[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.