[xienze]

> I don't think that's so clear.

Yes, it is clear. When you have a system in place that is predicated on having enough productive citizens to support the non-productive ones and your birth rates have fallen off a cliff you're in for trouble.

> Free market capitalism has its own problems and its flagship country, the US, is increasingly considered to be in decline.

Never said the US doesn't have problems. Just pointing out that socialism also has its own problems. No economic system is perfect.

[yongjik]

Quite to the contrary, when you have a system where "non-productive" citizens are not supported, you stifle innovation, because people don't (can't) take chances when one misstep will lead them into inescapable poverty.

Inefficiencies develop across the system because people can't afford to make a change. Firing people or shutting down a factory becomes a massive struggle of life and death, frequently with literal deaths. (If unemployment means your family's livelihood is at stake, you wouldn't just walk away, would you?)

Source: grew up in a country like that.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

> When you have a system in place that is predicated on having enough productive citizens to support the non-productive ones and your birth rates have fallen off a cliff you're in for trouble.

Every country with falling birth rates has that problem, regardless of the political/economic system. Barring extremist solutions like euthanasia, you need to support non-productive citizens and the resources for it need to come from productive citizens in some way, be it with government intervention or not.

[xienze]

> Barring extremist solutions like euthanasia, you need to support non-productive citizens and the resources for it need to come from productive citizens in some way, be it with government intervention or not.

Agreed with the first point. Ultimately though, if you can't generate enough revenue to support the social safety nets something has to give (the old Thatcher quote "socialism works until you run out of other people's money to spend" applies here). The problem with incredibly generous (read: expensive) social programs like Scandinavian countries offer is that the day of reckoning will come much sooner.