wrote:
Alun L. Palmer wrote:
wrote in news:1108745797.245365.147250
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
Alun L. Palmer wrote:
wrote in news:1108665611.010471.49400
@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
But emulating Sweden is OK huh?
n3kip
w3rv
Sure, why not?
BINGO: There it is. Old Europe. Sez it all.
Not in your lifetime Alun.
'Bye.
w3rv
We have very different political views.
OBVIOUSLY.
I don't know how you would classify
yourself, but by European standards you are very far to the right
indeed,
I'm a centrist Republican a la Sen. Arlen Specter, a member of a
disapperaing breed.
Sadly disappearing!
Ted Kennedy is a right-winger by Old Europe
standards.
Yup.
Welcome to America.
as by no stretch is Sweden a socialist country.
Blather. It's a country which uses it's outrageous taxes on it's few
monster "capitalist" smokestack industries to hand out socialist
entitlements to it's population on a scale unheard of in any other
country. Entitlments being the heart of socialism in all it's forms.
Sven the fender-hanger at the SAAB plant didn't "feel good" yesterday
so he stayed home and watched the tube. No problem, he got paid
anyway
under Swedish law. SAAB plant payrolls are bloated by 20% percent
per
unit out the door vs. the U.S & Japan because 20% of the SAAB workers
"call in sick" every day. Absolute fact. GM got stupid and bought
SAAB
mostly to save the marque otherwise SAAB would have died years ago
but
GM is now mulling a pullout to cut their losses. The outflow of
capital
from Sweden to other countries has been appalling, check out the
numbers and why it's happening and what the Swedish government is
doing
to stanch the bleeding.
The reason the whole thing didn't collapse right away was that the
smokestacks are/were big exporters, bringing in hard currency.
I can no doubt go ten blocks around the compass from here in the
suburbs of Philadelphia and find more businesses with ten or fewer
employees than you'll find in all of Sweden. Why is that Alun?? Could
it be that Swedish socialist economics stifles entrepreneurial
capitalism which is the engine behind the astounding growth of the
U.S. economy for over two centuries? Of course it is.
As for myself, I used to be a card carrying member of the
Conservative and
Unionist Party in the UK, but I freely admit that I have drifted
leftwards
since then, very likely as a result of seeing at first hand the
huge
social inequalities in the USA.
Certainly there are social inequalities in the U.S. The original
Constitution plus it's Bill of Rights guarantees equality in all
elections and in all courts in this country and nothing more.
Translates into a system in which the fate of individuals depends on
what they freely choose to do or not do with their lives. Those who
choose to be slackers suffer the consequences they freely imposed on
themselves so of course we wind up with "social inequalities" galore.
Equality of rights and opportunities - not equality of outcomes.
Add in some other points about Sweden:
Compared to the USA, it's tiny in both population and land area. Also
virtually homogeneous (again compared to the USA). 'Diversity' means
something very different in Sweden. Heck, they split with Norway after
less than 100 years of alliance IIRC.
It's relatively easy and simple for a community/society to 'work' if
it's small and uniform. USA is neither, and never has been.
By your leftist standards our system has too many freedoms.
If it's called being a socialist to think that the ordinary working
man
should be able to get medical care without courting bankruptcy,
then
I
suppose that makes me a socialist, but if you actually look in a
dictionary, then you will see that I am not, and neither are the
Swedes.
See above.
Health care is only one issue. Is W3RV's info about SAAB accurate or
not?
Should American industry work the same way?
socialism // n.
1 a political and economic theory of social organization which
advocates
that the community as a whole should own and control the means of
production, distribution, and exchange.
Oh**** . . the second coming of Cecil and his friggin' dictionaries .
..
!
2 policy or practice based on this theory.
socialist n. & adj.
socialistic // adj.
socialistically // adv.
[French socialisme (as social)]
"community as a whole" = "the government"
Sure seems to fit!
73 de Jim, N2EY