Game News Support Nazism by Supporting Grimoire

[Lyric Suite]

^ If i could get a bionic super-hand i'd ask for more too. That test is a failure.

 

[caliban]

Ah, so that's how you get a bionic multiheaded dick.

 

[Nicolai]

 

[Jaime Lannister]

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/facult ... _Taxes.pdf

Keldorn is woefully uninformed about taxes. For that matter, so is Saint P. (but significantly less so)

The rich DO pay the majority of the tax burden, Keldorn, no matter what internet conspiracy theorists are saying. And Saint P., taxing consumption would reduce federal revenues and increase the deficit, further weakening trust in the American dollar.

As for presidential candidates, I have recently flip-flopped from McCain to Obama for two reasons.

1. Obama doesn't support lifting the gas tax. McCain does.

2. McCain will put us another $100 billion dollars into debt.

The problem is that the campaign has been far, far more detailed about its tax cuts, which would worsen the deficit, than its spending cuts, which would reduce it. Mr. McCain has proposed the elimination of the alternative minimum tax (at a cost of $60 billion a year), new child tax deductions ($65 billion), a corporate tax cut ($100 billion) and faster write-offs for corporate investments in new equipment ($50 billion to $75 billion).

On the spending side, the senator talks broadly about cracking down on pork barrel projects and holding agencies accountable for their budgets. These steps, Mr. Holtz-Eakin told me, could eventually bring $150 billion a year in savings. He added that given Mr. McCain’s history of fighting against wasteful spending, he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/busin ... wanted=all

Expansionary monetary policy is nice, but when the country is in debt and experiencing a weakening currency, an Obama or two might be in order.

 

[Keldorn]

Constricting political views to a one-dimensional scale is begging for a constipated discussion, especially with participants from different nations since the "left-right" scale can mean so many different things.

There are 2 viable approaches : nationally relative and universally objective. Versatility and complexity provide the omni-perspective.

 

[Keldorn]

Commie throws specious Flash-Bang grenade! Commie attempts to stun Cleve with obfuscation!

Cleve rolls! Cleve saves against blindness/confusion!

Cleve gets extra attack round!

Cleve fires napalm cannon! Cleve hits for 20D6 flaming napalm!

Cleve cooks commie obscurantist in shoes! Commie sophist is dead!

Cleve is victorious! Cleve has gone up another level! Cleve acquires super-squat power!

Cleve continues exploring ruins. A smoking pile of ash that used to be a commie is nearby. There is a ravine leading north to a large metal hatch.

RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST : "I am an R5 Laissez-Faire Capitalist. If you are to the left of me politically, you are a Commie. Even if you only support a 0.17% income tax rate. Inversely, of course, if anyone is at all to the right of a Communist, they remain a classified Communist until they reduce my income tax rate to absolutely 0 %. I become enraged, paranoid and violent when you take money from Multi-Billionaire Warren Buffet and give it to those who are starving. Warren deserves every penny. The catastrophically poor deserve an accelerated death. That is their natural law penalty for being inadequately productive and not being born into wealth. It's THEIR own fault and they DESERVE to starve, rot and die. Quickly."

 

[Keldorn]

Cleve sees tub of lard.

Cleve critically fails at bipedal locomotion and falls into tub!

Cleve drowns with a gleeful smile on his face!

No, a benevolent, tolerant, moderate humanitarian pulls him out.

Later, they discuss the meaning of life.

Cleve develops empathy and common sense because he volitionally gives in to the reasonable realization of lucid truth. IOW, he stops the dogmatically rabid repression of previously *supposed* polar opposites.

 

[Keldorn]

Oh boy! A bunch of google links to left wing blogs! I'm totally convinced now! After all, left wing blogs are much less biased than the United States Census Bureau!

No. The LACK of regulations allowed mortgage lenders to pocket hefty commissions and bonuses for unloading high risk mortgages to naive poor folks. The CEOs of the lending institutions were recently at a hearing, explaining how they deserved their record profits and multi-million dollar bonuses created from such exploitation.

No, the problem was they weren't lending to those people in the first place. Then congress called them up and said they had to start lending to those people or else Congress would pass laws to make them do it.

Dipshit, banks are there to make money. You don't make money if people don't pay back their loans. If they load someone $300,000 for a house, and that house gets foreclosed on, the house doesn't sell for anywhere close to that $300,000 in auction. In a buyer's market, like we have now, that house might auction for less than half of the original loan.

Up until the bubble burst, left wingers were bitching about the price of housing because it was a seller's market. "Oh no! The price of housing is too expensive! People can't afford to buy new houses!" Now they can afford to buy houses, but the left are bitching about lost equity in houses. Give me a break.

No. The rich get richer in such a scenario, while the poor get poorer. You want it to be a race to see how much wealth can be concentrated in the hands of the top 10%. That's what is happening and you like it. Let the Billionaires be free to become trillionaires and let the poor be free to fall through the cracks. profits over people. You are a champion of Disaster Capitalism.

No, they don't. You can make money in either market. Property is cheap now, so you buy real estate. Fix it up, wait a year or two for the market to swing back the other way, then sell. You can get lots of houses for a song in foreclosure auctions. You can even negotiate with the people who are in foreclosure to take over their mortgage.

That's the CEO / Bush Admin. spin perspective. The bottom 90% of society counts too, and that's what you forget. Basically, you are a pro-corporate slimeball who judges societies based on how well the CEOs are doing.

Look it up. Manufacturing in the United States has gone up, not decreased. We're not outsourcing all the manufacturing jobs or else those figures would be going down.

In principle, but the DEGREE of illegal immigrant flooding has increased drastically under Bush, in order to reduce big business overhead and make the CEOs better off / more powerful. Getting those Mexicans to work for peanuts allows CEOs to exponentially increase their wealth, and that's all that matters in capitalist systems : how much freedom Millionaires have to become Billionaires (...to become Trillionaires).

Most illegals tend to work for landscapers, not corporations. The only major industry I can think of where illegals work would be meat packing.

What you don't understand is that the Scandinavian income tax code is superior, non-distorted, transparent and progressive. American CEOs should be in a system which forces them to pay a HIGHER rate than the middle class, not HALF as much (15%).

Ours is 67,000 pages long. Ours is superior.

Actually, income tax is a completely stupid idea on it's face. A consumption tax on refined goods is a much better way of doing things.

1) You are repressing the US poverty and hunger figures. Typical right-wing extremist.


http://www.alternet.org/story/68054/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007 ... 092544.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... -usa_N.htm


Highest child poverty rate in the developed western world.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in ... ted_States

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0828/p17s02-cogn.html



2) You are a dipshit if you believe that the country with far LESS consumer protections (the US) can blame their mortgage crisis problems on the almost non-existent consumer protections, while the countries with far MORE consumer protections (in Scandinavia) don't share the same mortgage crisis related problems of consumer exploitation/victimization at ALL. The dipshit (you) doesn't comprehend that it was the overly free capitalist process of lenders getting big bonuses for every subprime mortgage they unloaded on someone who's credit rating was poor. That's right, a short-term minded capitalist feeding frenzy to pocket those big bonuses everytime you told a poor naive person "SURE you can afford this house... BUY NOW !!!"

With stricter regulations and enforcement on who can qualify and cracking down on mortgage fraud (it increased drastically under Bush, again, due to LACK of regulations and enforcement), the crisis wouldn't have happened. But the systemic crisis was ALLOWED to happen, because that's how many capitalists play the greed game - by a ruthless crash & burn, buy low, sell high strategy. And you want MORE of that environment.

Again, the more left-wing governments in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, France have a housing market with MORE controls, limitations, fines, penalties, transparancy, regulations and enforcement, so, guess what (dipshit) ? They don't get the capitalistic US-Bushian-Republican greed-based corporate predatory environment which allows and breeds such unscrupulous practices (for profit) and subsequent market catastrophies.


3) It's not all about manufacturing. It's about other indicators of overall quality of life. The US ranks far below other more left-leaning European/Scandinavian countries when you consider poverty rates, infant mortality, life expectancy, violent crime, incarceration rate, personal bankrutcies due to medical expenditures and subprime mortgages, unionization rate, percentage of the population experiencing hunger, homelessness, educational standards, etc.


4) Illegal immigrants provide cheap labour to PROFIT-BASED businesses, services and companies. The top executives get to pocket MORE cash by paying workers LESS. That's capitalism. Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under Bush, a pro-capitalist president. That's why the US lags so far behind the more left-leaning European countries WRT minimum wage increases and unionization rates. The business community WANTS it that way. It's all about maximizing profits ... the unions, minimum wages, and worker & consumer protections CURB top-end profits and takes away the inalienable right of the CEO to buy Yacht #9.


5) Income tax is good if all loopholes are closed, and the more you earn, the more you pay. It must be simple, transparent, incrementally proportional and non-distorted. The US millionaires/billionaires and corporations LOVE the big convoluted tax code book because it has more loopholes and intricacies. Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, the megarich are forced to pay hefty progressive taxes and fines - in direct proportion to their income, and this fuels their welfare state making everyone better off.


In your espoused extremist system, it just means you'll have more poverty and more billionaires. Exacerbation of economic polarization in capitalism is inevitable.

That's why consumer/worker safeguards are needed.... and the US, under corporatist Bush-Wacko, doesn't have enough of them.

 

[Keldorn]

I think Trash was referring to the exact legal construction. Technically, weed still falls under the opium law here, even though the policies under which sale & use are tolerated are defined & enforced. You're right though in that there's a fairly strict set of rules & policies nationwide under which you get to keep your coffeeshop (like the max 5 grams/person rule or the "you can grow your own, but max three plants and no artificial lighting" rule). The max stock volume isn't that strictly enforced in my experience, though, but the 18 year old / max amount sold per day to a single customer rule is. My favorite local shop got temporarily closed by the city a couple of times because of that, already. But I guess it depends on the city; Enschede, for instance, has a fairly proactive policy on enforcing those rules, but that's mainly because they're the easiest legal way to cut down on drug tourism (filthy germans). Arnhem, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, The Hague, on the other hand, seem fairly lax (I never have to show my ID there, while local shops always card me - my regular shop being the exception, since they know my face by now)
These days they no longer extend liquor licenses to coffeeshops, either.

Yeah, I meant something along these lines. Though there are certain guidelines (like the amount one shop can carry, the no hard drugs rule, etc) that almost every city adhers to, there is also a system of "lokale verordeningen" (local regulations) in place that means that every muncipality has it's own further rules regarding coffeeshops. For instance in the Hague the police will fine you when they catch you smoking a joint near the central station. In Utrecht they won't care as long as you won't smoke it in non smoker area's. It's pretty vague rules wise, but that's why they call it a "gedoogbeleid" (toleration policy)

There is localized fluctuation, but some primary standards apply : no selling to minors, no hard drugs on premises and no stocking or selling over the limit. Several coffeshops have been closed for violating these limitations (regulations), inspections are semi-regular, and the penalties quite severe (a total closing down of the shop for months, or permanently).

From the North American viewpoint, it seems alot more reasonable than mass-incarcerating pot users for the benefit of the profit-based prison industry (while the head jailer gets to go home and have a triple rye & coke).

The USA has 2.3 million domestic prisoners, almost half locked up for puritanical morality crimes of a consenting non-violent behavioural nature. The USA has the highest incarceration rate on earth.

 

[Keldorn]

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/files/Fair_Taxes.pdf

Keldorn is woefully uninformed about taxes. For that matter, so is Saint P. (but significantly less so)

The rich DO pay the majority of the tax burden, Keldorn, no matter what internet conspiracy theorists are saying. And Saint P., taxing consumption would reduce federal revenues and increase the deficit, further weakening trust in the American dollar.

As for presidential candidates, I have recently flip-flopped from McCain to Obama for two reasons.

1. Obama doesn't support lifting the gas tax. McCain does.

2. McCain will put us another $100 billion dollars into debt.

The problem is that the campaign has been far, far more detailed about its tax cuts, which would worsen the deficit, than its spending cuts, which would reduce it. Mr. McCain has proposed the elimination of the alternative minimum tax (at a cost of $60 billion a year), new child tax deductions ($65 billion), a corporate tax cut ($100 billion) and faster write-offs for corporate investments in new equipment ($50 billion to $75 billion).

On the spending side, the senator talks broadly about cracking down on pork barrel projects and holding agencies accountable for their budgets. These steps, Mr. Holtz-Eakin told me, could eventually bring $150 billion a year in savings. He added that given Mr. McCain’s history of fighting against wasteful spending, he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/busin ... wanted=all

Expansionary monetary policy is nice, but when the country is in debt and experiencing a weakening currency, an Obama or two might be in order.

I never said the US rich don't pay the majority burden, so stop the insinuation. I did hint that by taxing them more (as Obama proposes, as Scandinavia does) they will still be megarich but much needed help for infrastructure and the social safety net (including education & health care) is made possible through increased revenue.

There is no use arguing with a Scandinavian social-democrat, as that Nordic model is very much a part of Obama's economic policies, including his alternative energy policies, and more progressive (rich pay more, middle class & seniors pay less) income tax proposals. He is going to regulate the US economy according to the centrist model currently operating in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway (though he won't be nationalizing half of the oil companies).

 

[Keldorn]

In a given country,

1) Calculate the precise personal income tax rate on millionaires and billionaires.

2) Calculate the precise tax rates on small businesses, medium businesses and corporations.

3) Identify to WHERE and to WHOM said collected tax revenue goes.



Pure Capitalism = 0% tax on all sources.

Pure Socialism = 100% (effective) tax (or related economic mechanism of governmental monetary collection) on all sources.


Pure Capitalism = the means of production and personal wealth are entirely privately owned.

Pure Socialism = the means of production and personal wealth are entirely publicly owned.


Guess what... numerical specification dictates that these (1st world, western, industrialized, developed, nations) are all mixed economies, with the US being predominantly capitalist and Scandinavia being semi-socialist/semi-capitalist.

Don't be like Cleve... be able to identify the middle between the 2 extremes and QUANTIFY it precisely.

Regarding "3) Identify to WHERE and to WHOM said collected tax revenue goes."


The USA :

-military funding
-corporate welfare
-war on drugs
-prison industry
-intelligence/investigative agencies

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm


Scandinavia :

-universal health care
-education
-welfare state/social safety net
-consumer/worker protections

 

[DarkUnderlord]

The rich get richer in such a scenario, while the poor get poorer.

I've personally always wanted to know how people with nothing could ever have less. There was actually a really hilarious show on TV the other night about the current economic situation in Australia with poor people whinging about interest rate rises. They talked to a cleaner who was making a couple hundred a week saying how she's only just making it. Then we cut to a guy on three times that amount who was also telling us how he's just barely scraping by. Something funny's right there.

And Saint P., taxing consumption would reduce federal revenues and increase the deficit, further weakening trust in the American dollar.

How? I say this from Australia, which introduced a GST (Goods and Services Tax) which is reaping record revenue for the Federal Government.

I never said the US rich don't pay the majority burden, so stop the insinuation. I did hint that by taxing them more (as Obama proposes, as Scandinavia does) they will still be megarich but much needed help for infrastructure and the social safety net (including education & health care) is made possible through increased revenue.

As opposed to, say, better spending of existing Government revenue? If a Government is mis-handling it's current income, giving it more money won't miraculously change that.

The USA :
-military funding
-corporate welfare
-war on drugs
-prison industry
-intelligence/investigative agencies

Scandinavia :
-universal health care
-education
-welfare state/social safety net
-consumer/worker protections

The moral of the story? Scandinavia is ripe for invasion. Mind you it is kinda funny how a country at war, would be spending most of its money on war. And by the way, here's a better pie chart for the US.

 

[Keldorn]

The rich get richer in such a scenario, while the poor get poorer.

I've personally always wanted to know how people with nothing could ever have less. There was actually a really hilarious show on TV the other night about the current economic situation in Australia with poor people whinging about interest rate rises. They talked to a cleaner who was making a couple hundred a week saying how she's only just making it. Then we cut to a guy on three times that amount who was also telling us how he's just barely scraping by. Something funny's right there.

I never said the US rich don't pay the majority burden, so stop the insinuation. I did hint that by taxing them more (as Obama proposes, as Scandinavia does) they will still be megarich but much needed help for infrastructure and the social safety net (including education & health care) is made possible through increased revenue.

As opposed to, say, better spending of existing Government revenue? If a Government is mis-handling it's current income, giving it more money won't miraculously change that.

The USA :
-military funding
-corporate welfare
-war on drugs
-prison industry
-intelligence/investigative agencies

Scandinavia :
-universal health care
-education
-welfare state/social safety net
-consumer/worker protections

The moral of the story? Scandinavia is ripe for invasion. Mind you it is kinda funny how a country at war, would be spending most of its money on war. And by the way, here's a better pie chart for the US.

1) You are apparently conceptually incapable of identifying the vast area between nothing and everything (something in various incremental degrees).

2) Change the spending priorities wrt tax revenue to be more humanitarian AND tax the rich more WHILE still allowing the rich to remain rich.

3) Countries which perpetually invade, eventually LOSE their power and domestic economic well-being... the fall of an empire - if blindly aggressive foreign policy doesn't become moderate.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Countries that invade and stick around for occupation fail. We should stick to Viking or Mongol tactics.

 

[Hory]

Mind you it is kinda funny how a country at war, would be spending most of its money on war.

That "war" was won from day one and needed only 1% of what was allocated. Now there's just plundering, looting, despoiling, pillaging and sacking, and this was the intention all along. Let's not pretend otherwise.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

1) You are apparently conceptually incapable of identifying the vast area between nothing and everything (something in various incremental degrees).

Oh please, poor people have been getting poorer for years and yet they still have enough money for a house, car, mobile phone, payTV, food, alcohol, cigarettes, pokies and everything else they reckon they need. They must be getting poorer by infinitesimally insignificant amounts. And of course the rich will get richer. It's because they're not stupid. When you pass a certain wealth level, you have significantly vast amounts of cash to invest, which is a Good Thing™ for everyone. That investment allows poor people to start businesses with venture capital provided by rich people.

2) Change the spending priorities wrt tax revenue to be more humanitarian AND tax the rich more WHILE still allowing the rich to remain rich.

... and it's still going to leave you with an underfunded health system and an underfunded medicare system and a need for more money in welfare, according to the HARDCORE LEFT of which you appear to be a card carrying member. The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor and people like you will still say that the rich need to be taxed more to fund everything, which only makes Monaco look even nicer.

3) Countries which perpetually invade, eventually LOSE their power and domestic economic well-being... the fall of an empire - if blindly aggressive foreign policy doesn't become moderate.

Yeah, because six years is a "perpetual invasion". You're the first to jump up and down and ask for intervention when poor people are getting shot in Africa though, aren't you?

That "war" was won from day one and needed only 1% of what was allocated. Now there's just plundering, looting, despoiling, pillaging and sacking, and this was the intention all along. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Actually, I'm the first to say that if the Iraqis don't want despots in power, they're the ones that should be doing something about it. Not anyone else. Let them figure out their own security issues. All we need to do is BOMB THE CRAP OUT OF THEM whenever they think it's cool to piss us off.

 

[The Dude]

Keldorn, I'm thinking you are a bit simplistic in your views. The Scandinavian model isn't without its flaws, and even if there are bits you'd like I don't think it would be easy or even possible to cherry pick stuff and implement those policies in the US.

The Scandinavian model is pretty much based on a multi party system with broad agreements between employers, workers and the state. Another basis has always been the prevalence of base industries, since this usually means that the majority of workers are closely tied together, deals have often been relatively easy to strike. Today however, when the industrial sector has been surpassed by the much more diverse and volatile service sector, the classical Scandinavian model is quickly losing ground, some would even call it dead. The society faces a lot of competition between different groups of employees, and individualism (not solidarity with your peers) is the movement of the day. My hope is that the model will be able to cope with this, and transform into something that can deal with these changes (which aren't all bad btw), since I and many other Swedes feel there are at least some aspects worth preserving.

Just adopting the model to a country like USA would never ever work though. The US are pretty much founded on the idea of competition along with the so called natural rights, the Scandinavian model would never work there without a total change in culture, and that's pretty much impossible and hardly something worth striving for. Sure, we Scandinavians value competition and owning stuff, but they are not our core values to the same extent as in the US.

Anyways, I agree that from where I stand I could see the US doing more to fight social inequity, but stop going on about the Scandinavian model in every other post.

 

[Keldorn]

Countries that invade and stick around for occupation fail. We should stick to Viking or Mongol tactics.

2 sides of the same imperialistic/authoritarian/interventionist policy coin.

More suited for video games.

 

[Keldorn]

Mind you it is kinda funny how a country at war, would be spending most of its money on war.

That "war" was won from day one and needed only 1% of what was allocated. Now there's just plundering, looting, despoiling, pillaging and sacking, and this was the intention all along. Let's not pretend otherwise.

The Iraq war AND the Afghan war/invasion have not been won, at any point. To win, there has to be *extended* civility. There was never any.


Now if the US (as Obama advocated) had put ALL of it's focus on Afghanistan and not be diverted by a peripheral ideological temptation to smash Iraq, then the Afghan war/invasion would likely have been won by now.

 

[Keldorn]

1) You are apparently conceptually incapable of identifying the vast area between nothing and everything (something in various incremental degrees).

Oh please, poor people have been getting poorer for years and yet they still have enough money for a house, car, mobile phone, payTV, food, alcohol, cigarettes, pokies and everything else they reckon they need. They must be getting poorer by infinitesimally insignificant amounts. And of course the rich will get richer. It's because they're not stupid. When you pass a certain wealth level, you have significantly vast amounts of cash to invest, which is a Good Thing™ for everyone. That investment allows poor people to start businesses with venture capital provided by rich people.

2) Change the spending priorities wrt tax revenue to be more humanitarian AND tax the rich more WHILE still allowing the rich to remain rich.

... and it's still going to leave you with an underfunded health system and an underfunded medicare system and a need for more money in welfare, according to the HARDCORE LEFT of which you appear to be a card carrying member. The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor and people like you will still say that the rich need to be taxed more to fund everything, which only makes Monaco look even nicer.

3) Countries which perpetually invade, eventually LOSE their power and domestic economic well-being... the fall of an empire - if blindly aggressive foreign policy doesn't become moderate.

Yeah, because six years is a "perpetual invasion". You're the first to jump up and down and ask for intervention when poor people are getting shot in Africa though, aren't you?

That "war" was won from day one and needed only 1% of what was allocated. Now there's just plundering, looting, despoiling, pillaging and sacking, and this was the intention all along. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Actually, I'm the first to say that if the Iraqis don't want despots in power, they're the ones that should be doing something about it. Not anyone else. Let them figure out their own security issues. All we need to do is BOMB THE CRAP OUT OF THEM whenever they think it's cool to piss us off.

1) No, you are ignorant and blind.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=mil ... ngry&meta=

Billions of people are malnourished, and several millions are starving to death internationally annually.


2) SEMI-socialist states like Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland have the LOWEST poverty rates, the healthiest populations, lowest infant mortality, and almost ZERO homeless. Like I said, if they go TOO far left, they destroy their economies as happened in the USSR, so they DON'T GO THERE . If they DID, they wouldn't be ranked tops in quality of life indexes.

3) The invasion in Darfur is what SOME are asking for (right AND left). I have NOT. Best to try to negotiate a peace treaty / cease fire and come in with billion$ worth of food, clothing, medicine and shelter.

4) Bombing the crap out of them shows your rational faculty has short-circuited, and you are being a terrorist (you have become the monster).

Save that approach for video games.

 

[Keldorn]

Keldorn, I'm thinking you are a bit simplistic in your views. The Scandinavian model isn't without its flaws, and even if there are bits you'd like I don't think it would be easy or even possible to cherry pick stuff and implement those policies in the US.

The Scandinavian model is pretty much based on a multi party system with broad agreements between employers, workers and the state. Another basis has always been the prevalence of base industries, since this usually means that the majority of workers are closely tied together, deals have often been relatively easy to strike. Today however, when the industrial sector has been surpassed by the much more diverse and volatile service sector, the classical Scandinavian model is quickly losing ground, some would even call it dead. The society faces a lot of competition between different groups of employees, and individualism (not solidarity with your peers) is the movement of the day. My hope is that the model will be able to cope with this, and transform into something that can deal with these changes (which aren't all bad btw), since I and many other Swedes feel there are at least some aspects worth preserving.

Just adopting the model to a country like USA would never ever work though. The US are pretty much founded on the idea of competition along with the so called natural rights, the Scandinavian model would never work there without a total change in culture, and that's pretty much impossible and hardly something worth striving for. Sure, we Scandinavians value competition and owning stuff, but they are not our core values to the same extent as in the US.

Anyways, I agree that from where I stand I could see the US doing more to fight social inequity, but stop going on about the Scandinavian model in every other post.

Obama is trying to take the centristic, non-ideological hodge-podge of policies in Scandinavia which have been empirically shown to provide the best quality of life for all (including the rich - Norway has the greatest per capita number of millionaires - 1 in 85 Norwegians are millionaires) and bring them to Americans. Principled pragmatism.

I'd rate Scandinavian centrism ( overall, a fusion of center-left social democracy and center-right conservatism ) as a very good system, all things considered. "B+" rating in my books. There are problems and imperfections, but with a scientific and centristic approach based on common sense and compromise, the USA again could become the most respected country on earth.

Systemic Copy & Paste ? No. General Emulation ? Yes.

 

[Rhett Butler]

Where the fuck did Cleve go? He's way more entertaining to read than this poofter.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

1) No, you are ignorant and blind.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=mil ... ngry&meta=

You'd think that people who are hungry, that is without food, would have "nothing" which means it's hard for them to get poorer as you can't have "more nothing". So it sounds more like the poor are still poor to me.

Billions of people are malnourished, and several millions are starving to death internationally annually.

I don't disagree with you there. However corruption and the general lack of concern shown by a lot of those Governments, coupled with the "they have no idea how to run a country" factor doesn't generally help the issue. EG: Zimbabwe. Of course, Zimbabwe doesn't have many rich people to tax either so I'm not sure how that would work there.

2) SEMI-socialist states like Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland have the LOWEST poverty rates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... in_poverty

Interestingly enough, not all the data was available for Poverty, so I went for GDP per capita.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... y_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

4 Norway 53,037
8 United States 45,845
16 Denmark 37,392
18 Sweden 36,494
19 Australia 36,258
20 Finland 35,280
22 United Kingdom 35,134
25 France 33,188

Fun Fact™ about Norway: Having oil sure makes a difference, doesn't it? Other than that, the US kicks everyone to the curb and Australia and the UK come in about average.

If that's not enough, we can go for the all-round "Human Development Index".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

2 Norway
3 Australia
6 Sweden
10 France
11 Finland
12 United States
14 Denmark
16 United Kingdom

Australia's just beaten by oil-rich Norway. Sweden comes in third but the US just misses out to Finland but soundly beats Denmark. The UK lags behind.

the healthiest populations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... expectancy [United Nations]

4 Australia 81.2
7 Sweden 80.9
10 France 80.7
14 Norway 80.2
22 United Kingdom 79.4
25 Finland 79.3
36 Denmark 78.3
38 United States 78.2

Denmark beats the US by 0.01! Sweden lags behind Australia but just beats France, while the UK is better than Finland and Denmark.

lowest infant mortality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... rate_(2005) [United Nations]
192 Sweden 3.2
191 Norway 3.3
189 Finland 3.7
184 France 4.2
181 Denmark 4.4
179 Australia 4.4
174 United Kingdom 4.8
163 United States 6.3

UK isn't that far off. Australia is level with Denmark and France is even better than Denmark. The US sadly, does lag behind.

and almost ZERO homeless.

This was hard to find any data on. Given the number of articles I found about homelessness in Sweden though, "zero" doesn't quite sound right.

In short though, your four great example countries aren't really all that better than anywhere else. That data certainly doesn't show any outright clear advantage.

3) The invasion in Darfur is what SOME are asking for (right AND left). I have NOT. Best to try to negotiate a peace treaty / cease fire and come in with billion$ worth of food, clothing, medicine and shelter.

So that the incentive to improve things is diminished because they can just rely on foreign aid, like is happening around the world now.

4) Bombing the crap out of them shows your rational faculty has short-circuited, and you are being a terrorist (you have become the monster).

I think if you pop your head up with invasion ambitions, we have every right to blast you back to the Stone Age ala World War II. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, I think he lost the right to rule right there. I only think the second Gulf War was necessary because George W's dad didn't have the stones to finish the job (well in actuality, it was the question of "and replace Saddam with who?" but I think that was always an issue for the Iraqi's to resolve - we can pull out now, job's done).

 

[Nutcracker]

It's all bullshit.

Despite a standard of life better than any of the generations in human history before us, people still bitch.

Even in somewhere like Australia (a very prosperous country especially in recent years) you have people slitting their wrists over high interest rates, complaining about industrial relations laws that will improve productivity, and generally being faggots.

Fact is, even people on welfare in the States have a far higher standard of living than, say, a generic medieval peasant. Let alone someone in the lower-middle class who has access to far more than any of his ancestors, but is pissed off because interest rates went up half a percent, and now his budget is squeezed because he now can no longer afford the repayments on his 50" plasma TV. Stop complaining bitches.

Oh, and fuck off the illegal immigrants...they drain your public services.

 

[Keldorn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... y_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

4 Norway 53,037
8 United States 45,845
16 Denmark 37,392
18 Sweden 36,494
19 Australia 36,258
20 Finland 35,280
22 United Kingdom 35,134
25 France 33,188

GDP is misleading because because it doesn't factor in medical and education costs. In Scandinavia & Europe, especially Finland, they're universal and socialized, and people don't have to risk financial hardship to pay the private fees. In the US, medical costs are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy, especially among seniors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in ... ted_States


1 Sweden 6.5 7.2 7.5 1.0 6.5
2 Norway 7.0 8.4 7.9 0.4 6.4
3 Netherlands 8.2 8.7 10.5 2.5 7.3
4 Finland 8.2 9.7 10.4 2.1 5.4
5 Denmark 8.4 10.4 9.6 1.3 -
6 Germany 10.3 8.8 14.4 5.0 8.3
7 Switzerland 10.7 7.8 15.9 1.6 7.6
8 Canada 10.9 8.1 14.6 0.7 11.4
9 Luxembourg 11.1 9.7 - 1.2 6.0
10 France 11.4 9.8 - 4.3 8.0
11 Japan 11.7 7.1 - 1.5 11.8
12 Belgium 12.4 9.4 18.4 4.3 8.0
13 Spain 12.6 8.7 - 3.0 14.3
14 Australia 12.8 7.7 17.0 0.9 14.3
15 United Kingdom 14.8 8.7 21.8 1.1 12.4
16 United States 15.4 11.8 20.0 0.6 17.0
17 Ireland 16.1 8.7 22.6 1.5 16.5
18 Italy 29.9 7.8 47.0 4.0 12.7


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 38077.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01727.html


But it's the US incarceration rate...


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=us+ ... rate&meta=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration


...which is troublesome, as it inevitably has a profound effect on the poverty rate. The US has the WORLD'S HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE. Even MUCH higher than either Russia or China.


My point stands : Bush policies have hurt Americans (except for those earning over $100,000/yr. - only 5-10% of the general population).