I like what Andrew Carnegie did to help with the inequality thingy: he built libraries. Seriously, what is the excuse for capable people that aren't paying their own way in life? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library#Distribution_of_U.S._Carnegie_libraries_in_1920
I think were I a Swede, in Sweden, and my taxes went to help Swedes, I'd be fine with socialism. In the US taxes go to help inner city people that hate me because I'm white. Who the f%^k wants to pay for that sh*t? Oh, and Mexicans that are here illegally... I don't want to pay for that sh#t either.. European Socialism works because they don't have much military expenditures. It works best in Norway where they don't have military expenditures and they have Oil to sell.. It works in the US only because the gov can run deficits and it's not working very well. I really feel that the US's situation is going to collide with reality in 2015. Just intuiting that...
For some reasons, studying prison systems - aka the worst situation someone is supposed to avoid - allows to understands better the 'truth' about a society.
The question then is which system is most effective to rehabilitate people? It is well known some systems goals are different.
The Japanese - before they "westernised" too much- were much "worse" from American perspectives. These were for Japanese only. - Swimming, tennis classes! - Fancy meals - really luxurious by Japanese standards accomodation - "re-education" classes - strict time-table For some reasons, their prisonners used to develop very strong sense of regrets for their actions. The extreme case I saw there being a man who killed an only child, deciding to work and support financially the child's family till his own death. This was his own decision.
I really can not keep noticing that these Scandinavians countrie have this : they offer jobs to education/jobs to hookers AND they give criminal records to punters. So what type of VALUES these countries have? Norway
As disclaimer, I have myself been victim of crime, and my view is please change what goes into a criminal mind, so that they become saints and make amends/repairs the mess they create. "We have seen an out-of-the-ordinary decline in the number of inmates," said Nils Öberg, the head of Sweden's prison and probation services. "Now we have the opportunity to close down a part of our infrastructure that we don't need at this point of time." Prison numbers in Sweden, which have been falling by around 1% a year since 2004, dropped by 6%