Swedes effect as immigrants to America is different to the shit we get to Sweden. It's totally unrelated to Sweden. By law I'm not allowed to say talk in a negative way in whatever way about specific people groups but there's of course a massive difference with an American immigrant of Swiss immigrant or Norwegian immigrant on average and the shit we get the most of.
There wasn't much to leech of in America. Except plenty of newly conquered land. The average American didn't had to spend for that shit or accept to have his people raped and murdered.
Now we no longer have the best sides of America in Sweden. We don't have freedom. We don't have border control. We don't have a smallish government (American is also pretty large but of course a bit less into things than our.) and we no longer have low taxes. We don't get to carry weapons for protection.
The immigrants are shit. We could have good immigrants but we have shit immigrants. We could have a social system which made them less shit (lower taxes, lower welfare, less benefits) but we don't. Our social system is the most attractive for shit people and the least attractive for the best people. The system are shit and the kind of immigrants we get are shit. If we got well-educated obedient productive people then it would still hurt our people but be much better than the shit we get now. I could specify beyond "immigrants" but it's questionable if I'm allowed to and just because "immigrants" could provide benefits doesn't make the immigrants to Sweden any good.
We don't necessarily have to be as many and that could easily had been affected. We could had given couples who got a child 1-2 million SEK for getting one. Way cheaper than the asylum seekers and their families we don't want and would likely help people decide to get one. That people work the most in the EU and get very little from it makes it harder to have children too. How fucking shitty the society is with all the unwanted immigrants and how little one want to stay here is another one. That a lot of them are young men and that they throw the balance of the sexes out of the water and leave (both immigrant and native) men without women is another one. I don't know if you are aware but it takes two to make a baby and if you import men who occupy your women then it become harder to get children too. It's genocide in multiple ways. As (((planned.)))
The reason Norway have Swedes working there is mostly because it's less of a shit-hole than Sweden. Norwegians are of no obligation to like having Swedes there and some may even think they are taking their jobs which is a totally fair opinion. But the difference between those Swedes and a Somali mother is that they are there to work.
Canadian are likely also less shit. As long as they doesn't defend the Muslim invasion and plundering and African welfare migration. Which you obviously do. Any contribution you've done to Norwegian society is most likely taken away by many times if you make them take in one non-European immigrant. In Norway they estimate a western immigrant contribute ~one million NOK to the society whereas a non-european one cost ~4.5 million NOK. Some years ago at-least. So just for the coffers everything else being the Poles, The Swedes, The Canadians in Norway isn't a problem. The Syrians, the Afghans, The Somalis, .. are.
Whatever I emmigrate or not doesn't change the fact that they are shit. Economically, by enforcing change of society, for our people.
What I've read about those ancestor DNA tests is that they aren't flawless. I don't know how specific the changes are of it they use statistics (the claim that we've got more variation between a specific population/"race" than between two races (likely with very specific interpretation / the only parts which change beyond the first rather than all of it or whatever) has been made. Anyway I already know I
Yeah, this, rather than the socialist and welfare approach which kinda all of Europe share but it's clearly not making people richer in the rest of Europe.
Do they really share that approach?
Mean-while here in Sweden the taxes for ore or minerals or whatever for a mining company is 0.1%.
Well, this statement indicates that there are other European countries that doesn't share the same socialist and welfare approach.
Just because they are socialist on paper doesn't mean they are in practice.
So Norwegian younguns are better off because they sell more fossil fuels.
OK, American Left, you have finally convinced me that we should be like Scandinavia. I surrender.
Let's fill our country with Scandinavians, and sell lots of fossil fuels. So we can be like them.
What ... I thought you'd be happy??
There is no such a thing as a completely free market that is a place where agents can handle as they please w/o any restrictions. This is not true in any of the country that has a rule of law and justice system as these make restrictions on agent's activities. There are different levels of freedom in different places this much is true. Communal ownership is just the way human societies work. I do not know one that does not have it except maybe ones like NK where everything belongs to Kim but even there he has to give some to some communities (generals and party members and some parts of the populace) or else he will be deposed. I am also old enough to remember living under communists in east of Europe. Even in Soviet Russia there were thing that were owned by private people as well as communities and the state. At the end it is the level of freedom that you grant agents which make a difference. In fact private exchange works everywhere. It is just differently limited in different places. There are of course ideas that drive some groups of extremists one or the other way but pragmatism eventually wins at least to the effect that biggest faults are corrected. In fact communal ownership is just a special case of private ownership.
Unfortunately the jobs are low paying and people who work 40 hours/week still cannot pay their bills, even when living in a lower cost-of-living locale.
And that my friend, is why California is most desirable state to live in, and we have a bigger population than any other state in the US. Because it's nice here.
I'm pretty sure the weather and geography play a large role as well...
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
You are correct - it's "The Alberta government". I have never once heard one single person in Alberta refer to it as "The Albertan government" no matter what their socioeconomic background.
I use the dictionary definition:
Well, the income tax rate in Denmark is just over 60%, so it fits that definition, too.
Denmark. Denmark plays by those rules. More than 60% of income in Denmark goes to taxes. Last time I checked the definition of "most", 60 percent meets the definition.
Face it: The happiest countries in the world are the countries that have struck a balance between socialism and market economies.
Market economies are independent of socialist/capitalist governments. The market economy fails when a government puts it's ideologies above functional economics... I.E. under extremist governments. Both extreme socialism and extreme capitalism will lead to a collapse of a market economy, ironically due to the same issue, one party gaining too much power over the market, under socialism it's the government, under capitalism it'll be a corporation. End result is the same really.
No country operates a successful "pure" capitalist or socialist economy, they're all mixed in various amounts.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Now that technology is unlocking massive amounts of fossil fuels, it's unfortunate that other countries (I'm thinking of my country Canada) aren't following the example and planning for the future in the same way.
Exploiting fossil fuel reserves is selling out the future for profit today.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
400 times executive to common worker pay is absurd. The reality is Cook earns almost 2400 times what his geniuses do.
102 million to 43 thousand.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/27/apple-ceo-tim-cook-102-million/
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Apple-Mac-Genius-Salaries-E1138_D_KO6,16.htm
If you want to organize, understand that there is a difference between a Union and a Trade Union (Basically a Guild).
The first is for the people, the second is for the job. That is a huge difference.
Where I live (Belgium) everybody can join a union. There are several unions that you can join. There are also some trade unions that you can join. And even then there will be different options. If I wanted, I could even join several unions, although there is no reason to do that.
You can also join at any time. If you are a member of a union, you do not have more, nor less rights. (Elected Union members is a different discussion).
The reason I joined a Union was because I got let go at a job. The first I did was go to a union. Not to protest it, but because they took care of all the paperwork to get my unemployement benefits. Instead of doing all the paperwork myself and wait a few months before it starts coming, they will already give it to me on a monthly basis.
So even the fact that I was unemployed, ment that I could join a Union. And I care more about me than about the job I do. It also gives less power to the Unions. I do not want them to be too powerfull.
e.g. there was a strike with the trains a few days ago. There where fewer trains, but not no trains. I still was able to go to work and stil able to get home with minor delays. This because only one union of the trains was on strike, not 'The train Union'.
And nobody cares if you are Union or not. Every company above 50 people (or is it 49) has to have a 'social election' where a representative of the Unions need to be elected. Not sure how many. I also assume that it is more when the company is (much) larger.
So almost every company is 'unionized'. The smaller companies still could have people who are in a Union or not. Nobody cares.
I have never been asked if I was in a Union or not. With my friends the discussion has come up. It is nothing to be ashamed of, but also not something importand to bother people with.
None of the job interviews I have been present at, on both sides, anybody asked about a Union. There is no reason, because there is no difference and I could easily change my status from one day to the other.
Really: nobody cares. And again: you have a choice to go to any of the Unions you like to go to. Yes: some things they do I do not agree with and some things I do agree with. In the end what I like is that they have seen that there is an honest power distribution between myself and a large company.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sure sounds like it. There's royality to boot.
Rape the land, provide for your people, pontificate your good will to the world..rise repeat, duplicate.
I'm not sure how much you'd appreciate your grocery shopping choices (i.e., your personal exchange) to be regulated by the rest of your neighbors. Do they get to pick what you're having for supper or what products can be sold at the grocery store?
What kind of ridiculous question is that? Yes, of course they do. In every developed country, that's how it works. Naturally they don't actually choose what you have for supper (thanks for the fallaciously ridiculous example there, sport) but they absolutely do choose what you can buy. The representatives of The People set standards for what kind of food can legally be sold. That's how it works there, and it's how it works here. Furthermore, that is a feature. I don't want non-food items to be sold as food. If I want to put non-food items in my mouth, that's my own business, and still not against the law, but I certainly don't want my supermarket to contain fake eggs or plastic rice.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund was actually inspired by the Alberta Heritage Fund. Norwegians learned from us. The difference is that they were much more disciplined when it came to managing the fund.
Dumbshit.
Kid, go back and read what he C&P'd there. You actually quoted it right there, and then you referred back to the post where he pasted it the first time, where it says the same thing because it's the same thing you quoted: "owned OR REGULATED by the community as a whole"
Communism is a kind of socialism where the stuff is literally owned by the community, but it's not the only kind of socialism. And the text you're complaining about made that abundantly clear.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
HOWEVER, too often people want communal ownership AND communal control over those resources - and that breaks down quickly. Direct democratic operation really doesn't scale well at all; could you imagine having hundreds of thousands of people voting monthly on decisions made by your local utility?
Yes, yes I can. I think it would work a lot better than letting them manage themselves, since PGE is doing basically everything wrong; they're not maintaining gas lines, causing fires, and they're not maintaining clearances around power lines, causing fires. And they've knowingly and willingly polluted significant areas in ways that gave a lot of people cancer.
In any case, with modern technology, participatory democracy is easy. We only have so little of it here in the USA by design. If we actually got out and voted, things might change, so significant effort is spent dissuading us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess we're socialist, too, comrade!
All democratic government is socialist, unless only the people at the top benefit and all the people below are slaves. The only real question is to what degree they are socialist. A government that doesn't do anything for The People fails; a government that does things for The People is engaging in socialism. To be fair, the USA is not very democratic, but then, it's not very socialist either. We have some half-assed, inefficient health care which is only given to the very poor. Whoopeeshit!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. The social safety nets were first introduced by von Bismarck, a very conservative monarchist. There were meant to suppress socialism
You can't suppress socialism (by and for the people) by doing things by and for the people. That's not how it works.
and because it was a christian thing to do.
You mean it was meant to pacify and delude?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you mean "cannot"?
destroying unions
You mean not forcing people to pay union dues that didn't want to. That goes especially so when Unions are the largest campaign contributors. Why should anyone be forced to pay an organization that lobbies the government.
If a Union wants to stay a live here is a thought: Do what your members want instead of playing politics. K thanks. It should be no problem for a union to be relevant if they do what their members want and other workers see the value and voluntarily decide to contribute.
It's about damn time the government isn't the moneyed enforcer for unions.
The nordic states (and most of the nations in the western world) aren't properly called socialist. They're social democracies:
"Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and capitalist economy." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy)
Last I checked thereâ(TM)s quite a bit of labor and production outside of healthcare, education, welfare, and retirement in most countries.
Saying what business remains is heavily regulated doesnâ(TM)t make it even a shade of socialist. What would you call it if all private businesses turned into employee managed coops, super-duper-uber-socialist to the ninth degree?
You are, and have been for a long time. Which makes it very strange that you fight so hard against more universal socialization (45% -> ~100%) in areas like health care that have proven so successful in other places.
In the US social democracy seems to have been successfully conflated with Soviet-style totalitarian communism.
Norway isnt ritch not because they are paid by govt, it's because they have robust economy,
Brainwashed much?
WTF are you talking about. The US military has not relied on conscription since the Vietnam era. And I think you are proving his point. The socialist systems are failing hard. They don't necessarily fail over night though. You have been brain washed into thinking you have the best when everything is just slowly falling down around you and other governments are getting on board. As is your government though those governments will fail because the economics don't work.
That tells us more about you being ignorant and uneducated than those brands not being well known.
LOL.
You just look at their revenues, and, most importantly, their margins, and you'll see that they cannot be compared to their peers worldwide. Numbers cannot be faked, it's not about being brand-obsessed.
And why would a brand like Ferrari, Sony or Apple point to a country being successful?
Because they do. Of course a country needs more of them, I just made a few significant examples, but having some of them is a statistically reliable indicator that a country can create successful, high value-added companies without floating on oil like Norway or Qatar.
And there are cases of the opposite. If you are into diamonds you would know about De Beers. But does that company mean that South Africa as a whole is a country where the population is living in comfort and wealth?
I'm not into diamonds, but you really chose a bad example to try to prove your point. South Africa is probably the only African country that could be vaguely considered part of the first world.
If people are willing to pay for it then there is no need for government or the use of violence to achieve your socialist paradise. You have pointed out the very problem with socialism by bringing up other socialist states with poorly paid doctors. The socialist system doesn't compensate people based on market demands. So you end up with too much or too little and a people who are forced to pay too much because of inefficiency relative to what they are getting either through fees or through taxes (theft, at the point of gun or other violence).
Alberta shares tar sands (and conventional oil) revenue already. The federal government doesn't really have a good system of saving and reinvesting windfall revenue, they mostly just give it back to provinces in equalization payments.
Alberta itself used to have something called the Heritage Trust Fund where oil revenues were saved and some was used to fund things like technology sector development, scholarships, etc. (my PhD was partly paid for by heritage funds). After forty years of power the conservative government apparently got cocky and raided the fund. That's part of what got them kicked out and the NDP elected.
The UK pisses it away as it's the Scot's oil. It belongs to them - North sea oil, but the monarchy couldn't have those Scotch peasants having the oil wealth, so nobody can have it , well except the elites.
This is because Quebec never signed the constitution... All other provinces did.
Also there is a law called "clairte referendaire" (Clarity Act ) says that canada gouv can refuse the result of a popular vote for independance.
The problems in the US that have to do with health care are the result of socialism. Obama care is just a wealth redistribution program and we have a problem with copyright and patents which rely on violence to achieve a social objective- but like in all socialism fails to do what is promised and really just redistributes wealth to an elite.
I don't think I've ever heard a Canadian refer to a provincial government that way. It's always Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan etc. government. Then Canadian government.
This is exactly why we all live in shitholes. Europe might be worse, but the US, Canada, and other countries are not far behind. If you want to buy certified bread and pay with a certified credit card I don't care. But when you force those things on others using violence (is that is what you are doing when you propose a law in most cases) I object. I should be able to buy my unpasteurized milk from a farmer down the road. I am not a fan of unpasteurized milk, but its not anyone elses business. I want freedom, not slavery.
I should be able to buy my unpasteurized milk from a farmer down the road. I am not a fan of unpasteurized milk, but its not anyone elses business. I want freedom, not slavery.
I agree, you should be able to do that. And if people stayed involved in government, then they'd be able to. Here in California, you still can buy raw milk from the farmer down the road... or in a supermarket, if they choose to sell it to you. They do have to label it clearly, though, and there are still standards the product has to meet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the 80s they found their oil (...)
Actually oil was found in Norway in 1969, and production started in 1971.
Actually yes, this is ultimately what killed socialism in Germany, although it took about a century to achieve. In order to have actual socialism the workers have to struggle and they generally do that when they don't have much to lose, which was the case back in the day. With all the social safety nets and the compulsory single payer medical insurance the workers seldom bother, especially since the amount of actual industrial workers has fallen sharply after the whole deindustrialisation thing.
This is why social democracy in Germany is in its death throes, which is a shame.
Well, that too. Look, apparently, for some reason, you seem to think that I am some christian conservative, which couldn't be further from the truth. But in the case of social safety nets, credit where credit is due, von Bismarck did the right thing back then, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Another off topic article from the worst "editor" slashdot has ever seen. This moron doesn't even understand what technology news is, yet is still allowed just relentlessly post. Slashdot has really just went off the deep end.
don't call them centrists. They're right wing. Calling them centrists makes them sound reasonable when they're not. Call a spade a spade and a right wing Democrat right wing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
from public Universities. I was in college in the 90s when this crap started and remember the school paper talking to the economics professors who pointed out that without the subsidies tuition would hit $12k+/yr by 2020. They were wrong, we hit that in 2016 when my kid hit college.
College was _always_ this expensive. It didn't go up in price any more than inflation. The federal government was subsidizing education. They stopped doing that so they could give tax cuts to billionaires.
Trump is very much a member of the ruling class. He's a billionaire who sites on golden thrones. Swing states haven't changed since I was a kid. I'm 40.
You're twisting the logic. This is a common right wing tactic pioneered by Karl Rove in the United States and the Soviets before him. Why should somebody in Montana be able to force their politics on the more populace California? How the hell is that Democracy?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
While you're at it, you should learn about Switzerland's political system. It's not direct democratic; it's semi-direct, it's a Federal system like the US is supposed to have. Direct at the local level, indirect at higher levels. And it helps when you have just 8 million people (about the size of the Bay area, or 1/3rd of the Los Angeles area) in your entire Country; you can manage "democratic" operation a bit higher up.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
PG&E should not be exempted from prosecution, and the executives of the utility should be brought to Court. Of course, when PG&E is basically a Government entity (due to massive regulations and funding - it's essentially a 'fascist corporation" for the State of California), it's going to get preferential treatment...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So you make over $380K a year?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
OR. You seem to know know what that word means.. When someone says "OK, here in this case we're talking "owned", how does that work?" and you ignore the OR... Time for remedial reading!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Those wage scales only apply to employers who have agreed to them, either directly (through negotiations with unions) or indirectly (through membership in an employers' organization).
Didn't California go bankrupt a few years ago?
For both of us, if you include capital gains.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Australia, where the 35 year old kids who don't still live at home pay 75% of their wages to rent from an immigrant.
if your population rate grows through combination of a high birth rate, high life expectancy, or immigration. Then either your standard of living must decrease, or your GDP must increase. I believe Norway's new generation are benefiting from egalitarianism and high tax rate of Nordic socialism. Norway's population rate is increasing by about 1%, while the U.S. is 0.81% (source). What is extremely interesting is that the GDP growth rate for the US is better (2.20%) than Norway (1.40%). What I left out in my second sentence is that the final factor is if your society suffers from a growing wealth gap. It should be obvious now that millennials are suffering in the US because they have high costs compared to income than previous generations. Costs for housing and student loans, as well as lower wages conspire to reduce the standard of living for the new generation.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Cap gains, which are taxed at 0% to 20%? That's how you get to 60%? Again - you're full of BS.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
They estimate that 40% of the work force is not actually needed as of right now. It would require some restructure and a change to the belief that everyone needs a job, but we could maintain our production, while reducing the number of people working without increasing the number of hours the working population has to work while making them happier at work. The data, according to some, is showing that there's some combination of people adding less value than the administrative overhead they create by just existing and others who can technically do a job, but not well enough to be of positive value.
This issue does exist, how much is up for debate, but it will get worse and worse over time. What's the end game for when 99% of people are negative value to no fault of their own?
Union Power was more than balanced by the Citizens United ruling, where corporations could be considered persons for the sake of contributing to a political campaigns.
Power can not and should not be this lopsided in America, or you end up in a cut throat race to the bottom for anyone that is not at the C-level in a company.
I want to live in a country where people can be dealt with fairly and not just at a "sector competitive" or "industry competitive" rate of compensation and benefits. "Industry Competitive" is code for our competitor figured out a way to cheat their employees, so we are going to cheat you in the same way.
Do we really want to live in the hunger games?
Do we want to continually "dummy down" and have the "race to the bottom".
Walmart has already achieved this feat and I recommend spending a few hours there just to get a feel for the bottom. Look at store quality, talk to the employees, ask for help, maybe have lunch at the local restaurant.
Theory be damned, socialism in practice is a philosophy that holds societies ought to provide the essentials for life (food, clean water, shelter, education, health care) for all their members, regardless of their income level, as fundamental rights
I like this idea. Let's just redefine everything for our own convenience of the moment.
For example, cats played a role in the failed 20th century socialist regimes, but I don't want MY cat potentially tainted by association with these failures, therefore, I will no longer call my cat a "cat", from now on my small pet will be called a "duck".
Excuse me a moment, my duck is trying to sit on my keyboard where it's nice and warm, I need to deal with that.
Get off my keyboard and go hunt a mouse, you silly duck!
I may get some strange looks from the vet when I show up with my duck, but it will be worth it. After all, the important thing is that I am right and everybody else is wrong.
Formal welfare systems have existed for centuries in one form or another, while informal systems have probably existed for millennia. There's no reason to coin a new term to describe a very old idea, especially when the alternative term you propose to use already has a well defined meaning thanks to Mr Marx and Mr Engels.
Socialism as a word is like capitalism, you can range from being slightly socialist to being overwhelming socialist. Most countries have some amount of socialism. Ignore the modern redefinition of socialism as used in recent US presidential elections which seems to equate socialism with communism. If there are tax moneys that go to welfare, health care, education, or job loss protection, then there's a some socialism involved whether or not the economy is based on capitalist principles. Socialism doesn't require direct worker ownership of companies.
The US has had this huge anti-communist political trend for a long time, which morphed also into an anti socialist and anti union political stance as well. Which is why for some strange reason, "socialist" has become a new insult because it's a trigger word for those who were around in the anti-commie era and another way to divide people into "us" versus "them".
All good and well. And you do get a point for it being semi-direct at some levels. However: the claim was that no system existed where a hundred thousand people have direct democratic influence. I point to a counter example of it working right now. Who cares how many people Switzerland has? That's movig the goal post
Not so much destroying unions, only the unions that give money to the opposition. The Police and Fire Unions get special carve-outs and opt-outs for Right to Work laws. Teacher unions, no so much. The process is very similar to gerrymandering.
You don't know how percentages work.
I assure you, that when my federal, state and local taxes (including real estate taxes) are factored together, it is within 10% of the Danish tax rate. And worth it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Despite the fact that you got modded several times above +3 in your answers to PopeRatzo: you are just an idiot. And so are your moderators.
Can't be so expensive to fly to Denmark and check for your self, or use google earth.
E.g. I'm not sure how much you'd appreciate your grocery shopping choices
Hae? What? What kind of choices are you talking about? The fact that alcohol is expensive (relatively)? Or the fact that the girl at the cashier is most likely an immigrant and black or brown or asian?
Moron ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As we say in the religious South, "Preach it brother!"
Another key point to remember is that Alberta would likely not just go independent. It would join US. Because its oil needs US shale for proper refining, and its economy is actually more integrated into US than Canada because of it.
Not in some distant future. Right now. The hard part of independence/joining another state is already done. And because of it, being in Canada on a different currency makes Albertan economy less efficient. Which is why confederate leadership will never antagonise Alberta beyond the minimum necessary amount. They know the outcome should the push come to shove. It's far too risky.
Sadly, the UK didn't do the same.
All three branches of government are in the control of the Trumpicans and that doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon, if ever. So, don't look for help from the government.
Cops are ultra right wing who believe the rich and powerful can do no wrong. So, you'd be looking at a replays of the Homestead strike if folks took to streets. They are just itching to use all of that decommissioned military hardware they've been buying over the last decade, or so.
And, even if the Democrats somehow manage to remove their heads from their own asses for long enough to take back the Congress, the party is run by Country Club types like the Clintons who aren't exactly friends of the working class.
Face it, the best the average 'Murican can hope for is to find a kind master who doesn't beat his serfs too much.
Archangel Michael protested:
The moment you conscript (yes) a doctor or teacher, and Require society to pay them a set wage, you'll find that they become in short supply, especially when considering the rest of the market is more or less open and free. Nobody goes through ten years of prescribed education to be told they can only charge so much for their services, and are otherwise required to give said services away.
You're as out of touch with 21st-Century reality as a person can be.
The vast majority of doctors in the USA work for HMO/HMA/group practice organizations. They are paid a salary - and possibly a bonus, depending on the organization and the amount of income they generate for it - while the individual organization sets the actual price of their services. Which is to say they work for wages, and don't get to set the terms of their own employment. Likewise, primary and secondary-school teachers in the USA are almost entirely union members, and therefore are paid whatever the (typically quite small) salary the union's contract with the local and/or state school board stipulates, as determined by their seniority. There's seldom even any incentive pay. College profs, likewise, work for wages.
You're doing exactly what I cautioned against: insisting on trying to shoehorn messy, complicated reality into your tidy, simple economic model that willfully ignores practical, quotidian, everyday facts of life in favor of supposedly-stirring rhetoric and pronouncements ex cathedra from your boyhood fascination with Ayn Rand's comic book Atlas Shrugged.
But, by all means, tell me more about these so-called "failed socialist economies" - because I don't see any of those here in 2018 ...
Check out my novel.
It's not tax and spend, it's 'pump it out of the ground and spend'. At most, it's taxing the earth.
It's easy to sell petroleum products real cheap when you don't have to burn it for lights and cooking
sounds prudent
I stated:
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common.
Prompting LynnwoodRooster to respond:
For some things - such as utilities and public parks, I agree it makes sense. HOWEVER, too often people want communal ownership AND communal control over those resources - and that breaks down quickly. Direct democratic operation really doesn't scale well at all; could you imagine having hundreds of thousands of people voting monthly on decisions made by your local utility? Best to think of it as a corporate model - the corporation (utility/park) is owned by the people (the shareholders) who empower control over the corporation to a small group. And review the performance of the group every few years. In other words - a republic model of control, rather than a democratic (mob rule) method.
I can actually see a system of direct democracy that could work pretty well, assuming proper authentication technology is developed:
Every adult has a vote witch he/she is required to cast on every legislative decision, be it local, regional, or national. Every voter has the option of appointing a surrogate to cast that vote in his/her place. Voters are free to employ a professional, non-partisan surrogate, who is contractually bound to follow the guidelines the voter sets out, or they may entrust their votes to a volunteer whose decisions and positions appeal to them. Surrogacy may be revoked at any time, for any reason, by either party to the agreement.
So, effectively, you actually have a representative democracy (because only a small percentage of voters will choose to wield their votes personally, even if almost everyone is unemployed, and theoretically has the leisure to fully participate in the legislative process). It has the advantage of essentially the equivalent of snap elections, where, when a volunteer surrogate casts a vote that most of the voters who have awarded him surrogacy disagree with, he/she woould abruptly find him/herself reduced to a single vote - or a mere handful.
It'd sure make professional politicians a helluva lot more directly responsive to their constituents, don't you think ... ?
Check out my novel.
Theory be damned, socialism in practice is a philosophy that holds societies ought to provide the essentials for life (food, clean water, shelter, education, health care) for all their members, regardless of their income level, as fundamental rights.
A socialist business, both in theory and in practice, is one where the workers own the means of production.
That doesn't necessarily mean equal shares. But it does mean that there are no third parties with ownership: the workers benefit directly from their labour without any third party other than the government (taxes) and possibly a landlord (rent) stealing a share - the implication is that the shares of such third parties are quite small. There is also an implication that the worker shares are reasonably fair (equal shares would never be fair, because human beings are not identical, but you also need to ensure that people on the bottom have a reasonable share).
There are LOTS of real world businesses like this. Any family owned business with no debt and no workers outside the family will qualify. Many smaller, non-public corporations will qualify. Even some manufacturing businesses with several hundred employees are run in a socialist manner, with ownership divided between the employees. Even some businesses with debt might still qualify as socialist, that's a bit of a grey area, in large part because there are so many different ways to handle debt within a legal system and society.
Employee ownership gives employees the maximum opportunity to pay for the essentials of life. While the need for governmental welfare systems is not eliminated, it is reduced by having large numbers of independent and self-sufficient people.
In short, "socialism" is not a theory that fails to exist in the real world, it's a description of how many real businesses operate. There is no need to try to twist the meaning of the word "socialism" to refer something other than the accepted definition.
If a country only had such businesses, it would be a socialist country.
In practice, people have had difficulty scaling this up to the national level. Typically sociopaths end up getting the power to control things so that it is no longer the workers who own the rewards of their labour. Government on the large scale in any society tends to result in large scale corruption.
there would be a major fight with Alberta to share tar sands revenue
We do share. They're called equalization payments, and Alberta has always paid in to them while receiving essentially nothing from them. Also, an easy way to get us to increase equalization payments would be to GTFO of the way of pipelines. But certain regions of the country would rather import foreign oil, I guess.
it would be nice if the Albertan government at least would follow Norway's approach and provide for their citizen's future.
We did/do. It's called the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund (aka Heritage Fund), and while it was doing well for a while, it's been absolutely gutted by incompetent (actually, downright malicious) leadership in the last generation or so. Which is why the previous Alberta provincial election (amid the rest of the country thinking we'd lost our collective fucking minds) we voted NDP. I wish we could fix it - there's no excuse for the state it's in - but I don't think it's ever going to happen before oil finally collapses. Also, maybe we shouldn't have completely privatized our O&G sector and then allowed foreign corporations (better yet, foreign state owned corporations - looking at you, CNOOC) to waltz in and buy it up? Just a thought. Looks like we're all good and fucked now anyways.
It is socialism, and many Americans would love to see it happen here. And it will.
Unless being mostly Nordic has something to do with it.
But science never has confounding factors, so I guess that's not possible.
Heavy industry focused on resource extraction and export creates wealth and prosperity for a plurality of people!
Are you suggesting that people of Nordic ethnicity have an extra bone in the foot that makes them more suitable for socialism?
I mean, as long as we're throwing stuff out there...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Clearly you're not a Canadian, eh. It's aboot time you admit it, eh? You forgot the "Eh" at the end of Alberta Government, eh..
Just a little ribbing for our brothers in Canuckistan from a displaced Tropical Hippy from Seattle...:)
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So you mean in Switzerland, every citizen's input is required for every decision? When there's a question about whether to paint the East-bound lanes or the West-bound lanes, all citizens vote on it? Or do they have a representative whom they elected make that decision for them? In a direct democracy, the people make the decision. In a democratic Representative Government, the people directly elect Representatives (Governors, mayors, Federal levels) to make decisions for them.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Perhaps many ignorant fellow American who have never lived or been to Scandinavia would like to explain why I saw so many non-immigrant family living off NAV and preventing their kids from drinking themselves to death? Fuck this socialist propaganda. Stupid fuckinâ(TM) liberals with no life experience
The thing not understood by Fundamentalist Libertarians (yes, it's a religion) and other's who believe Capitalism is the only answer is that socialists (socialist has many meanings, I will unapologetically stick to mine) are not against ownership of property, they are for finding a system where MORE people have property and ownership and control of their lives. Capitalists make most of their money by virtue of what they own. I believe we could convert all renters into home owners, for example. That would require new laws making it impossible to rent a property to a person as their primary residence. And it would require replacing for-profit banks by nationalized distribute-profits-back-to-the-tax-base banks that, over a few decades buy out all current land lords (lords being a feudal concept), and replace that system by a system of much more equitably distributed ownership. Same goes for companies. Fine that a top notch PHP programmer was able to become a billionaire by being in the right place at the right time and making the right moves. In a socialist economy he would still be very well rewarded but laws requiring all employees to own part of the company along with much more progressive taxation would also help level the playing field.
Systems like in Denmark, Norwayt, and Germany just go a small step toward my above-hinted-at concept of socialism, but they are a start. Germany is a net exporting industrialized country with tax-base paid education for all and health insurance for all. If they can do it, the U.S. could do it.
See: http://oceanpark.com/blog/2013/10/no-rent-and-distributed-ownership/
Dennis Allard
Santa Monica
July 16, 2018
Yes, and everytime someone turns 18 they throw away their entire rulebook and start again with new regulations because the vote might be different now.
"WTF are you talking about. The US military has not relied on conscription since the Vietnam era."
Do you even read? The US military is as much conscription-based as doctors in any socialized health-care first world country.
"The socialist systems are failing hard"
Thank you for letting me know. Let me think about it for a while...
Nope, even after your enlightment, I prefer my country's socialized health-care system -and its statistical output regarding not only life expectancy and population health variance, death rates at birth, etc. but also its per capita costs, to USA's any day of the week, twice on Sundays.
So, why is it okay when Norway does it, but the height of evil when we do it?
It's one level of evil when they do it and at least their citizens get something other than fucked, it's another level of evil when we do it and all we get is this lousy environment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not 300x or not 500x? Why not 100,000x?
They also have a population thatâ(TM)s 87% White Christians. If youâ(TM)re advocating for the US to become more like Denmark, I say bring it on!
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded â" here and there, now and then â" are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
~Heinlein
The conflation was no accident. It is systematic propaganda pushed on conservatives to drive them to these extreme notions.
Most companies would coast just fine as they are if the entire C-Level went poof. There was a real-world case where exactly that happened (Uber) and nothing changed whatsoever with the company itself.
There is no conscription in the US Military.
No, that's not why. I'm sure the cities full of homeless sure enjoy your high taxes. I'm sure the illegal immigrants there sure enjoy your high taxes. I'm sure your middle class fleeing to surrounding states sure enjoy your high taxes. Forget it, I know who I'm talking to. You'll never hear me over the cloud of smug that surrounds you.
People from flyover states sure have a funny idea about what California's like.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That has nothing to do with the crime rate. Look at where the majority of crime is. It's in a handful of our biggest cities. MOST of the country does not live in those. Same goes for the other stats you're going by. Lower education levels, lower health, and higher depression. Ironically it's the "left" that mostly inhabits those cities, not the right. Funny, that.
Got a chance to compere what I and my company, in Missouri USA, pay in taxes and health care to cover myself and my wife, with what married friends of mine living in Germany and Sweden pay for the same.
They pay about 5% more... and have better bennies. As in no $4,000/person medical deductible, and then 10% of everything after that. 2 out of the last 5yrs I have made my deductible... which on those years I paid in more. And 2 others I would have hit it if I wouldn't have gotten ill in Dec, and the parts they were still playing with in Jan were in a new year so didn't count.
And because of that bloody deductible I have been avoiding going to the doctor, because forking out $700 for test that may or may not show anything isn't what I want to do.
As noted several times above, we're not socialist.
What we are however is more collectivist, and we run high trust societies. This is because of the culture that came out of the unique challenges of living this far north. If you tried resolution methods that put you in conflict with your neighbour, neither of you would likely survive to the next spring. Winters around here are that punishing. All while having almost no population, so relatively little need to competition for land. It's far more important to work than to conquer, because conquerors just can't gather enough resources to effectively survive the winter, something Swedish Crusaders discovered in Finland.
That means that co-operation and societal support of the weakest, as you will need everyone to work the land just to survive. All while maintaining the basic principles of elites' right to ownership of most things formed the core of the culture as you cannot afford to waste any talent - something that is visible to this day in the fact that we all but worship meritocracy in education systems.
And it's why this model is in free fall in Sweden, where MENA cultures that are the exact opposite of our cultures are now taking hold, and finding just how easy it is to abuse the high trust society now that technology prevents environment punishing such behaviour with death. Because MENA cultures are the exact opposite - grown in climate where you can have a massive conflict with your neighbour, and there's still enough food around to survive the winter. All while having enough production to support large population groups, that can feud within and between each other.
Please read history, the word socialism meant communism, and still does. Read Marx please.
There is no conscription for doctors anywhere else, either.
Even if Norway had a lot of brands catered towards end-consumers...
You just involuntarily denied it has any, and you ended up backing yourself the very point you were trying to oppose. Is that the result of years spent inhaling the smell coming from oil-drilling sites? It must have weed-like effects.
Of course social welfare programs are part of socialist systems.
Firstly, OP didn't write that they weren't or couldn't be, OP wrote "Welfare is not socialism," which is to say it's possible to distinguish between socialising the means of production (socialism) and wealth redistribution via taxation (social welfare). Plainly social welfare can exist in modern capitalist democracies.
Secondly, while it is true that social-democratic parties have eventually come to be seen as its champions, the modern welfare state was initially the creature of conservatives deployed explicitly as an anti-socialist measure. This was already so in the C19th, but took on increased significance after the Russian Revolution.
If social-democrats increasingly saw the value in pursuing the "crumbs off the capitalist's table" --and to be fair, redistribution via high taxation had seemed more effectively to provide the larger part of society with a better life than violent revolution --in the early post-war period most conservative parties around the world were more than willing accomplices. It was really only towards the end of the 1970s, as the Soviet Union was increasingly understood to be spent force and especially as any talk of "Revolution" in the West became increasingly fanciful, that conservatives began the move to call their welfare state back in. The modern welfare state, from that perspective, had amply served its purpose in protecting Western liberal-democracies [in which use, for the benefit esp. of our American friends, 'liberal' refers to private ownership and free markets] from the threat of socialism, and had thus outlived its purpose.
Welfare is not Socialism!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke