Now there is the difference in why socialistic government is so much more acceptable in some countries. The average citizen is stuck in a way below average station in life, either limited by caste or lack of opportunity to better himself. Someone comes along and says hey dude if we get in charge, all the aristocracy that has held you down will have to share their wealth gained by your sweat with you, and all will be equal in status and income. By our standards this new average income level would be less than we average, but to this guy it is a no brainer of an increase. We are not as receptive to this siren's song because we can better ourselves, and all but the moochers and misguided ignore it.
We're also the biggest success of the enlightenment period and a historic great producer of goods. Which I think has kept us from going down that road the longest.
not really, it's the jobs that have dropped off a cliff, production has been basically flat as a percentage of gdp for years and years.
we should not be making sneakers or toasters or anything else that is labor intensive and requires zero skills. that's a massive waste of our high end labor force.
I don't think we should strive for those jobs but I don't think we should put in regulations and policies that hurt them either.
In a pure global economic system, this is exactly correct. Each country finds it's niche where it is best suited by either natural resources, cheap labor, or skilled labor, and fulfills the demand for it. To work it requires 100% free trade, and lack of any meaningful armed conflict between the participants. Those not wishing to belong ie N. Korea or Iran would just be more isolated from the world.
Yeah, the problem with socialism is quite micro. What gets us out of bed in the morning?* *Hint: it ain't a duty to the greater good. That ship gets the snooze button.
It's pretty macro too. In the sense that it's hard to effectively manage a top down huge open economy efficiently. Most places that are successful in it have huge amounts of natural resources and a very homogeneous society.
Places that are successful aren't as "top-down" as ones that are not, either. Example: giving a lot of the decision-making to town councils and such.
Norway and a lot of other places generally are decently free economically. Huge amounts of oil and natural gas resources per capita is the main driver of their system and a homogeneous society with a regressive tax system.
Norway has really high taxes too but as a share of gpd the lower levels pay higher amounts. Which isn't surprising since they're not very corrupt as a whole, so they're not using their programs for cronyism and vote buying. The scandavian countries have that aspect correct that to have expensive welfare states, you have to be disciplined enough to fund them.