The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism

[Glacier]

I'm not a libertarian, but this guy makes some really interesting points:

[rekabis]

Wow, does this video ever have a mess of red herrings. So let's knock a few of them down one by one.

First of all, “Wealth Growth”. The study that he is referencing talks about the growth of wealth in families. That’s all good and dandy, and the figures he is quoting are indeed correct. However the red herring here is that he is talking about “wealth growth” - as in, assets like retirement funds, investment accounts and capital purchases. This does NOT talk about things like upgrades to a home (new roof, new carpets, etc.), better food, better furniture or even better clothing. As such, the decrease in “wealth growth” as government gets bigger is obvious and expected -- poor people who receive redistributed wealth are hardly going to stick it into stocks, bonds and that beachfront cabin. No, they’re going to use it to improve their lives and their lot in life -- which is NOT counted as “wealth” in this study. Essentially, in those governments that are <25% of GDP, most of the “wealth growth” goes straight to the 1%, who put it toward their massive hoards of investments and assets, because they don’t need this money to actually live on. They can put it toward their hoards because they can. Poor people can’t, so even though more money gets redistributed in Socialist government, less goes into “wealth growth” because most of the people receiving it put it toward improving their lot in life instead of socking it away in investments. Much less is left for the 1% to stick in their obscene hoards of investments, so of course the “wealth growth” is lower in socialized countries.

Second, “Per-capita GDP is highest in nations with the highest economic freedom”. Well, here he doesn't exactly make his case, as there is no direct evidence provided on the screen to fact-check. In fact, when I went to Wikipedia, I found that Norway, one of the most socialist of the scandanavian states, sat well above the United States on most any metric of per capita GDP one could find. Plus, “even the poor are 10× better off when the government is smaller”. Really? The poor are better off in Somalia, which has no government to begin with? I doubt that.

Third: “life expectancy is [higher] in the top quartile compared to [lower] in the bottom quartile”. If he’s trying to make the case that socialism leads to shorter lives, he is sadly mistaken. Both Norway and Sweden sit massively above the United States when it comes to life expectancy, and are pretty well at the top of the list. For the World Health Organization, Sweden sits at 8, Norway at 15. United States? 36. Even Canada, with its socalist healthcare, sits at 11. That United Nations study, further down? Sweden 8, Norway 13, Canada 12, United States… a dismal 40. “Having big government is a 20-year death sentence…” BWHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

And here I am only five minutes in.

I've got work to do, so I’ll have to finish this later. But already this is a video filled with little evidence, and lots of hand-waving, unsupported statements and outright misdirection and overt lies.

[Glacier]

And here I am only five minutes in.

Phew! I was thinking as I was reading your post that you must have fallen asleep halfway through, but now I see you haven't finished yet.

One of his basic points is that Scandinavian countries aren't that socialist, and are in fact some of the freest nations on earth. One very important part of economic freedom is property rights, and for most of those countries you've discussed, they don't score very well. Actually none of them are more free-market than Sweden...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ic_freedom

Besides not watching to the end, I think the biggest mistake you made was finding a single exception (the US) to a rule, and then claiming the rule isn't true. That's just silly. You're under the assumption that the correlation is 100%, which never happens with anything in the real world.

[bob vernon]

Thank God we have Stephen Harper who will never allow us to go down the path to socialism. This Scandinavian Hell that has been created in northern Europe shouldn't be allowed to come to Canada.

[Gill_B]

A better topic would be:

The myth that free-market capitalism is a system that works for the people.