2 ms·
The Nordics are doing way better precisely because they have the highest taxation rate and the largest states. Statoil is a massive mixed enterprise and it's d
by Daishiman 9y ago
The Nordics are doing way better precisely because they have the highest taxation rate and the largest states.
Statoil is a massive mixed enterprise and it's doing just fine, and unlike the rest of the countries where wealth from oil gets funneled overseas or goes to a few corporations, it goes into the largest sovereign fund in the planet to safeguard people's wealth.
The Nordic nations have the proportionally massive states and nobody's saying that they would be better off with fewer public services... because they wouldn't, and it's obvious to anyone who wants to make the debate global.
- dnautics 9y agoyou're neglecting the fact that the nordics have the lowest rate of inflation among all of the countries in europe, in other words, the state steals the least from its (poorest) people.
- jacobush 9y agoMaybe but I know they are doing the best they can to increase inflation, to little avail.
- AFNobody 9y agoInflation is not theft. If you genuinely believe that: 1) Please use a deflationary currency (like bitcoin) for all your transactions. 2) Study the impact of deflation on Japan. Or the deflations in the US that almost always coincided with a depression with one (arguable) exception. Keep in mind, that arguable exception was one of half a dozen such events.
- dnautics 9y agoCorrelation is not causation. your arrow of causality is wrong. Of course deflations are correlated with modern economic contractions. In the era of central banking, contractions happen after the social capacity for debt has been stretched to the limit because tptb have tried to goose the economy too hard, and defaults exceed the rate of debt creation, leading to a contraction of the money supply. I suggest studying the free banking era and the us during the 1800s. How did the country ever survive without inflation??? They even managed to royally screw things up with a civil war and a completely insane bimetallic standard, without implosion. I suggest you study the effect of inflation on Japan. How's that lost decade going? Well, at least we got a lot of pansocial angst among the < 30 crowd (and some interesting anime) out of it.
- Daishiman 9y agoInflation as a variable for income inequality is dwarfed by tons of other factors. No serious economist is going to say that it's a terrible thing. A lot of countries have had to deal with inflation rates above 5% and they could still grow and lower inequality.
- dnautics 9y agoI don't understand how you can make that assertion. The effects of inflation are compounding and disproportionately bad for the poor. Have you ever been poor? The price of everyday goods was definitely a cause of worry for me on a daily basis. And you shouldn't take anything from "seroius economists" on the issue, most of them are from the 1% and totally clueless.
- Consultant32452 9y agoI'm genuinely curious about how states with high redistribution rates fair with regard to their impact on the broader world. For example, are the Nordics over or under-represented in Nobel Prizes? Is there some metric that takes into account population, perhaps GDP per capita, and patents filed or scientific papers written? How about immigration policy, both statutory and real-world. I do know that the Nordics are largely mono-cultures where something like 98% of the people are the same color and religion. If the Nordics are such great places to be, and if they have statutorily open borders (they are in the EU, right?), why are they not flooded with poor people from other nations? Are they socially hostile to immigrants?
- freeone3000 9y agoToday in Oslo it was -5C and had 6 hours of sunlight. There may be other reasons that the Nordic countries are hostile to outsiders.