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The Dangers of Socialism 13 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Thanks for warning us about these perils. I have emailed this to everyone I know so they can be aware of the danger. :)

    • Then hopefully they'll read my counter-argument, too. One primary tenet of economics (and one that's often not taught) is that in any given economic system, there tends to be an inverse correlation between efficiency and "fairness". If you go too far to either extreme, the systems can break down. One problem with many socialist countries is that they have strived so hard for "fairness" that they tend to be less efficient and economies like the US tend to dominate. Witness the economic doldrums of France

      • Witness the economic doldrums of France as a classic example.

        I guess I'll have to step up to the plate on this one ;--)

        Not being an economist, I won't comment on figures and if the French economy is really that bad though. I will just give an example of why I can't really comment ;--)

        My favourite economic example is a perfect illustration of a line that should be familiar to you: "There Is More Than One Way To Do It". See I used to work for Airbus, a German-French_English (with a smidgen of Spanish th

        --
        mirod
  • Quick note....

    Speaking as a danish citizen. Notice quite a few scandinavian countries in the top 10 those charts.

    Also note that the income tax are not flat, but progressive. http://www.worldwide-tax.com/finland/finland_tax.asp [worldwide-tax.com]

    I believe that one of the reasons of the fine ranking, is trust. I don't expect to get cheated/lied to/murdered by fellow citizens/ politicians/the state (ok, politicians always twist the truth a bit). This makes it easier to create and innovate, and more likely to share.

    • Yes, cultural differences are a huge problem. On this side of the pond, we have a nasty habit of placing socialism on par with Satanism. I find that amusuing because most citizens of the good ol' USA are quick to condemn this economic system despite that fact that most of them don't know a damned thing about economics.

  • I am not a citizen of Finland, but I have spent about a year there. This is realy great country, but ...
    1. Finland receives big amount of support from EU (especially to support northearn teritories)
    2. I have seen a lot (and I mean A LOT) of drunk people wandering all day through out the city. I suppose, that this country won't last in this condition to long, since prices of alcohol are decreasing and most Fins do like to drink.

    But hey, at least now, they do make a great living.

  • While I have no personal knowledge of Finland, here are some fact and figures, courtesy of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    1. Finland [wikipedia.org] has a population of only 5mil spread over 338,145 km², making it only the 162nd most densely populated country.
    2. the Finish miliary [wikipedia.org] expenditure for 98/99 was only 2% of the Finish GDP. Compare to the USA's 3.7% for that time frame, a number which has surerly risen since then.
    3. 92% of all Fins are, well, Finish [wikipedia.org] :)
      (My point beeing that demographic homogeneity surely encourages trust and a grea
    • Point 3 is a load of crap.

      Last time I checked, Australia has the highest rate of migrants of any country in the world, over 25% of the country wasn't born here, and it works just fine thank you.

      One thing I will say though, is that we don't have any major minorities (except for the aboriginal situation sort of...). There's no equivalent to the entrenched poor black or latino populations America has to deal with. At least, not amoung the migrants.

      But again, if you look at the top cluster of countries, Norway,

      • Point 3 is a load of crap. Last time I checked, Australia has the highest rate of migrants of any country in the world, over 25% of the country wasn't born here, and it works just fine thank you.

        I'm sure it does, but you can hardly say "Point 3 is crap" based on that - for one, thing, every point I listed is a contributing factor, changing just one may change the situation a bit, but the other factors will remain (as you yourself pointed out!).
        Furthermore, Australia is very different from both Finland

  • Some more interesting (some more, some less :)) comments at Ovid's LiveJournal [livejournal.com].

  • At the highest incomes, income taxes are a staggering 45%.

    As Frej pointed out, Finland's tax system is progressive, not flat, so this is a marginal rate.

    Through the Kennedy Administration (IIRC), the US Marginal tax rate was about 60%. It was somewhat high until the Reagan administration, when the tax code was cleaned up and replaced with a three(?)-step rate structure (with oodles of shelters). That "high" tax rate was justified at the time because it was a 60% tax on all income above $1MM/year

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