Ok @onmindset, so we agree that we don't have real capitalism in USA. So who defines capitalism? Does the US define it? Or do scandinavian countries do? Because from our perspective, you have a capitalist/socialist hybrid as Bernie Sanders put it. In fact liberals in the US want a scandinavian form of government. And before you come to me with different names and definitions and dates, remember definitions can change. I recommend to just use a word different than capitalism altogether.
You remind me of the crowd who was against FDR(the guy who initiated a lot of safety nets that you guys are using now) and with Reagan. The same crowd that has led us into this shithole. You have to understand that a straight up capitalist and meritocracy will not work. We must as a species know that helping those that are weaker is in our best interests in the long term while at the same time encouraging and promoting success.
Check out @charitybot reply and understand that one thing is to tear systems down(what happened here) and another one is to change them. Scandinavian countries have some of the best systems in the world, if not the bests.
It's weird how people (in this case, you) claim that capitalism won't work, even though it has never been tried. But socialism, yeah..let's try that over and over and over again. It always ends up in tears - but let's just try it ONE more time :)
Listen - I understand that it's easy to be seduced by how scandinavia is portrayed. Sweden is damn near destroying itself with immigration. Old people are dying in their downshitten beds and the police are quitting their jobs at record speeds. It's a society in slow decay.
In Norway, a country that I know even better, I can agree that it looks good on the surface. And it's not that bad. But it's a strange society. Everyone is equally medicore. We have half the population on welfare, anxiety, depression and straight up welfare frauds. 5% of all children are taken by the child protective system. It's gone too far, even people working there admits it. We have very little innovation due to terrible schools. We score very bad even though we are one of the richest countries in the world. We have only one college in the top 100.
That being said, we are intelligent and hard working people. But it is also a little bit of a lie that we have always been a capitalist hybrid society. In the 80s and 90s we were pretty much as capitalist as any country has ever been. Same with Sweden. And guess what..that's when we blossomed. Innovation was incredible - especially in Sweden. But as they (and us) has gone more towards socialism..our society has decayed.
We have bad health care. Bad schools. Bad education. We have to wait up to 2 months to get an appointment at the doctor. Most people just pay for private health insurance instead. I guess you don't see Michael Moore report on that? ;)
I am not socialist... nor do I think it works. I believe in fair reward for innovation and free market but you need nets so people don't fall off it. No system is perfect and systems need change according to the situation.
Yes, the open borders was a very bad idea. Everyone agrees on that.
Mediocre? By whose standard. Scandinavia has some of the best human development index. Bad schools? Bad education? You have some of the best scores worldwide. Again, by whose standards? It's good to push forward but it's also important to keep things in perspective.
No really. We rank terrible. Bedtime now. Ill cough up some rankings tomorrow. Thanks for the discussion btw! Thumbs up