Or is it? My apologies in advance for the shameless clickbait title, or in this case perhaps "clickbait-and-switch" would be a more appropriate term. I did some research yesterday as a result of an interaction I was having on Facebook with someone who was criticizing Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialism. (I would reproduce our interaction here, but when it was complete he went back and deleted all of his comments.)
This person claimed that socialism never works because the money always runs out. He also claimed that Americans pay the highest taxes in the world, and that Sanders’ free college plan would be paid for by the middle class. (And by the way, “I’m not going to bother trying to explain all this to you. It’s complex and I’m an economist.”)
Knowing a load of horse manure when I see it, I did a little checking to compare which countries are deemed to be the best for business by the business community, with the prevailing economic/political structures in place in those countries. Even I was surprised by what I found.
I started by tracking down Forbes Magazine’s Best Countries for Business list:
1 — Denmark
2 — Hong Kong
3 — New Zealand
4 — Ireland
5 — Sweden
6 — Canada
7 — Norway
8 — Singapore
9 — Switzerland
10 — Finland
11 — The Netherlands
12 — Belgium
…
18 — The United States of America
Next I found a listing of the countries deemed the most socialist. *
The numbers next to the countries’ names are their rank on the above Forbes list.
1 — China — (Hong Kong #2) 2 — Denmark — 1 3 — Finland — 10 4 — The Netherlands — 11 5 — Canada — 6 6 — Sweden — 5 7 — Norway — 7 8 — Ireland — 4 9 — New Zealand — 3 10 — Belgium — 12Wow, that’s a pretty impressive correlation between being socialist and being good for business. But given those high taxes people pay, with so much going to the government, the disincentive factor must cost them in national prosperity, correct? Why should people strive to produce more when so much of it goes in taxes?
Here is a list referenced again by Forbes Magazine, this is called the Legatum Prosperity Index and is based on scores in eight different categories, Economy, Entrepreneurship & Opportunity, Governance, Education, Health, Safety and Security, Personal Freedom, and Social Capital. Again, the number on the right is their ranking in the socialism list.
1 — Norway — 7 2 — Switzerland — n/a 3 — Denmark — 2 4 — New Zealand — 9 5 — Sweden — 6 6 — Canada — 5 7 — Australia — n/a 8 — The Netherlands — 4 9 — Finland — 3 10 — Ireland — 8 11 — The United States of America — n/aOK, so they have prosperity, at least according to these criteria, but with all the taxation, aren’t they fed up with government taking so much? They can’t possibly be happy when they're being taxed to death in these socialist hell-holes, can they?
“Happiness seems to be most abundant a long way from the equator. At least according to the new World Happiness Report 2015. The 10 happiest countries are”
1 — Switzerland, 2 — Iceland 3 — Denmark 4 — Norway 5 — Canada 6 — Finland 7 — Netherlands 8 — Sweden 9 — New Zealand 10 — Australia.Hmmm. noticing a pattern here?
* The list of most socialist countries comes from a blog named peerform.com. It was the first Google hit on this query. The list seems quite reasonable on inspection , and there are blurbs at the site for each entry in the list providing the author’s justification for that country’s inclusion. I have no idea what the political leanings of this blog or the author(s) are, what their history is, etc. They appear to be a peer-to-peer lending site. In any event, if they are awful people or involved in something nefarious, please restrain yourself from using that as the basis for ad hominem attacks on this diary. No need to post multiple comments about how you're going to rip me a new one, as one rather hyper-aggressive — and mistaken — Clinton supporter did in my last diary. Thank you — kbman