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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zzpat who wrote (1063294)	4/7/2018 10:38:36 AM
From: RetiredNow	2 Recommendations Recommended By Honey_Bee Tenchusatsu Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1576290

Have you ever visited the Nordic countries that you claim have a socialist utopia? I just came back from one. The prices for EVERYTHING are sky high. Most locals can't afford their own goods. Many rely on tourism to provide their living, which is very meager compared to other countries. Socialism tacks on taxes of 50% or more and those taxes reach down to the lowest levels of society. The workers, including in the restaurants, appear sullen and not very customer oriented. And why should they be? The policy is "no tips" and they are paid a flat wage regardless of how they perform. There is no incentive to perform better than others, because the capitalist incentives are squeezed away. They earn no more money for being exceptional than if they were completely unexceptional. Being exceptional requires effort, which is not rewarded. I wondered why their prices were so high, so I started asking people. They told me there are government price controls, which squeeze out suppliers and leave prices higher among the few suppliers left. There are high import restrictions to protect local agriculture and manufacturing, which drives prices up for consumers. The taxes are 50% and higher, which makes it difficult to afford things for the locals and tourists both. Arable land and desirable commercial land is scarce, and so, it runs at a very high premium, which drives up rents. Innovation is very scarce compared to other western nations. Yes, they have high resource wealth and yes, countries like Iceland have invested heavily in green sources of energy, which helps lower prices of energy for consumers, but these benefits are more than offset by the high costs of socialism and it's result of low competition, both of which have driven prices up so high and incentives to work so low, that most Nordic people live on a day to day basis, not really planning for the future, because there's no point. Happy? Not like the media portrays. They are happy only because some academic guy in London says they are happy. Happy is very subjective and not something that can be measured objectively and scientifically, with reproducibility. Bias is playing an outsized role in your analysis and that of all the other socialists. You are grasping at straws and the facts don't back you up. You and other socialists need to start researching things in a lot more depths than the surface level garbage you hear from the MSM and propaganda pumpers like Bernie. Try this book out and open your mind: The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia A witty, informative, and popular travelogue about the Scandinavian countries and how they may not be as happy or as perfect as we assume, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People offers up the ideal mixture of intriguing and revealing facts” (Laura Miller, Salon). Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another. Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn’t easy being Scandinavian.