[PanickedOmlette]

Taxpayers. And that, people, is socialism.

That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again

[philipp-de]

In Germany,where i live, you get:

* 2/3 of your last wage for 1 year on unemployment, free health care

* After that expires you get your rent paid, free health care , and 400 euro per month for other expenses - indefinitely

On top of that everyone also gets free additional care when they are old / nursing home.

Also everyone gets a minimum pension once they reach 67 years of age.

Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in europe. it has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in europe. it is one of the few countries that still had growth in the years past / is not deeply in recession.

Yeah, those are the perils of "socialism".

[nraynaud]

I liked living in Germany, they have a good work ethics, I really like their service at the bar/restaurant, they come back from the office sooner than the French (I think we have a cultural problem with that), and they know how to have fun, chilling with a beer in the sun, enjoying riversides, simple joys.

[theorique]

How do I convert to German? :)

[PanickedOmlette]

Germany is doing well, because of : 1. Germans working hard 2. Qualified immigrants from Eastern European countries(and other parts of the world as well). Their labour is cheaper, which in turn is like adrenalin to the economy. I'll let you figure out why.

[coldtea]

1) That's actually factually wrong (check EU work statistics) and a little racist -- adopting the stereotype of Germans as working robots. Here's a pointer:

"According to a new research on working hours in countries of the European Union, Greeks work 42.2 hours per week. more than all other Europeans. The research was conducted by the National Statistical Service of Britain for the period April-June 2011. German people work 35.6 hours per week, French 38 hours, the British 36.3 hours, while the Irish only 35 hours. In addition, according to the same research, full-time workers in Greece and Austria are working more hours (43.7) than workers elsewhere in the EU" (from the Guardian).

2) Nope, they mostly got/get lots of unqualified immigrants. Not to mention that the integration of Eastern Germany post 1989 had an enormous cost that nearly toppled Germany's economy.

[mjn]

The cycle in Scandinavia seems to have played out rather differently. The social-democrats (at the time considerably more socialist than they are today) were mostly elected in the 1930s and '40s, when the countries were extremely unequal, with a lot of poor farmers and factory workers and a small aristocratic class. They implemented a sort of welfare-state capitalism, and the countries prospered after WW2, during a period of almost unbroken left-wing rule.

Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right and towards some expansion of free-market policies and privatization (Denmark's particular version is called "flexicurity").

[javert]

> Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right

As far as I can tell, the Nordic countries had started to stagnate economically, with a lot of young people emigrating for better opportunities, hence people wanting to change things.

[coldtea]

>Taxpayers. And that, people, is socialism.

No. It's just what the civilised West (namely, Europe) calls "welfare state".

And it's very successful, when it's not fucked up by right wing politicians.

"Socialism" was what the old Eastern European countries had.

>That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again

Nope. The cycle is:

rich country with strong middle class --> social left politicians get less popular/elected neoliberals and right-wingers come --> poor country/fucked up middle class --> social left politicians are elected again.

The same way Reagan and Thatcher fucked up the American/UK economy and middle class, and the same way the economy did better under Clinton that under the republicans.

[PanickedOmlette]

It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?

The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...

[coldtea]

>It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?

Deadly serious:

"""Looking only at the core measure of economic performance – GDP growth – Thatcher's performance was slightly better than that of her predecessor, James Callaghan, but slightly worse than under Tony Blair, with average growth over her tenure standing at around 2.3% a year.

(...)

Perhaps the best look at what Thatcherism meant for British families comes from a series of measures calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which calculated household incomes after tax (and any income from benefits), and put them into monetary amounts relative to 2010-11 prices, stripping out the effects of inflation. These figures show families got richer. The median household – the household right in the middle, where half are richer, half are poorer – earned the equivalent of £270.74 a week in 1979. By 1990, this had increased by 26% to £341.58. But, as you would expect, these gains were nowhere near evenly distributed, and the poorest got the least. A family in the bottom 10% had a weekly income of £151.58 as Thatcher came into power. Eleven years later as she left Downing Street, the family had just £158.57 – a mere 4.6% more. The richest families – the top 10% – did far better, with their incomes increasing from the equivalent of £472.98 in 1979 to £694.83 in 1990.

(...)

Still, the poverty figures don't look good: the number of children in poverty almost doubled under Thatcher, from 1.7 million in 1979 to 3.3 million in 1990. Pensioner poverty in the same period increased too, from 3.1 million to 4.1 million. Those numbers rise still further if housing costs are factored in.

(...)

By the World Bank's measures, industry (including manufacturing) fell from contributing 40% of the UK's GDP in 1979 to just 34% in 1990 – and has since fallen more dramatically still to just under 22%. The consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly Wales and northern England, hard. Unemployment soared from 5.3% in 1979 – a level high enough for the Conservatives' "Labour isn't Working" poster to go down in the annals of great election adverts – to peak at 11.9% in 1984. In 1990, the year of Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than when her era began, at 6.9%."""

>The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...

I very much live in Europe. And it's only considered a "failed model" by neo-liberals and private interests that want to demolish it. The people are very much for it.

In fact, the countries in Europe that are the most successful financially and socially, from Germany to the Skandinavian countries, are the ones with the best welfare states.

[sentenza]

Huh? Could you give an example of a country in which communism was established without a violent mass uprising? Here in Western Europe, we have had a few rather stable decades of people voting right and left as they please. Are you aware that there is a world of difference between Socialism and Communism?

Most European countries have a free market economy with some sort of social safety net (that's the socialism right there). Communism has a planned economy, something which is unheard of in Europe at the moment (with the possible exception of Belarus). Also, some countries with strong social safety nets are doing rather well at keeping unemployment at bay. Think of the famous German Kurzarbeitergeld, where the state replaces a part of the pay of workers that work less due to temporary economic circumstances, thus avoiding layoffs.