Danes Rethink A Welfare State Ample to a Fault

[Vasconcelos]

You should look up the population density of Western Europa and then talk again. We need less children not more. Hell.. in this country (and maybe even in Belgium and Britain) we could use a one child policy.

I understand your point of view, but on the other hand it gets complicated for a small amount of working age people to sustain a large amount of retired people as we have now, it creates a lot of stress due to the required taxes. It's a tricky issue..

[The Lawspeaker]

I understand your point of view, but on the other hand it gets complicated for a small amount of working age people to sustain a large amount of retired people as we have now, it creates a lot of stress due to the required taxes. It's a tricky issue..

We can do with the Japanese do: automatisation and mechanisation where needed. And we have Eindhoven University so we can try to beat them on robotics. No, I think that the Dutch population should just start a slow decline. Back to 10 million with a couple of decades and then 8.5, 9 million.

[alfieb]

And who caused the current economic hardships ? Exactly.. capitalism did. And the right is just trying to cure heroine addiction by administering heroine. Saving capitalism by making it even more hard-line.

Nonsense.

Countries with extremely high entitlement spending, spending that was out of control and increased their debt to beyond a reasonable limit is hardly the same as free market capitalism. Cyprus has had communist government recently. Greece had socialists in power. Spain also had socialists in power.

The only way out of the current mess in Europe and North America is to decrease social spending, and state spending entirely.

You don't need to be an economics major to realize that if you spend more money than you take in, it's going to have disastrous consequences.

[The Lawspeaker]

Nonsense.

Countries with extremely high entitlement spending, spending that was out of control and increased their debt to beyond a reasonable limit is hardly the same as free market capitalism. Cyprus has had communist government recently. Greece had socialists in power. Spain also had socialists in power.

The only way out of the current mess in Europe and North America is to decrease social spending, and state spending entirely.

You don't need to be an economics major to realize that if you spend more money than you take in, it's going to have disastrous consequences.

It's funny because it's untrue. F.I: the crisis did not begin in Finland, Norway or Sweden with it's extensive welfare states. It began in America: the first country to dismantle safety nets and to give the banks free reign. Try again.

[alfieb]

It's funny because it's untrue. F.I: the crisis did not begin in Finland, Norway or Sweden with it's extensive welfare states. It began in America: the first country to dismantle safety networks and to give the banks free reign. Try again.

Free reign? You know nothing about this country.

It began because poor people defaulted on their loan payments on their mortgages. These mortgages were forced upon the banks by the central government who felt that it was too difficult for poor minorities with no-credit and bad-credit to own their own homes, and that too many of them lived in apartments that they rented. It was left-wing social engineering, and it backfired.

Banks were, by law, required to loan money to people who they knew couldn't afford to pay it back, who purchased homes that were well out of their economic means... and when it came back to haunt them, the government blamed the free market, when it was their own doing.

While the Scandinavian countries are famous for their high taxes and large safety nets, the Germanic states are actually considered to be more free-market than Italy and the rest of Southern Europe. They absolutely have their disgusting problems, like just how many of their citizens work for the state, and the absurdly high top income tax level, but to insinuate that the fact that Norway (with their immense oil wealth and their wise decision to remain out of the EU) hasn't collapsed, is an indictment on free market capitalism is absurd.

[The Lawspeaker]

Free reign? You know nothing about this country.

It began because poor people defaulted on their loan payments on their mortgages. These mortgages were forced upon the banks by the central government who felt that it was too difficult for poor minorities to own their own homes, and that too many of them lived in apartments that they rented. It was left-wing social engineering, and it backfired.

Banks were, by law, required to loan money to people who they knew couldn't afford to pay it back, who purchased homes that were well out of their economic means... and when it came back to haunt them, the government blamed the free market, when it was their own doing.

While the Scandinavian countries are famous for their high taxes and large safety nets, the Germanic states are actually considered to be more free-market than Italy and the rest of Southern Europe. They absolutely have their disgusting problems, like just how many of their citizens work for the state, and the absurdly high top income tax level, but to insinuate that the fact that Norway (with their immense oil wealth) hasn't collapsed, is an indictment on free market capitalism is absurd.

It's always easy to blame the government but the banks bought politicians to change that law for them. And the only reason why bankers are not being arrested and put on trial is because they are not legally responsible but the functioning of the corporation. A legal trick they also made sure of. And because of all this I believe that the separation between the legal entity that is a corporation (which prevents prosecution) and the people running it should be dismantled and banks themselves should be nationalised and then handed over to their customers as cooperative banks.

Capitalism hasn't worked and will never work.

[alfieb]

Hong Kong has the freest markets in the world and is one of the strongest economies in the world. Their GDP per capita is stronger than your own country's (and mine).

I will disregard your conspiratorial talk of laws that were hostile to the banks being written by the banks, because I don't trade in that hypothetical bullshit.

Switzerland will never collapse. Their economy (like Hong Kong's) is ferocious. I wish more countries were like them.

[The Lawspeaker]

Hong Kong has the freest markets in the world and is one of the strongest economies in the world. Their GDP per capita is stronger than your own country's (and mine).

I will disregard your conspiratorial talk of laws that were hostile to the banks being written by the banks, because I don't trade in that hypothetical bullshit.

Of course not. Because it isn't conspiracy talk but the cold, hard truth. It's funny that our free media (freer than in America where all media are just held by six companies) has already talked about it quite extensively. Hong Kong ? That's one of those "countries" that if you take the banks away it's all over. Hong Kong is also not really capitalist since there is no difference between private and state: the bankers and company directors literary own the government and the central bank and living circumstances for the poor are extremely impoverished but that's something most libertards.. sorry Paulbots.. err libertarians wouldn't care about because they have no actual life experience.

So looking at this country what did capitalism do for us ? Did it build roads ? Nope paid for by taxation.
Did it build railways ? Nope.. paid for by taxation.
Did it build society housing ? Very few social housing has been built since the cooperatives have been privatised.
Did it build canals ? Nope.. paid for by taxation.
Did it build factories ? Well yes after the government paid for the infrastructure and quickly moved them abroad when the wages were cheaper somewhere else where people could be exploited without mercy.
Did it build a social welfare state ? No it didn't. It even hired the church to fight tooth and nail against it.
Did it build the ports of Rotterdam ? Nope.. paid for by taxation.
Sure it built the Flevopolders ? Ach no.. paid for by taxation


So what did capitalism do to build up this country ? The backbone of what we have here is what we call the MKB (middle and smallholders) like family businesses. Not the big companies that don't pay any taxes (tax rate in this country for multinationals and foreign companies is less than 3 procent. We are a virtual tax haven. We are a country that taxes it's poor to death and gives the money away for free to big corporations). But you didn't know that, did you ?

So if you would have been an actual European you would have known about who built Europe. It's not capitalism.

[Graham]

When RBS went down, it was more to do with the bank taking on too many assets, & the buyout of the dodgy Dutch Bank ABN Amro for £49 billion. That ultimately sunk the ship.

[Neon Knight]

If wealth was distributed fairly to begin with, there would be no great need for re-distribution. I am in favour of workers' cooperatives for all medium and large companies where the employees own at least 51% of the shares. Then these companies will stay at home and not go to slave labour places like India.

I also think most European countries desperately need a 'one child' policy combined with very low immigration. Apparently in the 70s there was a saying: "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control."