At the risk of getting downvoted, I'm going to try to reply to show something. Give me the benefit of a read through before downvoting? Discussion is welcome,

At the risk of getting downvoted, I'm going to try to reply to show something. Give me the benefit of a read through before downvoting? Discussion is welcome, too. The point I was trying to get across was that people will look qualitatively and ignore quantitative arguments when it suits them, and will do the opposite when it suits them. Heck, you can see it here - "A capitalist economy with a 50% tax rate, more generous pension, health, unemployment benefits and a larger public sector is still fundamentally a capitalist economy." - You could've made a similar reply to ugh explaining why Singapore and the USA is a valid comparison for qualitative reasons despite the population difference. There are qualitative similarities between Singapore and the USA (market economy, dominant emerging industry is information sector, high personal freedom in some areas but strong anti-drug laws, economy is facing falling global demand and a banking system with downward pressure on interest rates due to other countries cutting theirs to rock bottom)... and ugh tosses those qualitative differences due to population size. People don't do the same when the arguments suit them. So people will be skeptical of Singapore data because of its different population size and landmass, while they embrace Denmark... despite the fact that it's a different population size and landmass. This should be noticed and ideally transcended if we want to get to what actually works.