| "Source? So what?" Apologies for that intro, I had planned to delete it but I'll leave it so your comment makes sense. I was planning to expand a thought about how it's always the rich who casually conclude that lower taxes and less welfare will help the economy. "Can people who are part of the lower earning rung of society give a unbiased opinion of the system?" In a democracy, yes, they do. Someone who is lower down on the earning rung of society (say earning the median US income), has a far more accurate view of the "average" society than someone who is at the very top, merely because they represent an average citizen. "Yes the evidence does speak for itself. Capitalism worked out pretty great for much of Western Civilization. Everywhere where more socialist approaches were tried it failed. Just ask all soviet countries', Japan, East Germany, China etc. citizens if they are happy." East Germany no longer exists and Russia is essentially a dictatorship with a very powerful upper class of plutocrats, not unlike the US. The happiest countries in the world are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada according to the World Happiness index. Do you notice a trend among those countries? "America is not for nothing the land of opportunity, and it is not for nothing that emigrants are flocking to the USA, Europe and Australia." Denmark has twice the social mobility of "the land of opportunity" as defined by the probability of someone born in the poorest 25% of society making his/her way up to the richest 25% of society within their lifetime. I don't think America is the land of opportunity, unless you count the children of the rich who were shuttled into Ivy Leagues as those with opportunity. "Unfortunately the soviets discovered you cannot have a classless society. It is that drive to elevate yourself to a higher class that makes us want to achieve more than the absolute minimum required effort." I do not disagree, it is impossible to have a completely classless society. But that does not mean that the lowest class cannot have a decent quality of life and financial security. I think it begins with education. After all, only 5.7% of the US population has an education above high-school level. (obviously skewed by <18s, but still a shocking number) |
We are if nothing else viewing the world through the glasses of our own experiences, and as such I must ask that you take my comment as such as such (I'll explain in just a second). There may yet be a better system than naked capitalism, but from experience socialism / welfare states can be a slippery slope, where the masses vote for ever increasing entitlements that does little to alleviate their circumstances.
The countries you have mentioned are indeed the epitomes of good governance and social responsibilty, but they have one other very important characteristic going for them. They are mostly homogeneous. I don't think the USA can say that of themselves anymore and from experience that complicates things quite a bit.
My rose tinted glasses :) . I am from South Africa, another non-homogeneous society with deep scars where we have slowly seen the expenditure of social grants (state welfare) creep up with very little to show for it [1], up to the point where the entire economy is risking collapse [2], not so much because of the expenditure of social grants per se, but because the society here have adopted an attitude of entitlement and looting [3].
So I guess my point is (and was poorly made), be very careful of the law of unintended consequences.
>>"I think it begins with education."
Maybe, who knows. I personally don't believe that anymore.
>>"merely because they represent an average citizen."
I think as in most discussions, balance between viewpoints is what must be sought. Certainly the average citizen must have at least some forms of state provided protection from the rich and powerful and poverty safety nets. But I have also seen the opposite where the poor votes for larger and larger royalties for themselves until the most industrious of society simply packs up and leaves, not willing to part with their earnings with no compensation in return. (Again my rose tinted glasses, in South Africa 2 million tax payers pay 80% of all taxes, and supports 18 million social grant receivers and 2 million salaried government workers. That is not a sustainable situation).
[1] http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2013/10/02/growth-in-social...
[2] http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2013/06/28/south-africa-fac...
[3] http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-01-20-analysis-a...