The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019)

Re:The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019) by sime2009 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @07:18AM (#25644755)

This whole approach of trying to understand Nordic and European countries from the angle of "Socialism" is just stupid. The link between these countries and historical Socialism (i.e. USSR) is so weak that the term Socialism just serves to scare and mislead.

We are talking about capitalist democracies with some government run social services, like health care and unemployment, for example. We are not talking about socialist or communist countries which have a dash of capitalism. The policies in these countries, like affordable healthcare and education are also very popular in America once you drop the BS "socialism" framing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019) by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @03:12PM (#25650381)

If you define socialism as "having social programs better than the US", then the Nordic countries are socialist. If you define it as "social ownership and democratic control of the means of production" (as Wikipedia does), then the Nordic countries are not socialist, nor anything close.

I'd argue that the data shows that the first kind of socialism works reasonably well, and the second does not.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019) by azaras on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @07:25AM (#25644815)

They are not capitalist democracies they are social democracies. The economy is socialist and capitalist.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019) by sime2009 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @07:32AM (#25644861)

I would argue that "capitalist democracy" is the least wrong of the two.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Data Show That Socialism Works (2019) by TakuYam on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @09:48AM (#25646035)

Scandinavian countries also aggressively push back against socialist/socialism labels that US talking heads and politicians try to pin to them.

[ Parent | on HN ]