But OH NOES, they are teh socialist!!11oneeleventy And we all know that socialism always fails because socialist governments go bankrupt; at least, that's what rags like the Economist have been telling me for the last 30 years.
<sarc>This is why free-market, no-social-services USA has such a low public debt/GDP ratio, whereas quasi-socialist (public health: boo!) Australia has high debt/GDP, and socialist hell-holes like Denmark have off-the-scale debt/GDP ratios.</sarc>
Just look at the numbers in my (highly debatable and somewhat cherry picked) loosely ranked list of least to most socialist countries.
DERP. Oh dear, the numbers appear to have little correlation with with how socialist the country is, but may be more related to how 'innovative' a country's banking sector is, how many 'state owned enterprises' there are, national demographics, corporate political capture, and how distorting the tax system is.
Even the neo-liberals at the Economist are starting to understand that government provided social services, transport, health, and education aren't the primary factor that sends countries broke. Perhaps one day they'll notice the elephant in the room: the banking sector.
2010 figures are a bit out of date given the deficits the US has been running (the US has risen over 100%). I think the Economist actually has noticed the banking sector (consider this invited column from 2010:http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-contr...). By and large, the shift in US politics to the right has the Economist looking like a left-of-Democrat newspaper these days. The idea that Obama is a "socialist" is, to anyone versed in a tiny bit of history or political science, laughable.
I believe The Economist paid lip service to the role of the financial sector in the collapse; but that's mostly my opinion; as you say, they definitely covered it to some degree. At least they're apparently starting to realise that chanting "cut public services" over and over isn't the answer.
One problem with the USA left-right false dichotomy is that when you pick a middle point between the Republicans and the Democrats, you end up with something that resembles no political party anywhere else (including in the USA's history); everyone else's right wing parties (and the Republicans in the past) resemble the Democrats or are even further 'left'.
As far as I can tell, there's almost no difference between Obama and (for example) Reagan based on the left/right scale; yet US conservatives generally idolise Reagan and demonise Obama. It's bizarre.
I read the entire article; your comment is pointless and unconstructive.
My comment wasn't especially well-worded or clear, but loaded with a fair amount of sarcasm which some people have trouble with, so let me try again.
The Economist is a Neo-Liberal rag. 6 years ago, they would NEVER have published an article like this. Now they're starting to consider actual evidence and are seeing that government social services don't necessarily send countries broke.
However, they still have a long way to go before their analysis actually mean anything. Because they're still strongly attached to their broken neo-liberal world-view.
Ah, it was a meta-comment on The Economist's position.
If you had been straight-forward up front, that would have been much more interesting. Your initial comment was a mess. Not because I "have trouble with sarcasm", but because it had little direction and (to phrase it in terms you should understand) was so drenched in sarcasm as to have practically washed away the original message.
Guilty as charged on that one! I'm incoherent this morning, and feeling a bit off colour. Thanks for being classy and constructive (no sarc).
Here's a fun experiment. Go to the article, and search for the terms 'bank' and 'monetary'. 'bank' appears once within 'bankrupt', and 'monetary' doesn't exist at all.
Any article on this subject is meaningless without including those. The Economist is like an alcoholic who has recently started to admit that their behaviour is sometimes harmful, but hasn't yet come out and said "I'm an alcoholic".
Any article on this subject is meaningless without including those.
Eh, it's fine in my book. Banks may be the biggest issue, but so long as we're getting somewhere I'm happy with The Economist focusing on different aspects. Getting tunnel vision and saying "we must focus only on banks!" would ultimately be a loss, IMO.
Sweden was at 70% and went to 30% (now, 38% was in 2010 as you pointed out) because they cut governement spendings from 67% of the GDP to 49%.
Then you conveniently left Greece out of your list. You know that it did partially default and that it's going to default again right?
And Spain, why did you left Spain out? You know what's going in Spain right now? 50% unemployment amongst young people. Crazy high state budget deficit.
France is in deep shit right now and that 86% from 2010 was heaven compared to today. New car sales dropped year-to-year by 33% or so, companies of all sizes are closing left and right and they're heading for a default is they keep on that nanny state "here are more gifts for you so your sense of entitlement gets higher and you keep voting for us socialists". Because you know what? When a liberal president (Sarkozy) was cutting 180 000 public servant jobs at the very same time collectivities (run by the socialists) did create 500 000 jobs. 500 000 public servants jobs created by the socialists which now, of course, are explaining that Sarkozy did a bad job (he was president right in the middle of the financial crisis and it's all Sarkozy's fault).
The banking sector ain't the issue: we're first and foremost living, after the sub-prime crisis, a state debt crisis.
Why do we need to bail out banks? Because they have bad credits. Do you know the kind of bad credits they have now? State credits which states are never going to pay back.
And why do we have states that are going to be unable, just like Greece, to pay back their debt? Because they've been running budget deficits for years and years and years.
Honestly we're witnessing the failure of governments spending more than they rake in and socialo-communists are able to turn this around and to try to make us believe that it's the evil capitalists from finance who are responsible for all the world's problems.
I'm not buying it.
I confidently say that a nanny state with public spendings at 67% of the GDP like Sweden was before is too much. At 56% like France is right now (but it's going to skyrocket seen that they're not reducing public spending while their GDP is going to take a hit this year and lots of people from the private sector are now unemployed) it's too much too.
There has to be a certain % which is "right" and there may be some room but it's certain that socialists in France asking for more socialism are out of their minds.
The problem when you're "on the edge" with a % of public spendings so high that it's basically ruining the private sector and hence killing any innovation and with state debt around 100% is that you have not much room for maneuver anymore. All it takes is a little match and your beloved nanny state takes fire. Just like Greece. Just like Spain right now. Just like France tomorrow if they do nothing.
It's ugly and it's the fault of government running budgets on deficits.
<sarc>This is why free-market, no-social-services USA has such a low public debt/GDP ratio, whereas quasi-socialist (public health: boo!) Australia has high debt/GDP, and socialist hell-holes like Denmark have off-the-scale debt/GDP ratios.</sarc>
Just look at the numbers in my (highly debatable and somewhat cherry picked) loosely ranked list of least to most socialist countries.
Debt to GDP ratios (2010) USA: 73% UK: 86.8% Australia: 30% Canada: 83% Germany: 82% Japan: 208% Finland: 49% Sweden: 38% Denmark: 46% Norway: 49% Singapore: 118.2% France: 86%
DERP. Oh dear, the numbers appear to have little correlation with with how socialist the country is, but may be more related to how 'innovative' a country's banking sector is, how many 'state owned enterprises' there are, national demographics, corporate political capture, and how distorting the tax system is.
Even the neo-liberals at the Economist are starting to understand that government provided social services, transport, health, and education aren't the primary factor that sends countries broke. Perhaps one day they'll notice the elephant in the room: the banking sector.