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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 his
by sime2009 6y ago
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.
- azaras 6y agoThey are not capitalist democracies they are social democracies. The economy is socialist and capitalist.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf 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.