[patrickaljord]

> And, some people are born Mozarts and Newtons, and we never hear of them because they they lack connections, access, leisure, and opportunity.

That's why I said even if we had 100% full equal opportunities, we would still have inequalities. Let's say 100% of people who are born Mozarts and Newtons got to be heard and succeed and all have great connections and equal opportunities, we would still have the same problem with people _not_ being born with such huge potential. That is, unless you believe we all are Mozarts and Newtons that weren't given the right opportunities and connections and here we'll have to disagree. Now, what kind of society gives better chance to succeed for everyone? Socialists ones with no freedom or the ones with the maximum freedoms? Reality says the latter.

[Futurebot]

Those aren't the only two choices. The west, and even many in the east, are made up of mixed economies. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and many others are extremely successful mixed economies by most measures (see OECD stats to start.) In the US, the mix is currently wildly out of whack; it needs to move back towards broadly shared prosperity, rather than the oligarchy we have now. That means higher taxes on the wealthy, better social programs, redistribution, and all the rest.

Read "Twilight of the Elites." Few are arguing for zero inequality; even anti-inequality crusaders acknowledge there will always be some inequality. It depends on how much, and what that affords the society. The amount we have now is wildly out of balance. We have models that work better in the world, and even in America's past, and should look to those.

No one is arguing for communism anymore (the implications of the poster higher up notwithstanding), except those that are largely irrelevant to the debate.

[patrickaljord]

I live in France, I can tell you that most of the countries you list here built their wealth before building their huge welfare state and that it's now turned into a money losing machine nightmare which are being urgently reformed as you read this. It's also turned people against one another and created more racism for a simple reason. Given that the welfare state takes money from people and redistributes it to others by force, as the "others" grow larger due to immigration, people start to hate on immigrants for shrinking the part of the pie they think they deserve (even if the welfare state is responsible for more people being on welfare, not immigrants). A huge welfare state also discourages many people from working, making it more difficult for immigrants to integrate like they used to and creating tensions and resentment from the part of the population that works and the one that does not. This is why most Muslims in the US are well integrated while in Europe they are pushed into ghettos and victim of racism. All this because we believe that it's better for people to be unemployed than being on a lower wage when in reality it's the opposite.

[Futurebot]

Welfare discouraging work has largely been refuted: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welfa...

Where it does discourage work, the effects are extremely minor. Your contention that their wealth was before the welfare state is completely incorrect and ahistorical. Even the crudest measures show that to be wrong. Examples:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/gdp

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/gdp

For France, the numbers since 1960 have been fantastic overall. Look through the OECD measures:

https://data.oecd.org/france.htm

I'm sorry, but your statements don't hold up to any of the measured data, and this excludes things like perceptions of corruption or gross happiness. No country is perfect, but the ones I listed are doing better than the US on almost every internationally recognized measure.

[argonaut]

> Welfare discouraging work has largely been refuted

Did you read your own link? Your own link says: "There is little doubt that welfare can discourage employment, particularly when recipients lose benefits quickly as their earnings from work rise. Still, the effects are muted."

[Futurebot]

Yup.

> largely

> the effects are muted

[argonaut]

The first does not follow from the second.

[patrickaljord]

I know for a fact that here in France we have both substantial unemployment and at the same time many job offers available that people refuse to accept because they can afford to live on welfare instead. By definition, if they could not live on welfare they would accept these job offers. As for these countries building their wealth before the welfare state:

- http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-160.html

- http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0319/034.html

[Futurebot]

Your first link is a known biased source.

Your second one doesn't undermine the case; it mainly discusses that tweaks are needed, not that the social democratic system doesn't work as you've implied. No one is arguing that the numbers never need to change; the entire discussion about the US is that the numbers need to change (in the other direction.)

As far as whether those people would accept the offers, it's possible at the margin, which are the minor effects I've mentioned. The numbers matter, though. France is a particularly bad example to use considering its job performance:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/cheese-eating-jo...

[patrickaljord]

Sorry but if you are just going to dismiss my sources because they are too biased then there is no point in continuing this conversation. Not to mention the irony of following that with a Krugman article which as biased as can be.