Welfare

[aleph_0]

I would like to know if there are any very good books or sources on the sustainability, effectiveness, and equity of Scandinavian welfare states.

[Tenure]

Can't speak of books specifically. Simply have some friends living there, and according them, it works quite well, but only because of the vast sums extorted from that big well of off-shore oil.

(As an aside - I represented Norway at our Model UN here:D!)

[DarkWaters]

I would like to know if there are any very good books or sources on the sustainability, effectiveness, and equity of Scandinavian welfare states.

Andrew Bernstein has around five or six pages about Scandanavia in The Capitalist Manifesto. These few pages alone are really worth reading. Here is a paragraph of delightful tidbits from this section.

Some of the major points include that the economies of Sweden and Norway are still "mostly free" as they allow a substantial amount of private ownership, maintain low tariffs and actively engage in free trade. Furthermore, from 1870 to 1970 Sweden experienced a higher rate of economic growth than almost any country in the entire world. It was not until the post-1960s when Sweden began significant strides towards a social welfare state. Now Sweden has one of the highest tax levels in the industrialized world and productivity is very low. For example, Swedish doctors worked an average of 1600 hours in the 1990s as opposed to an average of 2800 hours by United States doctors. Sweden currently has an adult population of 7 million, of which 2.7 million are not working, most of whom are supported by some kind state welfare.

Even recently, I remember reading in the Wall Street Journal that around 13% of Sweden's population is receiving some sort of disability payments from the government. This included for laughable conditions like being too sensitive to the electricity in your environment. (commonly called Electrohypersensitivity or EHS)

Anyway, for a wide variety of reasons I recommend that you check out Dr. Bernstein's excellent, excellent book.

Can't speak of books specifically. Simply have some friends living there, and according them, it works quite well, but only because of the vast sums extorted from that big well of off-shore oil.

Dr. Bernstein's book also details how most of Norway's oil wealth came because United States companies figured out how to exploit the oil in the untamed North Sea.

(As an aside - I represented Norway at our Model UN here:D!)

I hope that you volunteered to take action concerning Mullah Krekar.

Edited June 6, 2007 by DarkWaters

[Prometheus98876]

Even recently, I remember reading in the Wall Street Journal that around 13% of Sweden's population is receiving some sort of disability payments from the government. This included for laughable conditions like being too sensitive to the electricity in your environment. (commonly called Electrohypersensitivity or EHS)

Hmmm..we have something like that here...people claim that power pylons etc near their house are making them sick, and get cancer due to electromagnetic radiation, however there seems to be absolutely no evidence for this, and in fact most people near such do not seem to get sick in any way that can be associated rationally with power lines. Would this be like / part of what the Swedish people claim?

Edited June 7, 2007 by JMeganSnow

[DavidOdden]

The very question of "equity" in the Scandinavian welfare system is a joke -- what would that even mean? It is totally inequitable -- people who produce are forced to sacrifice their lives for those who do not.

Effectiveness presupposes a goal -- the goal seems to be to be sure than nobody has to live under a bridge because they don't have a place to live, or starve because they can't afford food, or die of disease because they can't afford to see a doctor. All well and fine, but "effectiveness" means something onle if there is actually a problem that needs to be solved. Scandinavia is not Malawi.

The system is not sustainable, but it's not possible to predict when and how it will collapse. Some of the significant factors which will lead to collapse are the luxurious system of child-related entitlements (direct payments, a year's paid leave for each child, free day-care), health benefits (including health-related job leave which leads to the discovery of various "syndromes"), labor laws (wages, hours, "employee rights") and the full-employment ethic (this leads to massive inefficiency on the job -- nothing is ever simple, it takes a lot of time to do anything especially since you aren't authorized to do X and the person that does X is on vacation, so let's twiddle our thumbs for a week).

It's perfectly possible to live a simple life here, as long as you don't want too much of the good stuff in life that costs money, like cars. As increasingly more people accept the ethic that it is okay to milk the state to provide for more of your life, the cost will go up, taxes will go up, and goods will become even more expensive, so that cars are beyond being luxury items, and refrigerators become luxury items.

[intellectualammo]

Andrew Bernstein has around five or six pages about Scandanavia in The Capitalist Manifesto. These few pages alone are really worth reading. Here is a paragraph of delightful tidbits from this section.

[...]

Anyway, for a wide variety of reasons I recommend that you check out Dr. Bernstein's excellent, excellent book.

Note: said pages DW mentioned are 319-23. But more: I found references Dr. Bernstein has for that section...I'll give them to you, because I am feelin' generous:

Peter Stein, "Sweden: From Capitalist Success to Welfare-State Sclerosis," www.cato.org. The World Factbook 1999. Gerald O'Driscoll, et al., 2001 Index of Economic Freedom, op. cit., pp. 289-290, 347-348.

I'm having trouble making sense of the references, but that's the way it looks in my book. Click here! This should help.

If you don't have "The Capitalist Manifesto"...you can always borrow mine...hahaha...

Edited June 6, 2007 by intellectualammo

[aleph_0]

Andrew Bernstein has around five or six pages about Scandanavia in The Capitalist Manifesto. These few pages alone are really worth reading. Here is a paragraph of delightful tidbits from this section.

Thank you very much.

The very question of "equity" in the Scandinavian welfare system is a joke -- what would that even mean? It is totally inequitable -- people who produce are forced to sacrifice their lives for those who do not.

I simply mean the ability to provide equal treatment for all rather than privileging a particular portion of the society, though perhaps "universality" would be a better word.

Effectiveness presupposes a goal

Right. And I'm asking if there are sources on how effective Scandinavian welfare states are at accomplishing that goal.

The system is not sustainable, but it's not possible to predict when and how it will collapse.

What evidence do you have?

Note: said pages DW mentioned are 319-23. But more: I found references Dr. Bernstein has for that section...I'll give them to you, because I am feelin' generous:

I'm glad that you were so generous as to give them to me, despite how odd it would be to give them to someone else.

Thank you.

... And I'm pretty sure The Capitalist Manifesto doesn't speak to this issue directly.

[intellectualammo]

The very question of "equity" in the Scandinavian welfare system is a joke -- what would that even mean? It is totally inequitable -- people who produce are forced to sacrifice their lives for those who do not.

I'll add that the very question of whether or not welfare is sustainable is a joke...or whether socialism, communism, democracy, mixed economy, dictatorship is sustainable...it is certainly not a question I would even ask. What does that matter, when they should not even be in the first place? Political-economic systems that violate individual rights should not exist, even if they could somehow continue to use force to sustain themselves...they can't morally.

In other words, they are unsustainable morally, therefore politically and economically. They should not be, so why look to see whether or not they are sustainable?

I'm asking if there are sources on how effective Scandinavian welfare states are at accomplishing that goal.

Is he looking for how effective they are at being immoral?

Oh, and you didn't get my emphasis before, which increases my laughter.

[aleph_0]

They should not be, so why look to see whether or not they are sustainable?

As ancillary arguments.

Is he looking for how effective they are at being immoral?

You could word it that way, sure.

Oh, and you didn't get my emphasis before, which increases my laughter.

I got it, I was just playing with it to increase your laughable-ness--quite successfully, it seems.

Edited June 6, 2007 by aleph_0

[DarkWaters]

Would this be like / part of what the Swedish people claim?

Yes, it sounds just as ludicrous.

[Prometheus98876]

EHS is really what they are claiming here when it gets right down to it, as they know others arent suffering these alleged cancer problems. So they have to claim they are more sensitive to electromagnetic radiation than everyone else, or there claims completely fall down.

Though of course given the total lack of evidence for EHS in the first place, or that living near power pylons has any such effect..and statistics that suggest that the incidence of cancers etc near these thigns is no greater than say for people livign near trees, its just ludicrous as you say.

[intellectualammo]

I got it, I was just playing with it to increase your laughable-ness--quite successfully, it seems.

Oh, my mistake. Usually I take an estimated 95% of what you do post here as being a joke...and the one time you try to "intentionally" make a joke, I took it seriously. Sorry. Or maybe it's just an ansillyry argument of yours (read: rationalizing). Seeing your political posts here, your HP comments, and relationship quota's I should have known by now not to take any more of it seriously. Again I apologize for my error, if I did make one...hahaha...or maybe you're just a bad joke teller...and better at being one.

[aleph_0]

Or maybe it's just an ansillyry argument of yours (read: rationalizing).

A pun! My dear sir, may I declare you are a genius!

Again I apologize for my error, if I did make one...hahaha...or maybe you're just a bad joke teller...and better at being one.

I'll take no blame for your ignorance, though I may take some Schadenfreude mixed with embarrassment in your outlandish behavior.

[intellectualammo]

Schadenfreude

'pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune'??...how...sadistic. And here I thought of you as being more masochistic after your HP movie comment... Looks like I keep making errors...or am I?

[edit to add... Well if you're going to be mixing things... Mine's called Smirnoff, but I won't mix it with anything, because if I took a few shots straight to the head, only then might I be able to make sense of your avatar...]

Edited June 7, 2007 by intellectualammo

[DarkWaters]

I wonder if any countries give disability payments for ergophobia.

[Prometheus98876]

That would be an "abnormal and extreme fear of work" I believe. They seem to hear, lots of people get welfare payments in truth not because they CANNO

T find work but because they are just too scared. I would consider that abnormal (abnormal compared to proper human behavior) and extreme. So yeah, New Zealand does :-P.

[Tenure]

Eh, we have something similar to EHS here too. People claim that they need paid-time off work for 'stress'. Yes, stress. They claim that work is just "stressing me out too much, baby" and that they need to chill for a while - on the tax payers' expense.

I could actually bitch all day about the Welfare and Nanny state of Britain. Sweden might give more of their GDP to welfare, but I bet you we're even stupider in the way we spend ours.

Rule Brittania.

[Prometheus98876]

I would gather (I should look into this) that the "welfare state" of Britian isnt too dissimilar to what he have here in New Zealand, would you happen to know anything about this?

[DavidOdden]

I simply mean the ability to provide equal treatment for all rather than privileging a particular portion of the society, though perhaps "universality" would be a better word.

Okay, in that case the system is extremely inequitable and it is designed to privilege a portion of society at the expense of another portion of society. The productive, energetic and efficient portions of society are made into sacrificial animals that the unproductive, slack-jawed portions leech off of.

And I'm asking if there are sources on how effective Scandinavian welfare states are at accomplishing that goal.

The goal of destroying wealth and souls for no benefit? Your question is meaningless -- are there any sources that prove that the goal even exists? It doesn't, which is why it pointless to ask how good they are at nothing.

What evidence do you have?

That the course of the collapse is unpredictable? The simple fact that economic and political theory is nowhere near advanced enough to predict how long Jens Stoltenberg will keep his job. The collapse of Zimbabwe is vastly more predictable because that regime is ten of thousands of times more in violation of reality than the Norwegian socialist bureaucracy is (and it is fundamentally grounded in one 83 year old evil fact, but we can't predict when that fact will cease to exist). There isn't a quantitative model that predicts when and how Norway will shrug its burden.

[Tenure]

I would gather (I should look into this) that the "welfare state" of Britian isnt too dissimilar to what he have here in New Zealand, would you happen to know anything about this?

Well, let's see now... as far as free-markets are concerned, corporate tax is actually down to somewhere between 5-10% (when it used to be somewhere around 30-40%). And we obviously have a market where goods are bought and sold.

In terms of welfare state, I'll try to compile as much as I know at present:

Under the Labour Party, over the last ten years or so, income tax has gone down overall. However, at the same time, taxes on goods such as cigarettes and alcohol have gone up incredibly (I think the majority of the price of a packet of cigarettes is actually the tax). Benefits are handed out freely, with some people deliberatly not working, and actually putting themselves in the position of needing benefits (such as having children).

Schooling is 'free' for all, as is healthcare - I don't think I need to explain the defficencies, moral and financial bankrupcies, beauracracy and all manner of garbage involved in these systems. This is not to mention the constant harping on about 'Green' taxes and giving money for education and healthcare in third world countries.

We actually keep people on our benefit system and in our country, such as Abu Hamza al Masri - a muslim cleric who has preached continuously, in public, to local muslims about the evil, zionist overlords. He is off the benefit system... and in our jails now.

Then there's the whole issue of the nanny state: drug prohibition, public smoking ban (comes into effect July 1st), warnings against the 'dangerous' drinking habits of the middle class, the Terrorism Act, the (failed) Religious Hatred Bill - the list goes on.

Sorry to sidetrack from the issue of Scandinavian welfare - but the basic fact is this: If the Scandinavians didn't have the massive amounts of money available to pump into their Welfare schemes, they would be in the exact same position as us.

[aleph_0]

Okay, in that case the system is extremely inequitable and it is designed to privilege a portion of society at the expense of another portion of society.

In a respect different from that to which I was referring, namely, in health care.

I already agree that welfare is immoral, so you're just preaching to the choir. What I'm looking for is beside this point.

The goal of destroying wealth and souls for no benefit? Your question is meaningless -- are there any sources that prove that the goal even exists?

Good question, but it's pretty easily teased out of the fact that their welfare state provides food, money, psychological care, and other such provisions aimed at providing for health universally. So I see every reason to believe that this is the aim of their welfare civil services. Now to the point, about which you seem not to want to speak: Is this self-sustainable (is its existence able to be perpetuated by its own means), universal, and effective?

There isn't a quantitative model that predicts when and how Norway will shrug its burden.

What is the documented evidence that it ever will? Consider if you had a system that was purely capitalist. Then it regresses to a (highly) diluted welfare state in which each individual that composes the 1% of the society that has the greatest income, is taxed $500 every year for civil services. This society will not be as productive as it possibly could be, I'm sure. However, assuming this society is as productive as ours, it is clearly sustainable.

If the Scandinavian welfare states are sustainable, they are certainly sustainable only at a much lower level of affluence, but I wonder if they are at all sustainable--or would they have to give up either universality or effectiveness?

[intellectualammo]

[...]it is clearly sustainable.

The taxation you imposed in your example is not sustainable morally.

There is only one system that is moral enough to be sustainable.

[aleph_0]

You have one or both of two problems: Reading comprehension or reading, period. I already addressed the moral issue and noted that the moral issue is not what this topic is about. If you want to talk about that, take it to another topic.

[DavidOdden]

In a respect different from that to which I was referring, namely, in health care.

You are either being remarkably sloppy, or intellectually dishonest. The record shows that you were not referring to health care. I assume you will cop to the lesser offense of sloppiness.

Good question, but it's pretty easily teased out of the fact that their welfare state provides food, money, psychological care, and other such provisions aimed at providing for health universally.

But these things are available to everybody without the welfare state. Do you have any concrete evidence that the state does these things? I maintain that food, for example, is provided for by the individual wage-earner. Money (for beer, boat rides, bus trips, ski wax, new flooring and so on) is provided by the employer, in exchange for services. Why don't you try narrowing down your question. Would you prefer to just focus on medical care?

So I see every reason to believe that this is the aim of their welfare civil services.

This what? Medical care (which is to be distinguished from dental and eye care)? So housing be damned, we're not talking about water-welfare, this is just about medical care, right?

What is the documented evidence that it ever will?

First, stay on topic. You asked what evidence I had that we can't predict the manner or time of the demise of Scandinavian socialism, and the fact which shows this is the lack of a predictive quantitative model. Your response is incoherent. Did you want to shift topics?

Consider if you had a system that was purely capitalist. Then it regresses to a (highly) diluted welfare state in which each individual that composes the 1% of the society that has the greatest income, is taxed $500 every year for civil services. This society will not be as productive as it possibly could be, I'm sure. However, assuming this society is as productive as ours, it is clearly sustainable.

Spurious reasoning: you have to factor in the consideration that each year, those in the bottom 1% of the upper 1% will simply produce $500 less to avoid the taxes, reducing GDP. Another 1% at the top end will get fed up and leave the country, or cheat on their taxes, or whatever. Then the income range subject to taxes will have to be increased, but that increase will result in more dropouts, forcing another increase in the income range subject to tax.

I still don't know that you mean by "sustainable". If you would be so kind as to explain this notion as you understand it, and what evidence you have that Scandinavian welfare is "sustainable", this might be slightly above the level of pointless, but until you get a clue what thing you are trying to "sustain" and what it means to "sustain" something, you're just engaging in empty rhetoric. The tragic history of communist and socialist governments of the past 100 years is proof enough that socialism is flawed on simply practical grounds. The massive setbacks in Scandi-socialism over the past 50 or so years is further evidence of the unsustainability of that particular version of mixed-economy socialism. Where is your evidence that there is something "sustainable" about contemporary Scandi-socialism?

[intellectualammo]

You have one or both of two problems: Reading comprehension or reading, period.

Not with reading...I read this already before I posted:

I already agree that welfare is immoral, so you're just preaching to the choir. What I'm looking for is beside this point.

So my problem may be just reading comprehension, then...not both.

Like you said...what you're looking for is beside the point... Why look for ancillary arguments... Why look for any support...when you already know it's not a moral system? That's what I can't understand. I can't divorce the moral (I'm not implying or saying that you are asking me too)...and go on searching and asking whether or not it is sustainable...

Edited June 7, 2007 by intellectualammo