Why do so many people praise Bernie Sanders' policies? Don’t they know about the bad track record of socialism?

Bernie Sanders

If you are looking at the former Soviet Union, their Eastern European allies, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea you will get the impression that socialism although good on paper it is difficult to run.

But the Northern European Nordics countries Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. Seem to be doing quite well. According to The Economist, “The Nordics cluster at the top of league tables of everything from economic competitiveness to social health to happiness”. They have avoided the problems of Southern Europe especially after the credit crisis and the US extreme inequality. There is free health and education and although they pay more tax, “a Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care”.

These are the countries that Bernie is looking at, although there is less government involvement in saving failing companies. The government is focused on long term goals than short term gains. They are also focused on balancing the books, with a budget deficit of 0.3% (US - 7%). The issue of government transparency is at a different level, in Norway, everybody has access to everybody else tax returns. It is a public record “workers can see what their colleagues earn and neighbours can snoop on how much the people next door make - all legally and online”. In Sweden, everyone has access to public records. Hence the government operates in the “harsh light of day”.

But despite, this there is still trouble in paradise, 30% of the workforce is in the public sector and public spending as a proportion of GDP is high, people are worried whether it is sustainable. Levels of taxation force their bright and clever to move to greener pastures. A lot of people especially immigrants live off benefits and this is causing social problems. The EU has 7% of the world population but is responsible for 50% of its social spending and with ageing populations, this is likely to increase.

But on the whole, it seems to work for these countries and there is proof if slight changes are made they can inject market mechanisms to their welfare states making them more effective, less bureaucratic and more profitable. The Chinese are already looking at their models and why it is so successful.

Comments

The seedling of doubt - Merchants of Doubt

Doubt is the product What this book says, and the film elucidates is there is a selective specific group of "scientists" who have a particular playbook to discredit, confuse and "muddy the waters" against scientific research for their sponsors. What these group of people or interest groups have learned from the days of dealing with the tobacco industry, is that they need not concern themselves with trying to prove anything or to disprove the scientists. All they need is to seed doubt and confusion in the market of public opinion, their main motto is "Doubt is our product". As, when people are confused and the policies are difficult to interpret because they are complicated, ambiguous, inconclusive, etc then there will be great difficulty in organizing widespread opposition to it. They deliberately frustrate governments into inaction, blocking them by using their lobbyist and "experts" and hence stop all ways of finding effective solutions...

The end of a massive killer - The Malaria vaccine story

A program on BBC iPlayer tells the story of the search for the first Malaria vaccine. T his is an exciting story. It has everything, from an exciting detective story to romance, horror, thriller, and finance. The individuals involved go from country to country, from London, Oxford, and New York to Villages in Africa and India. It involves multi-million organisations and sole individuals working against the system. It is recorded that one child dies every minute from Malaria, and it is a significant killer in a large number of countries. This program tells the story of how the Oxford University Team, the same team that developed the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZencetra as part of the Academic Vaccine Development Program. They had produced about 3 billion doses and had been used in 170 countries. This was also helped by a grant from the EU. Malaria was endemic throughout the Western world. It got its name from Rome. The "bad air" ( Medival Latin' mala aria' ) surrounding ...

Further explaination of the universe

Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, has always tried to explain complex astrophysical phenomena in simple language that everyone can understand. The subtitle of this book is "a further explanation of a science classic made more accessible". To his surprise, his book A Brief History of Time was a bestseller and was on the top ten list for 237 weeks and sold one copy for every 750 people on Earth. The book was a remarkable success for a modern physics book. Many people were asking for a sequel to the book. A Brief History of Time explained how Newtonian Astrophysics described the laws that control planets and stars' movement. This book takes into consideration the most recent theoretical and observational results. How light speed is finite and constant at 299,792,458 m/s. Since the speed of light is constant, to explain the different observations for different observers, time must be relative. Producing the twin paradox, i.e., time slows d...

A different prespective to Life

Search This Blog