[refurb]

What does social democratic society even mean?

Canada has almost 100% public health insurance coverage, while Switzerland insurance is entirely private. The US is a mix.

The US public school system is based on where you live, while Sweden has a school voucher system where parents can choose where their kids go including private schools.

So what exactly is a social democratic society?

[soco]

Swiss insurance is definitely NOT private the way US understands it so let's not throw them in the mix as an argument for private insurance. It's run by private companies true, but the rules to run them are very strict, established by the state and revised periodically both by the state and by popular referendums. So, there's absolutely no free insurance market and I'm happy having it this way.

[sam_lowry_]

This actually is a good point. Capitalism and Socialism are broad labels that make little sense outside of scholastic arguments.

As a side note, I live in a wealthy European parliamentary monarchy with stellar press freedom ratings and an abysmal quality of press that makes me want to ignore all local news outright. Is there an -ism for that? Decadentism?

[soco]

No idea... The decreasing press/media quality gets often correlated to a decreasing education quality, can you see around you such a thing?

[sam_lowry_]

Nope. Education is on par with neighbors if not better. Quality of pre-school and primary education is great, secondary and tertiary are acceptable.

But... The only news-only FM radio that expanded from a nearby country was banned and replaced by a stub Catholic FM radio some 10 years ago. Politics is non-existent. Parties are melting pots of scrubs.

But we get by.

[refurb]

But the US insurance market isnt free either, they are heavily regulated in the US as well.

[toyg]

"Social Democracy" is typically used as shorthand for "Social Market Economy". Which itself is obviously slightly fuzzy, technically speaking, but again is shorthand for "a mixed system where the State has a significant and proactive role redistributing wealth and identifying priorities, asserting primacy over pure market forces". How that is implemented can vary.

[arp242]

This is the problem when people talk about "socialism", "capitalism", "free market", and these kind of terms. Almost every country on the planet today has some elements of that – barring some extreme outliers – with all sorts of different different implementations and restrictions.

Talking about these concepts in broad general strokes is worse than useless; it just muddles things. Talk about health care, or social security, or specific free market issues, or specific things like that instead.

Medicare is "socialism" and popular; it was already instituted in 1973 (when this article was written). The American people had already "chosen socialism", just not the extreme version the author seems to implicitly assume.

[the_third_wave]

Not socialism, that is what it is. The name is rather unfortunate as it brings up this confusion with big-S Socialism but social democracy is probably best defined as a balance between a free-market capitalist economy with a tax-financed social security system, tax-financed (e.g. Sweden, the U.K.) or through some mandatory insurance scheme (e.g. the Netherlands) universal healthcare, affordable (usually free) schooling up to ~16-18 years of age, often with some form of school choice which counteracts the ideological capture seen in some public school systems. Social democracy is not a precursor to "Democratic Socialism" (an oxymoron since it is hard to see how all private means of production can be "democratically" nationalised). It is the most likely end stage of a free market economy since it has shown to be a workable solution to the problems posed by unbridled free-market capitalism without taking away the benefits of the latter.

Have a look at one of those "happiness surveys" [1] and you'll find that the top countries in those list tend to be social democracies in some way or form. Find some Socialist countries - hint: look towards the bottom of the list - and you'll find people are less happy when the promised Utopia remains outside of reach - for them.

[1] https://worldhappiness.report/archive/