The CATO Institute’s index that people use to say how capitalist Norse countries are includes mostly things that have nothing to do with distinguishing capitalism from modern democratic socialism.
Even looking at the economic freedom indicator, only four percent of it is looking at the state’s ownership of assets, which is core to what socialism is.
Yet, this is used again and again to say how capitalist these countries are.
In the US, the state owns around 4% of total national wealth, for Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, this is: 11.2%; 24.1%; 31.7%; and 57%.
There are many different types of Socialism. Just determining that a country isn’t a fully topped down planned economy, doesn’t mean it’s not Socialist.
Low-wage workers in the US pay HIGHER taxes than the Nordic countries if you count healthcare premiums as taxes. Healthcare premiums come right from your paycheck and go a bureaucracy that pays for healthcare. It’s the same in the US as Nordic countries, except in the US it goes to a private company and in Nordic countries, it goes to the government. In both cases. health insurance is provided…except out of pocket costs are also lower in the Nordic countries.
If you need a family plan, then the US average wage worker also pays more!
The focus on taxes is silly. What matters is what are the cost burdens on Americans. Whether it is a tax from government or a healthcare premium from an insurance company, it’s a burden! Only looking at taxes is highly misleading, especially when taxes are instead of a premium, so when you look at the US, you ignore the cost of that premium.
That the US is a larger country, means we have more economies of scale, meaning it should be easier for us to provide healthcare for its people. We don’t do it based on ideology.
The problem with childcare fraud in Minneapolis wasn’t simply a problem with Somalis, but with private companies providing government services while being paid by the taxpayer. That wouldn’t have happened if the government did it itself.
The Nordic countries have universal welfare states and high levels of state ownership. They are examples of more successful “socialist” policies.
Spirit Airlines means nothing to the economy. The point of capitalism is that creative destruction helps us get good companies that sell us good products and services. It doesn’t work if you bailout the losers! It’s one thing if the fall of the company hurts the entire economy or much of the country, but Spirit doesn’t matter. The government had no business trying to bail it out.
Trying to maximize their profits by limiting taxes and regulation, big corporations have funded Christian movements that preach capitalism and market fundamentalism.
“”State capitalism is a two-way street. Many businesses, by aligning themselves with Trump’s agenda, elicit better treatment—in their ability to sell to China, the tariffs they pay, how they are regulated, and what mergers are allowed,” wrote Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator, in a recent piece about how CEOs are navigating Trump’s state capitalism. “In other words, state capitalism doesn’t just serve the interests of the state, but of favored capitalists.”
And the Trump administration does not seem likely to place its own limits on this behavior. Asked recently about the logic behind these acquisitions, Trump said, “We should take stakes in companies when people need something.” That’s an answer that lacks any limiting principle.”
“Adam Smith, widely considered the first major theorist of capitalism, abhorred the institution of slavery. “Whatever work [a slave] does…can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own,” he wrote in 1776. In an earlier lecture, Smith indicted laws that “strengthen the authority of the masters and reduce the slaves to a more absolute subjection.” The plantation system at the core of this economy was not a competitive market; planters had secured a state-sanctioned “monopoly against all the rest of the world” and “indemnif[ied] themselves by the exorbitancy of their profites for their expensive and thriftless method of cultivation.” Smith singled out the exceptional cruelty found in the British colonies of “Jamaica and Barbadoes, where slaves are numerous and objects of jealousy [and] punishments even for slight offences are very shocking.””
“In an economy, prices are signals. Interest rates are the price of money, and they give the authorities a clue about how to manage the federal budget. If interest rates are too high, the market is telling the government it is spending too much. If interest rates are too low (like they were a few years ago), the markets are telling the government that it is spending too little (if such a thing is possible).
Right now, the government is spending too much. If the central bank were to cap the interest rate, its usefulness as a price signal would disappear. The government can borrow an unlimited amount of money with no immediate consequences but with one big long-term consequence: inflation.”
Economist Luigi Zingales was on Fox News for something other than the estate tax, but they asked him about it and he said he was for it. He was never invited on Fox News again.
Frank Luntz was hired by the Republican Party and groups funded by super wealthy people to fight the estate tax. He renamed it the death tax so people wouldn’t think of it as a tax that mostly affected the super wealthy.
The problem with the super wealthy and taxes isn’t tax rates, it’s that much of their income is not taxed at all. It isn’t counted as income. Before the fall of Communism, the American super wealthy actually paid taxes, but without the threat of Communism, there wasn’t the pressure to show that capitalism will work for everyone. Many changes, and a lack of reform to catch up with gaming the system, has resulted in the estate tax being a joke and the super wealthy paying very little tax compared to their lifetime income.
High income people pay taxes, but the super wealthy don’t officially have much income. Of course, they do have income, but it doesn’t count and is often never taxed.
Calling a political opponent a communist is silly. Not even the Soviet Union or China called themselves communist. They called themselves socialist. Communism is when the productive surplus is controlled by the workers themselves. The government owning a business and deciding what to do with a surplus is just a government elite controlling the surplus instead of an owner or manager elite. Communism would be not a government elite or capitalist elite controlling the surplus, but the workers controlling the surplus. The socialist governments were supposed to be a transition phase to true communism. The closest things to this might be cooperatives where the workers also own the business, although those are done within a larger capitalist system.