Danish elections - fyi
- 主题发起人 Adorno
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Lyze 说:
1. Yes, yes. I jest.
2. It's sad but it's true, I wouldn't exactly say we're 'powerless' though.
rejenorst 说:
Those did come from economies that did have a relatively unrestrained market, but didn't technological wizardry also shoot off during the soviet era? They were the foremost in terms of technological edge with rocketry and computing for a good while, and even after their supremacy was stolen they still didn't fall very far either.
Swedish culture is like the wolverine one from battletech.
leprechaun
Marquis
I agree!Lyze 说:
It's clearly 'aboat'.
Yes, the difference is whether they're used for the good of society or for profit of the individual.rejenorst 说:
The internet was actually invented during a recession, and sprung out of the military. I'm not seeing what capitalism had to do with that ...
Right. Because prior to the invention of capitalism in the eighteenth century we were still building tools out of stone. Wait, I think I see a small flaw in this argument ...
What, during the major global recession? You don't say. You do realise Japan was the only country which didn't suffer then, right? And the same thing in the eighties, when yet again the world was plunged into a global recession.
Socialism has nothing to do with interventionism
Government takes in an incredibly high tax (including rates above 100% for high earners) and is committed both legally and morally to spend that income on government provided social services. About the only part of socialism that's missing is the worker ownership of the means of production, but given it's still got the highest rates of trade union membership in the world I think you could probably argue that is actually the defacto case.
/facepalm. The SGP only arranges for continued monitoring of the Convergence indicators to ensure an economy isn't in trouble. There's not really anything for members to stick to.
Right, now you've actually hit upon the point. Currently the ECB only issues the Euro, it does not set economic policy, interest rates or the like. What is needed is to confer the ability to it to do so, so that it acts for the Euro as the Federal Reserve does for the dollar or the Bank of England for the pound. That way, you don't get nations like Greece, who like a strong Euro, undermining the economic policies of Germany, who like a weak Euro. Or in other words, so that the Euro nations act like members of a single currency rather than countries who just happen to have identical looking coinage.
And this has what relation to the economy of member states? The EU is there to standardise laws across the member states, that's all. It can't set economic policy in member states. The only way it can affect those is indirectly via things such as the CAP and the open borders policies.
Erm, there is one definition of socialism and one definition of communism. The fact one is an economy and the other a government should be something of a big clue.
Although the new Euro Pact agreement comes danm close.Archonsod 说:
It aims to lower wages, raise pension age and toughen public financing rules (read: determine tax policies).
In the end the EU will have complete control of the economic policies (which is politics par excellence) of the member states.
And one thing's for sure: it won't be the 'Scandinavian model'...
Swadius 说:
Sort of. The Soviet Union was investing large amounts of money into military technology in order to compete with the U.S. but this was unsustainable and it collapsed. If you travel into Russia you will find that much of the capital cities are ok but you go off the beaten track and you'll think you've gone back in time. In capitalism the large amounts of money needed for technological booms at least in the private sector result from private/corporate investment. However I will note that the U.S. is well on the way to making the same mistakes as the Soviet Union in its military budget.
[quote author=Archonsod]
The internet was actually invented during a recession, and sprung out of the military. I'm not seeing what capitalism had to do with that ...
[/quote]
It was called the internet boom and provided steady growth for the world wide web and its service providers. Thanks in part to large investment. Albeit the technology itself was made possible by the Military it was heavily expanded upon by private companies in later years.
The majority of humanity's technological development occurred within the last 200 years with the onset of the industrial revolution. Although there were plenty of factors that contributed to this. In any case socialism can't prevent people from competing for what is scarce.
So the system is not immune to external shocks, neither was it immune to the housing bubble it face in the 1990's resulting in a credit crunch. The point I am trying to make, which I was trying to get across in my earlier post is that Sweden faced much of the same trials that the U.S. is facing today but has learned to respond differently. The U.S. is pursuing interventionism on a large scale and currency deflation which is not helping.
Socialism alone isn't going to do anyone any good.
Socialism has nothing to do with interventionism
Correct. I felt that Sweden was moving away from both socialism and interventionism, but as Awdev pointed out that my definition of socialism is flawed and having double checked he was right. I added some attributes to Socialism that were not part of the socialist framework.
In any case it doesn't promote state ownership so they seem more like socialist in name only.
Welfare seems to be the main consideration for being called socialist while investments and capitalism still exist. With the exception of Netherlands; Sweden, Norway and Denmark do not use the Euro which I find interesting. While most of these countries embrace free markets and investments.
Like I said before they have continually curtailed the expenditure on welfare and have also placed conditions for the receival of welfare. One of the problems I am guessing is the increased amount of immigration, many of those immigrants become dependent on welfare. As much as Sweden may seem like a socialist paradise, I think that if you scratch below the surface you'll find that its a system that probably won't last.
For starters Sweden has one of the highest costs of living in the world coupled with some of the highest income tax, its spending in the 1970's went from 31% of GDP to 60% of GDP. Apprx 50% of its people believe they are now entitled to welfare (a sharp rise from earlier years), Absenteeism has doubled in the last seven years and “sick pay” now consumes 16 per cent of government’s expenditures. Unemployment rose sharply from under 5% in the 1990's to over 10% in 1998 and currently stands at 7.4%.
I will not nessecarily say that this system doesn't work for Sweden. But adopting the system from a country of roughly 10,000,000 people to a country of say 60 to 80 million I doubt it. there is not enough incentives for people to work and it shows in Sweden's high absent-ism.
SPG also attempted to force a penalty for not meeting target figures. This was never enforced though.
The ECB sets benchmark interest rates/key interest rates which is used as the basis for loans to Central national bank I am just unsure if this is set in cooperation with the ESCB. Whatever interest rate they set, you can expect will probably be incorporated somewhat into National bank loans. The ECB controls the money supply, manages the foreign currency supply for the EU, and authorized central banks in the EU to issue the Euro banknotes. It is also supposed to monitor and help work on price stability and stable inflation rates. While another one of its stated aims is to set monetary policy for the EU.
http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/ecb/index_en.htm
I agree with you to an extent but any organization that can apply pressure for a national government to change or adhere to economic policies outside of the National Government has a pretty damn good indirect influence I'd say. When does indirect cease to become indirect? It certainly may now given the changes spoken about earlier. But even with national governments being able to pick and choose which EU regulations they will or won't adopt, they seem likely to cave into EU pressure sooner or later and given the plans for further centralization as previously discussed the lines between indirect and direct are fast fading.
All the targeted aims and regulations of the EU will have some impact on the economy one way or another.
Alone the cost of implementing some of these regulations alone should be interesting.
The problem currently I feel is the lack of transparency as to how EU regulations and processes are actually conducted and affecting national economies.
There are different types of socialism and even Communism is considered a form of socialism.
The different types are:
Market socialism,
state socialism,
revisionism,
Marxism,
Leninism,
Trotskyism,
Socialist feminism,
Democratic socialism,
Stalinists, Maoists,
Syndicalism,
Utopian Socialism,
Religious Socialism,
and Communism.
AWdeV
Duke
Vadermath 说:
Damn near everyone does, but it's principle of the thing! It's jolly incorrect! Pars pro toto, shun! (sonofa*****, I just checked wiktionary to see if I wrote it correctly (yes) and it gave the same example!)
Adorno 说:I actually met a Dutch person recently and asked what he called it (in English).
He just laughed and said he didn't know, and added "Whatever"
But I'll say the Netherlands from now on.
Greatly appreciated. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but it's not actually that big an issue. Too much of a focus is IMHO placed on both provinces called "holland" and it occasionally grates a bit.
