@Eaglebauer Said
Okay. Fair enough.
There are critics who say that the affluent picture of Nordic countries is kind of misleading though when looking at things with a more macrocosmic view. Most of the wealth that has made the Scandinavian economy as robust as it's been in the latter part of the 20th century was built long before socialist leaning took hold there. Sweden was the fastest growing economy in the entire world from the 1870s into the 1930s but when the Swedish state began expanding rapidly in 1975, the economy slowed exponentially, and by the mid 90s they had gone from being the 4th richest in the world to the 13th. Since then...since the 90s, Scandinavian governments have actually been going through a systematic reduction in size. Denmark actually cut unemployment benefits out of necessity. Some would say that in the Nordic model we are seeing the top of an arc right now that will ultimately take a downturn and eventually end up leading back to more capitalist roots.
Nordic voters are also starting to take notice as they realize that the standard of living has become heightened and it turns out that not very many people want to pay twice the amount a car is worth while having 60% of their income taxed.
The other factors no one seems to be addressing is that Scandinavian countries are not only ethnically and culturally homogeneous (of course Sanders supports it...Scandinavia looks a lot like Vermont), which in a Utopian world wouldn't matter but does in the real world, but they also don't have to worry about a huge defense budget because they aren't major world powers on the same level as the US or China. Incidentally, they along with many others, also have the benefit of the US shouldering over 70% of the pot for NATO which incidentally will probably also have to change if we become democratically socialist.
Detractors also make note of the fact that pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. And they view pure democratic socialism as three men in a room...one with 50 dollars and two with none. Guess which way the vote will go when they decide what happens to the 50 dollars the one has earned? The moralistic argument is that voting to take someone's property from them does not make it correct. Theft by vote is still theft, isn't it?
The effort should be focused on how we make poor people less poor, I don't think anyone can argue that. The easy go to is to address it by asking the question how do we make the rich less rich, but a lot of folks (and not all of them rich) seem to think that is a morally flawed solution that will lead to collapse for almost everyone in the end.
(I might be playing devil's advocate somewhat here)
I think a good balance is the best solution really. We cannot go towards either extreme without extreme problems that result.
If we have a pure capitalistic system where everyone is responsible for their own and, therefore, only rewards winners and with no collective regard for the losers, then we eventually end up with an oligarchy, a system where the winners make conditions impossible for the losers to get out of, either through Upton Sinclair-like conditions on the bottom, monopolies among the middle, and/or corporate lobbying on the top, all of which have been very real issues in our capitalistic nation's 250 years of existence.
If we have a purely Communist system, where the government owns, controls, and distributes all wealth, then individual freedoms are taken away entirely and nobody has an incentive to be more productive, creative, or even earn more than they would otherwise be inclined to and many are downright unhappy.
A good solution still allows for capitalism, ownership, and individual freedoms for everyone to earn more and as much as they want, yet also has a safety net that ensures the losers that inherently result under such a competitive system will not be left to buckle, wither, and/or die, but ensures that they can reasonably remain in the competition.
This means we must take care of our labor force, our sick, and, yes, even our poor to a degree for that to be most effective. Sure, many are in these predicaments who could have done better to stay out of them, but many are in such situations without fault of their own. People get injured or chronically ill, get laid off, lose homes, get widowed, get into debt for reasons beyond their control, have to drop out of college for reasons beyond their control, or are or born into conditions that make it extremely harder to get out of than it would be for a child born in a white upper middle class family with a white picket fence and parents who stayed together. I would support a system that provides welfare in exchange for work, no problem, but there DOES need to be some sort of welfare that provides only the basics - things such as food, cheap clothing, and a shelter, at least until they can support themselves again, if they can.
Yes, there will be those who leech off of such a safety net and are satisfied with just those boring basics, just as there will be those who abuse economic clout at the expense of others under capitalism that creates such situations for many. But we all still benefit more from such a system than would otherwise, even with those leeches or capitalistic abusers.
Even monetarily. For example, if we all pay into a system that takes care of our medical needs and retirement needs, the amount that we have to pay for such is less than what we would pay if we only each paid our own for each. And that is not even considering the fact that without such a system we pay for emergency care anyways for those who are not under insurance, which drives up the cost of insurance for everyone who does pay. Furthermore, we are stuck with public safety issues that can eventually turn catastrophic if we don't take care of those who are unable to pay for health care and get sick or don't take care of the elderly who are unable to support themselves, all of which we also end up paying for it in the long term, including monetarily.
And don't even get me started in industrialized-driven climate change.
The same applies to those earning under the poverty level, those who cannot afford childcare, and so on. Crime increases, and again, we all pay for it as a result. The same even goes for infrastructure (including utilities), education, and so forth. We are already paying for the benefit of all to partake in with all those things, and would end up paying a lot more if we each had to pave our own roads, well our own water, and educate our kids ourselves or pay for private schools.
Like it or not we live in a community and because we live in a community, we are going to have to help each other out a bit if we all want to benefit, save, and live in a more secure environment.
Again, though, I'm FOR capitalism. I support a system that rewards hard effort and earning as much as you can, and for the existence of profit making corporations. But I also support a safety net as well, as it benefits all of us, both monetarily and security-wise. I think we can have a nice balance of both. Hence why I admire the European/Scandinavian system.
Time will only tell I guess what ultimately happens in regards to these Scandinavian countries. I certainly cannot refute any of what you are saying regarding predictions on them, but I will say this, though: I have a hunch they will continue to be alright. Why? Because they are in democratically run governments. This means that fixes are always possible when things are not working like they should be, especially when not under the heavy influence of lobbyists from the earlier corporations I mentioned.
And, yes, I do know about the argument that we spend too much on defense to be able to afford what these Scandinavian countries are able to afford. I think the better solution to that then would be - DON'T spend too much on defense. Or do we really need to continue being the world's police, intervening in places like Iraq, and inadvertently creating more crisis such as ISIS? No, I think we need to solve our own domestic problems as a priority rather than the opposite. Studies have shown that the money spent on the war in Iraq alone would have been enough to take care of everything I am proposing and then some.