[Cthulhu_]

Nordic style social democracy only works well (I think) if the country has reliable sources of income separate from corporations; Norway has a trillion dollar investment fund from oil and gas revenue that is still being added to. The Netherlands earned billions from a gas field in Groningen which they used to fund the social securities systems (subsidies, benefits, etc). But with the closing of those gas fields (they were causing earthquakes, plus environmental concerns) that source of income is gone, and with that + baby boomers retiring + NL being a tax haven so we don't earn much from the huge sums passing through + skyrocketing cost of living, these systems are being broken down one by one.

[NoGravitas]

Social democracy is a class-collaboration system where both the owning class and the working class compromise on their own interests (minimizing vs maximizing real wages) for the sake of stability or national interest. Class-collaboration systems -- however desirable they might be --are inherently unstable because the conflict between the owning class and working class is built into the basic structure of the economy. It's also the case that the state, which administers the conditions of this collaboration, is not a neutral party, but a tool of the owning class. Since the 70s, and especially since the 90s, that's resulted in the rollback of social democratic measures put in place after the Great Depression when the bulk of the owning class recognized them as necessary for stability. State oil revenues are a material factor that has slowed that rollback in e.g. the Nordic countries relative to the Anglosphere, but the underlying dialectic isn't any different.