I live in Europe too, the "welfare/social programmes" that have developed over time are hardly the East German / Soviet system that some Americans envisage.
No, but some countries have pretty horrific tax structures and levels of bureaucracy in exchange for the welfare. And the same countries unsurprisingly have bad debt levels/unemployment levels/ business startup rates etc etc. Denmark for example has top tax rate of 60%!! Then huge sales taxes, theres about 100% tax on new cars. But you get things like free university.. meh depends on your outlook. Personally id rather keep what i work hard for. Communist Russia certainly not. But general anti wealth/ambition with welfare dependent class absolutely. Can't speak for America though as I live in Europe. EDIT. I was wrong. Car tax is is 180%! Suicide rate over double that of US. 11% of adult Danes on anti depressants... but you get paternity and maternity pay.. the glories of "democratic socialism"
You were also wrong about the suicide rate. The 2012, the suicide rate in Denmark was 8.8 per 100,000 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367275/), in the U.S. it was 12.1 per 100,000 (http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/unitstates.pdf). If you look at the average suicide rates over the past 50 years, you'll see your statistic. If you look at current rates, you'll see what I posted. You'll also see a consistently dropping Danish suicide rate since the 1980's when it peaked, which is inconsistent with your unsupported belief that Denmark's increasingly socialist government causes a higher suicide rate in Denmark than the U.S. Not to mention that you're deciding that correlation is causation with absolutely nothing to link the two together, a common misuse of statistics. Continuing with Denmark and wrong, their debt to gdp ratio is 47.2 which puts them at about #90 in the world (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html) and pretty far below a bunch of places you'd probably consider not socialist. So jettison part one of on "And the same countries unsurprisingly have bad debt levels/unemployment levels/ business startup rates etc etc." Lets look at unemployment levels, at 6.6% there are 111 countries in the world with worse according to the World Bank for the period from 2011 to 2015, again much better off than a number of countries you wouldn't consider "socialist". There aren't any unimpeachable stats for startup rates I can give you, but as an entrepreneur I do know Denmark as a vibrant startup community. Turns out infrastructure and support impact startup rates far more than tax rates do. Put yourself in the place of a 25 year old entrepreneur. If you can take a year to try out a startup without having to worry about health care, starving to death, getting the education that allowed to you be in a position to found the startup.... you're much more likely to do so. Tax rates, seriously? No entrepreneur I've ever met decided to go or no go on their startup based on tax rates, can you point to any examples? So what we have here is someone citing a bunch of data that supports a position, i.e. if a country with govt type X has lower suicide rates, unemployment and debt and higher startup rates than govt type X is better. In this case, it turns out you must support Denmark's form of government, because the statistics you were basing your worldview on were all flawed or manipulated and they actually showed the opposite! I'll give you the car tax, that one's accurate but doesn't seem to significantly impact the economy of Denmark or well-being of Danes except that in my experience mass transit is far better, traffic congestion far less, and road quality much higher than places with a lower car tax.
Sig So my stats were correct. You can slice and dice statistics to suit either argument. I respect your point but my stats still remain true. There has also been a huge rise in use of anti-depressants in Denmark (now 7th highest consumer of anti-depressants on a per 1000 ppl basis) over the past 20 years which no doubt played a part. The purpose of my comment wasn't to get bogged down in an argument about Denmark. I just happened to pick that country as it was one of many, Sweden, Finland all applicable. France, another high tax, unionised economy with unemployment hovering around 10% and anemic growth. Thats Debt to GDP ratio. I could have a business with a debt ratio of only 5% but i only make 10k a year. Does that make me a bigger/better managed company than a Fortune 500 company that has a debt ratio of 50% but makes 500 million a year? Your facts are correct, but again can be argued a multitude of ways. It may have lower debt to GDP than some countries, but it is also weak economy. A Swiss study http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665646.pdf highlights if Denmark were a state in the US it would be the 10th poorest state. Its citizen's average income is about 37% lower than an Americans. Pretty much every entrepreneur i know (myself included) was driven by the desire to better their lives, put more food on the table, a more stable income to support their housing costs and not having a safety net to fall back on was THE driving force (i didn't go to university for example, self employment is my only way of achieving my financial dreams). Would it be easier with a state handout.. sure. But if I could be fed and clothed by the state for free i would be far less likely to have the motivation and drive that i do. In fact if the state offered me a house and income I probably wouldnt get out of bed. Tax isnt about incentives. Its about capital and its efficient use. If i didnt pay any tax (not possible but for examples sake) what am I going to do with that money? I invest in more business, in doing up houses, generating jobs, spending money. It has been proven over and over the private sector invests and grows money at a far higher rate than the state. Anyway.. arguing politics is like arguing religion. Everyone "knows" they are right. And a lot of it is personal opinion. My personal opinion is a large government spending/wasting my money is bad and the original point of this thread was to answer what could someone do to protect themselves if they shared that belief?
It's the personal opinion you take out of it when you you're intellectually honest with statistics. There's no relativism here. If the current rate shows the EXACT OPPOSITE of an average of the past 50 years, then carefully choosing to quote the rate for the last 50 years without pointing out the fact that the most recent statistics show the opposite of your thesis is being intellectually dishonest, full stop. I'm guessing you didn't know the underlying stats, that particular one is a meme going around conservative circles these days that you probably picked up without looking into it. You should watch out when you do that, as you become complicit in their attempt at deception by repeating it. I also care little about Denmark or iterating through every country you think is socialist to show the statistics you cite have more behind them than you think. I just found it interesting that honestly looking at the full range of the dataset for everything you claimed painted a much more nuanced and often times opposite view of what you were claiming. If you ever see me picking and choosing statistics in a dataset and conveniently failing to mention the ones that show the opposite of what I'm claiming, I would not only expect but I'd ask you to call me on it. BTW, debt to GDP ratio is the only way to reasonably compare debt between two countries. The other alternative to evaluating your original assertion, that Denmark has "bad debt levels" is to use their absolute debt. Since, as you pointed out, Denmark is a small country and their debt to GDP ratio is low, their absolute debt level is miniscule compared to the rest of the developed world and that would make your statement even less true. You didn't say they had a "weak economy" originally. You said they had "bad debt levels", and by any way you slice and dice it that statement just doesn't hold water. Clearly not going to change your mind, there's this fascinating effect where the misinformed (versus uninformed) just harden in their certainty when presented with facts that challenge their worldview. But as an Edmund Burke fan I'm not going to let blatantly misconstrued info sit out there unchallenged.
Well i highlighted the rise in anti depressants over recent history to one of the highest (7th) in the world, which being "intellectually honest" would impact short term trends. I never said it wasnt nuanced. I even stated politics is one of those debates where there is never an outright winner. Like i said, the purpose of this thread was never to debate pros and cons of political systems yes its called cognitive dissonance and not only am i aware of it i pride myself on remaining detached from it. I welcome anyone to challenge my points, but overall you havent raised any point that disputes mine which is that lauded examples of socialism are neither fully socialist nor able to solve the issues left wingers claim they do. Left leaning countries have fared relatively poorly across long term and short term time periods and across multiple cultures. But.. as already stated this is completely off topi of the thread.
I just wanted to comment that only when income is fairly evenly distributed would the average income be a useful statistic. In the US the income distribution is far from uniform. If you want to understand income in the US versus other countries you must compare the actual distributions in the two countries. Averages are good for comparing somethings, but certainly not useful, other than to mislead, in many other cases.
My favorite example of this, the average temperature on the moon is a relatively balmy 10 degrees F. Not much worse than Denmark in the winter, right? Of course the temperature on the dark side of the moon is -243 F and on the bright side it's +253 F and in no place except perhaps a narrow band of the terminator is it anywhere approaching a human livable temperature. Quoting the average temperature to convince someone to move to the moon without disclosing the actual conditions would pretty clearly be seen as blatantly dishonest, but I guess it's fine to use average income in a place where 40% of the wealth is held by 1% of the population? Not to mention the fact that when items like healthcare, retirement, and education are provided, a lower income can be equivalent to a higher income in places where you have to pay for these out of pocket. A great example of this is the U.S. military, ironically the most socialist sector of U.S. society. Salary is generally lower than the equivalent private sector job, but the military is quick to show how if you add in all the benefits like free healthcare, retirement, GI-bill... you're pretty close to or exceeding market.