Can Obama Learn from the Successful Economies?

[Bar Sinister]

Get mad? LOL!

I guess this means your opinion changed when the premise of your thread was proven wrong. OK. No problem.

We could give Locutus the benefit of the doubt and assume that he posted the article simply to stimulate debate. He may have just been playing Devil's advocate.

 

[gopher]

Several times he has posted links but makes no comment. While we all want stimulating exchanges here, the forum is best when everyone adds their own ideas as that further stimulates exchanges. No criticism intended, just a suggestion for making the forum more expansive.

 

[Locutus]

Several times he has posted links but makes no comment. While we all want stimulating exchanges here, the forum is best when everyone adds their own ideas as that further stimulates exchanges. No criticism intended, just a suggestion for making the forum more expansive.

Only several?

Are you new here? :lol:

My advice would be to relax more. Because you know...it's just an opinion piece from a blog. Read or do not read, any thread you see fit. Comment or not on any such thread. But don't fall into the trap of becoming too self-important where the lack of a response by any or all members to a 'quote challenge' becomes a um, problem for you.

The forum is best that way. ;-)

Oh, and no criticism was taken. Peace man.

 

[gopher]

^ lol

 

[Machjo]

I am quite well aware of the structure of the Swedish economy and agree with you that total government ownership is lower than that in the US and Canada. However, there are many aspects to socialism and Sweden is in the forefront when it comes to implementing many of them. For example, Sweden is very highly unionized; in fact it is illegal for most companies not to have unionized employees. Not only that, but it is a legal requirement that the boards of directors running Swedish companies have labour representatives on them. I have details of these laws listed below. I note that you referred to one of them (Codetermination) in your post, but I expect most people will not know what that is.

The Employment (Co-Determination in the Workplace) Act establishes rules for relationships and negotiations between employer and employee organizations. It requires employers to notify trade unions with regular information about the company’s financial status and personnel policies, as well as about any downsizing or restructuring plans. The act also contains agreements regarding meaningful work tasks, often including mandatory skill development regulations.
The Trade Union Representatives (Status at the Workplace) Act was drafted to protect trade union representatives, ensuring their job security and making it easier to perform their trade union duties. It guarantees union representatives’ wage and employment benefits and forbids dismissal in cases where the representative is necessary at the workplace.














In addition, the government of Sweden practices what is called indicative planning. This is a form of economic planing in which the government sets out long term goals and then moves towards them by the use of tax incentives and disincentives. This is quite different from the ad hoc economic planning of the US and Canada. In fact there is so little long range economic planning in the US and Canada that it can hardly be called planning.

These factors, coupled with a superb job-retraining program, generous social benefits and high level of taxation definitely put Sweden of the left side of the political spectrum.

However, as in all things it depends on how the word socialism is defined. Are public schools socialist? Are libraries? How about public highways and public transport? How about recreational centres and public parks? A century and a half ago all of these things would have been considered socialist to some extent. Do they still qualify?

Agreed. Techincally yes, libraries, public school, etc. are socialist, but socialism ought not to be thought of as a bad word otherwise we'd have to pay at a toll booth each time we turned onto another street.

As for economic planning,definitely government ought to have a long-term plan. I also know that for instance when the textile industry is in a slump, that's when the government would stockpile military uniforms, and then let the stock deplete in good economic times, as a means of stabilizing the markets.

So definitely Canada can learn from Sweden. But perhaps the biggest difference is that whereas Canadian socialists consider capitalism to be a dirty word, the Social Democratic Party of Sweden has been known to be willing to experiment with various capitalist models, focussed more on whatever works rather than ideological purity. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, Sweden's overall system could best be described as social-corporatist (which is more where I lean) than labour-socialist in the NDP sense of the word, so it would be somewhat disingenuous for a new-democrat to try to associate the NDP platform with that of Sweden's social democrats. We don't really have a social-corporatist party in Canada, though we might find a few social corporatist among the NDP's right flank and maybe among some centrists in the Green party, but we cetainly don't have a social-corporatist party as such.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Agreed. Techincally yes, libraries, public school, etc. are socialist, but socialism ought not to be thought of as a bad word otherwise we'd have to pay at a toll booth each time we turned onto another street.

As for economic planning,definitely government ought to have a long-term plan. I also know that for instance when the textile industry is in a slump, that's when the government would stockpile military uniforms, and then let the stock deplete in good economic times, as a means of stabilizing the markets.

So definitely Canada can learn from Sweden. But perhaps the biggest difference is that whereas Canadian socialists consider capitalism to be a dirty word, the Social Democratic Party of Sweden has been known to be willing to experiment with various capitalist models, focussed more on whatever works rather than ideological purity. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, Sweden's overall system could best be described as social-corporatist (which is more where I lean) than labour-socialist in the NDP sense of the word, so it would be somewhat disingenuous for a new-democrat to try to associate the NDP platform with that of Sweden's social democrats. We don't really have a social-corporatist party in Canada, though we might find a few social corporatist among the NDP's right flank and maybe among some centrists in the Green party, but we cetainly don't have a social-corporatist party as such.

Don't worry, I've never considered socialism a bad word. Historically socialism has been responsible for most of the meaningful social changes in western society since the middle of the 19th Century. And there are socialists and socialists. Swedish socialism has always been of the pragmatic sort in which elements of capitalism and socialism are blended. Many left wingers in Canada think the same way. You might note that when Tommy Douglas first took power in Saskatchewan his first priority was not health care, but the balancing of the provincial budget. Once that was done he could get on with his socialist agenda; an agenda that has pretty much been copied by every government in Canada. You might also note that the political agenda of the modern NDP is vastly different from that of the 1930s CCF. Parties evolve over time, moving either to the left or right as the situation demands.