Awesome organic long lasting paint is manufactured in Sweden. If we can’t get their social system happening we could try to make the paint. Grow some flax, press the seeds, let the proteins settle and scoop off the top for solvent free paint. I don’t think there is a patent on it. I’m painting houses, docks, truck and a ’73 Wheel Horse Tractor with this paint. Non Toxic! Come on American Farmers! If I get the Wheel Horse going and the proper implements I’m gonna try it on a small scale. Perhaps I could get to the point of selling it a a farmers market… Please beat me to the punch! Localize the Organics. Like they do it in Sweden. Sell off the extra.
solventfreepaint.com

The Swedish model? A relatively miniscule nation, with 1/30th the population of the U.S., 1/22 the size and with ethnic uber-homogeneity (82% Swede, 5% Finn & 14% Other), is not, in any way, a realistic model relative to the U.S.. Just another mindless exercise in blind over-generalization by some SFB academicians with some hidden agenda.

They might have more realistically just asked whether people knew what the wealth/income disparity was in the U.S. and whether they thought that was alright or not. Larding up the comparison with inapt analogy to a society with huge differences in history, demographics, size, values, and ambitions (of which the difference in wealth distribution is just one) is just hidden wishful thinking. I won’t go there, but if you pose the implied question another way – “Would you like the U.S. better if it were more like Sweden”?, you might get some really ugly answers you don’t want to hear and, even if that is what they’re suggesting, you can’t get to there from here, even if you wanted to.

right on, Syn.

“The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it.”

If not they’ll be aware of it soon enough. Americans have short memories. Ask them what they paid for toilet paper last year or 5 years ago. They probably can’t tell you or give some lame excuse why the current price is okay. Same for other items they purchase.

That’s why some of us call most Americans “sheeple.”

The poll merely picks out a real-world example that more or less matches Americans’ perceptions, not their preference or knowledge. It simply found that the answer to a question along the lines of “What do you think a fair income distribution is?” happens to look like Sweden’s income distribution.

There is no other comparison being made.

Only an intentional misreading or else an unfounded leap of anti-logic would suggest otherwise.

I have absolutely NO idea where you came up with calling Sweden “A relatively miniscule nation”. Apparently you have no idea of the history of this nation which actually ruled the whole of what is now Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and occasionally Greenland. The Swedes are also ferocious fighters and they were a key factor in WW2 being won by the allies. Ever heard of Christina of Sweden? Apparently NOT. How about the Vikings and their ability to navigate the world’s oceans as well as the rivers. The Swedes are a culture to be respected for their contributions to the world’s civilizations.

The US is NOT and has never been the center of the universe. The concept that America was a singularity of world evolution is an arrogant attitude. And, I’m Albanian-Austrian so you can’t say I’m not objective.

FINALLY! Democratic Socialism getting some POSITIVE attention! Thanks RAW!

You are over-thinking this, whoodoo. It’s not about an EXACT comparison but a FAIR & EQUITABLE disbursement of wealth.

We COULD get Democratic Socialism started if people weren’t afraid to learn the TRUTH of what it is and not buy into the blather about it being next to Communism and a HORRIBLE system. Few want to take time to do their own research and come to their own decisions anymore. If it ain’t on T.V., party line, or spoon-fed, people don’t want to take a bit of time to learn. No wonder this country is so fucking DUMB!

http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/widemsoc.pdf

Well done.

Uh…. “Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model”? *Republicans* are *equally* likely to choose the Swedish model? 92 percent?!! Since when does polling consist of just making up numbers and hoping nobody notices that they are utterly preposterous?

And does anybody read the news outside of America? The Swedes are in the process of changing the Swedish model themselves, re-electing a conservative government that’s lowering taxes and reducing welfare dependency. Do you think this might have been mentioned by canvasers in order to confuse people’s answers on the poll? If you selectively presented the liberal tradition or the conservative changes, you might finagle a number like that. Otherwise, the idea of getting 90% agreement on something this controversial is just plain ludicrous.

If you’re interested in a brief but eye opening illustration of the horribly skewed distribution of wealth in the US, drink this in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AhucAN6G00

Right on. But you forgot the most important thing. Hot blondes…..

Hey, Dumbshit! They took a poll on the attitudes of Americans to wealth distribution in the U.S. and found that what the majority thought it should be was comparable to what it is in the social democracies of Scandinavia. They never mentioned Sweden in the poll, they noticed the correlation after they crunched the numbers. Very fucking easy to understand for non-morons.

Oh, and if you’d actually paid attention to the news out of Sweden, you would know that Right wing victories in Sweden have come mainly from anti-immigration attitudes. I suggest you read further than what you’ve been told to by the people who do your thinking for you.

Then, as I said, why not just ask the question directly about that? What’s Sweden got to do with it?

Swedes, a key factor for allies WW II?? You need to go back and actually read some history. Sweden was neutral during the second world war. They sold massive amounts of iron and other minerals directly to the Nazis. The swedes played practically no role whatsoever in aiding the allies during the war, content to sit back and make money off the fascists.

Perhaps you’re confusing Sweden with Norway, which tried to resist, and was invaded and conquered by Germany. While the Swedes were comfortably enjoying the politics of nazi collaboration, Norwegians fought a continual resistance against their occupation. Norwegian insurgents helped cripple the German nuclear program by destroying the heavy water processing plant in Vermork.

Swedes, like Spain and Switzerland had bigger concerns in mind: staying free of all foreign entanglements and making lots of money.

I was referring mostly to your statement: “A relatively miniscule nation”.

why am i not surprised?

It’s no small wonder you have no idea. You’re completely clueless. What is it you don’t understand about numbers? A relatively miniscule nation (relative to the U.S, implied, because that is the comparison and supposed “model”) It’s 1/22nd the size in area of the U.S., (just slightly larger than California), 1/30th the population of the U.S. (Los Angeles alone has more people). The U.S. is a continent-wide nation with a single state ALaska that’s 3.5 X larger. If difference in size is no matter, maybe we should take Luxembourg or Switzerland for a “model”, or your Austria – every one is rich there. Ethnic mix? The U.S. ethnic composition is far more varied than Sweden’s. We are vastly different countries.

Clearly, it’s you that has no idea of the history of Sweden, the Vikings, Norway or the Danes – ancient or modern. It was the Western Norwegian Vikings and Danes that dominated parts of western Europe including Iceland and Greenland during the Viking age, not the Eastern Swedish Vikings, and the Swedes only ruled Norway for a very briet period through marriage in the 14th Century and only parts of it later during weak treaties and political arrangements through Denmark. The Swedish Vikings exploited the Baltic and rivers of what’s now Russia for trade. The Swedes later significant influence in northern Europe lasted for about a hundred years and only sporadically thereafter. And, “…a key factor in winning WWII for the allies? No, sorry. You apparently know nothing of WWII. Buy a good book on it or start with Google.

And where did I say that the U.S. was the center of the universe? Everything I said related to the fact that Sweden was a completely inappropriate model for the U.S. to follow – and if you knew anything about it’s recent modern history, you’d understand that. The U.S. has nothing in common with their context or their experience. That 14 people agree with your nonsense, that makes no contact with reality or with what I said, is a pity, but it doesn’t make you right. To end, what in the world does your being Albanian-Austrian have to do with your “objectivity”? Do you have dual-citizenship there? If that’s relevant, then know that my family and I are Americans and direct descendants of the Vikings, we grew up on the Sagas, and know Scandinavia and America well.

Re-read the article. They DID ask that. The comparison to Sweden was afterwards.

First of all, congratulations for discovering both google and wikipedia. Secondly, RE-READ the article. And, from the linked study:

“For the first task, we created three UNLABELED pie charts of wealth distributions, one of which depicted a perfectly equal distribution of wealth. Unbeknownst to respondents, a second distribution reflected the wealth distribution in the United States; in order to create a distribution with a level of inequality that clearly fell in between these two charts, we constructed a third pie chart from the income distribution of Sweden…We presented respondents with the three pair-wise combinations of these pie charts (in random order) and asked them to choose which nation they would rather join given a “Rawls constraint” for determining a just society”…

This was NOT done by mentioning countries, it was done with unlabeled pie charts that happened to represent countries.

You continue with simplistic thinking and a lack of in-depth research.

“Americans exhibit a general disconnect in their attitudes…” That explains everything. All delusional behavior is the result of disconnection so Americans say they love freedom but support the Patriot Act, love democracy but support every anti-democratic measure coming from the government from illegal wiretapping to FBI conspiracies. Americans are the most skillful doublethinkers on earth.

MMM, Alex Skarsgard, now that is one hot blond Swede.

No surprise. Ever been to Sweden? I have. That country is AWESOME. In addition, there’s a reason why Sweden is #2 here:

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm

You’re making an understandable mistake by confusing the recent far right wins with the ongoing center-right Reinfelt government, which as I said has been lowering taxes and trying to scale back the welfare state.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/politics/all/6296398/swedish-conservatives-bucked-the-recession-by-lowering-taxes-and-won-reelection.thtml

And here’s what you’re talking about:

http://www.thelocal.se/29126/20100920/

As for your defense of the poll, you’re demonstrating for us how deceptive this whole presentation is. You claim they “never mentioned Sweden in the poll”, so why is the headline “Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to SWEDEN” and the subheadline “92 percent prefer SWEDISH MODEL to US model when given a choice”? This is too obviously a push poll to create an impression there is wide acceptance of something that in reality has little acceptance outside of a particular ideological circle. I’m guessing the idea is to tout this ridiculous 92 percent number so that people will later more easily accept something like 60 or 50 percent, which sounds more reasonable, but likely also isn’t true.

I made no defense of the poll, I attacked your understanding. The poll is straight forward and doesn’t need my defense. They took a poll, saw a correlation and pointed it out. How RawStory presents their story is up to RawStory, not the people who took a poll and presented their findings. If you like you can attack the artilcle’s author and RawStory, I’m pretty sure that they won’t give a rats arse what you think.

I’ll concede you the point that I have put too much emphasis on immigration, although it was still an important factor in 2006. As for the Swedish people favoring a scale back of the welfare state – no.

http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/4/585.full

After the Moderates’ achieved only 15.3% of the vote in the 2002 election, having campaigned for welfare cutbacks, the deregulation of the labour market and tax cuts for the rich,35 Reinfeldt shifted the party to the centre ground when he assumed the leadership in 2003. Re-labelling the party the ‘New Moderates’ (Nya Moderaterna), Reinfeldt forced a reconsideration of its ideological rejection of the welfare state, which had become pronounced in the 1980s. This saw the party give up its insistence on tax cuts, and redirecting tax reductions to low- and middle-income groups rather than the wealthy. The party’s image became softer—campaign posters, in a lighter shade of blue compared to the traditional conservative navy, put across the message that the Moderates had changed. Now, the party argued that the welfare state had to be defended rather than dismantled: the New Moderates were ‘the new worker’s party’36 that supported collective bargaining and the Swedish Model.

I made no defense of the poll, I attacked your understanding. The poll is straight forward and doesn’t need my defense. They took a poll, saw a correlation and pointed it out. How RawStory presents their story is up to RawStory, not the people who took a poll and presented their findings. If you like you can attack the artilcle’s author and RawStory, I’m pretty sure that they won’t give a rats arse what you think.

I’ll concede you the point that I have put too much emphasis on immigration, although it was still an important factor in 2006. As for the Swedish people favoring a scale back of the welfare state – no.

http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/4/585.full

After the Moderates’ achieved only 15.3% of the vote in the 2002 election, having campaigned for welfare cutbacks, the deregulation of the labour market and tax cuts for the rich,35 Reinfeldt shifted the party to the centre ground when he assumed the leadership in 2003. Re-labelling the party the ‘New Moderates’ (Nya Moderaterna), Reinfeldt forced a reconsideration of its ideological rejection of the welfare state, which had become pronounced in the 1980s. This saw the party give up its insistence on tax cuts, and redirecting tax reductions to low- and middle-income groups rather than the wealthy. The party’s image became softer—campaign posters, in a lighter shade of blue compared to the traditional conservative navy, put across the message that the Moderates had changed. Now, the party argued that the welfare state had to be defended rather than dismantled: the New Moderates were ‘the new worker’s party’36 that supported collective bargaining and the Swedish Model.

Yes, the Swedes have retained a conservative leadership, but they are refusing to deal with their equivalent of Tea Baggers.

Yes, yes, yes, class warfare…….keep the red and blue team divided…..very good…..

Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record,

The above are facts, but we were sold the story that huge massive tax breaks for the weathiest in our nation will benefit us, that is what we were told. We were also told it will bring lots of money to run the government.

Reagan, Bush Jr and Republicans are serial liars and are telling the same lies to this very day and pushing these lies as a reason to vote Republicans.

This country is fast heading toward a nation like Haiti, where the have and have nots are obvious. What good does it do that 90 per cent of our nation should live in poverty? What good does that do?

And the lawyers they aren’t in it for the law, they are in it for the money and the laws will be heavily skewed in favor of the wealthiest in this nation. The laws will have indeterminate meanings. One day it will be one thing because you are poor and you lose, on another day it will mean another thning because he is rich and he wins. Just like it was before the American Revolution. And that is how the tea baggers wants it.

Its not red and blue when it comes to class distinction, with the poor becoming poorer and the middle class becoming poorer

You should not be. The Swedes are beautiful people, and a lot of that is due to their lifestyle. They are very progressive, healthy, and intelligent. Ever notice that, generally speaking, Red States have uglier people than Blue States? There is a reason for that. Fatted cattle are not attractive as animals or people. Yes, I know not all Swedes are blonde, but most are.

no worries, soon everyone will be poor when the dollar collapses….well, except for those who were smart enough to buy some gold now while the dollar still buys you anything.

I can only understand the polling/research from what is presented in the article, and it seems to have little in common with the headlines and subsequent promotion of this “find” elsewhere. In fact, the methodology of the research is highly suspect based on the big ideological assumptions presented in the article, but at this stage it’s hard to determine if it’s the writer’s ideological assumption about the research, or (of course, worse) ideological assumptions by the researchers themselves about people’s attitudes towards the income gap.

To put it as simplistically as I can, not everybody is worked up about that gap the same way — so if you find a Republican or conservative who says that the gap should be smaller, it does not mean the same thing at all as a liberal or Democrat saying it should be smaller, because it is not the size of the gap that is in question, but it’s relevance.

I used to be a liberal, myself, and back then I would have wanted liberal government to force readjustment. Now I’m not so liberal, and I believe (rightly or wrongly) the gap isn’t as consequential as we make it out to be — you don’t need to argue with me on that point, I’m just clarifying the mistake the research seems to make. I would still say, if asked, that the gap is too large, but does that mean that I want government to step in and “fix” it? At this point, no. The disparity between the poor and Bill Gates is really not as consequential as the disparity between the poor and the *middle class*, which has more to do with how the prices of goods and services are set.

Not everybody agrees with my blase attitude towards the income gap, of course — but the researchers seem to have simply assumed that everybody is in ideological agreement with *them*. So they concentrate on getting numbers on something that is very easy for everybody to agree on — that the gap between rich and poor is great — and mangled it into meaning something altogether different, which is how we arrive at this fantabulously broad support for a questionable position.

As for the book you link to, I don’t know — its assertions seem to conflict with fact. I’ve been simply following press accounts, whereas your book seems to be railing for a particular political point-of-view, pushing some of the same kind of fallacies as the research in this article.

“center-right Reinfelt”:

Here I assume you’re using American assumptions about what is left and right politically. Particularly since ‘centre-right’ in Sweden — or anywhere else in Europe for that matter — would be considered radical left in this country [US].

I think you’re being a tad disingenuous with your comment. Judging by the right-wing shit storm surrounding President Obama’s election, this country’s majority [including the majority of its media] is completely ignorant when it comes to political philosophies and the actual policies of political parties in Europe.

Calling Obama a “socialist” makes Americans sound ludicrously naïve… and as a Brit resident of New York, I’m embarrassed for them.

More to the point, it is highly unlikely to even be a consideration. The moment most Americans hear the words, ‘Sweden’ and ‘Social Democracy’ in the same sentence in reference to changing the American political landscape, it’s akin to calling their mother a ‘c*nt’. It’s just not done.

And you’re right, a very small nation, that however has an enviously high standard of living and quality of life – and a not so envious problem with suicides.

Those long, long winter nights can wear a person down…

You assume wrong. My Swedish news sources are necessarily mostly European or Swedish. The two links I posted before, for example: The Local is Swedish news in English, based in Stockholm, and the second link is to the UK’s Spectator.

http://www.thelocal.se/29126/20100920/

“Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s centre-right bloc won 49.2 percent of votes…”

http://www.spectator.co.uk/politics/all/6296398/swedish-conservatives-bucked-the-recession-by-lowering-taxes-and-won-reelection.thtml

“Never in modern Swedish history has a conservative prime minister been spared this fate.”

90% of Americans couldn’t find Scandinavia on a map. Exactly who were they polling for this?

I’m an American, but I recognize that, in political matters, the vast, VAST majority of this country is functionally retarded.

It’s precisely this ridiculous income disparity that the GOP is fighting SO HARD to preserve.

“…1/30th the population of the U.S. (Los Angeles alone has more people)”

Not quite. Los Angeles: 4,010,000; Sweden: 9,080,000.

If you had said Los Angeles COUNTY, then you’d be right [11,000,000]. But you didn’t. Picky I know… but since your post is full of interesting facts [seriously], I thought I’d clarify for people that don’t know.

A more equal comparison would be New York CITY: pop. 8,400,000 [July 2009 census bureau est.] and New York Metro area pop. 22,200,000 [same census] — making it nearly 2.5 times larger than Sweden, and with a claimed 800 languages spoken here a tad more diverse.

Heh, in fact, I just find this interesting tidbit in Reinfeldt’s Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinfeldt

“As one of Europe’s new conservative leaders, Reinfeldt is seen as an important ally of the United States. His party is a member of the conservative International Democrat Union, together with the Republican Party in the United States and the British Conservative Party, even though its policies are somewhat more liberal than these.”

That pretty much sums it up. Nobody, but nobody is making a “carbon copy” argument. Reinfeldt is completely different from any American conservative. Reinfeldt believes in reforming welfare instead of elminating it — just like the liberal Newt Gingri– oops, wait a minute. Bad example. Reinfeldt believes we should do more to combat Global Warming, just like the liberal Newt Gin– uh, I’ll have to get back to you on that. :D

Heh, in fact, I just find this interesting tidbit in Reinfeldt’s Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinfeldt

“As one of Europe’s new conservative leaders, Reinfeldt is seen as an important ally of the United States. His party is a member of the conservative International Democrat Union, together with the Republican Party in the United States and the British Conservative Party, even though its policies are somewhat more liberal than these.”

That pretty much sums it up. Nobody, but nobody is making a “carbon copy” argument. Reinfeldt is completely different from any American conservative. Reinfeldt believes in reforming welfare instead of elminating it — just like the liberal Newt Gingri– oops, wait a minute. Bad example. Reinfeldt believes we should do more to combat Global Warming, just like the liberal Newt Gin– uh, I’ll have to get back to you on that. :D

Not quite totally accurate. True, Sweden was nominally neutral but they were in reality, coerced into selling iron ore [and other minerals] to the Nazis under the not-so-veiled threat that the Wermacht would simply roll over the border from occupied Norway.

If I was in the government of Sweden, having witnessed the blitzkreig of Poland and others, I’d want to avoid the devastation to my country too. It was clear too that the British government knew this trade was going on under coercion.

Plus, the Nazis were getting their iron ore, coal, etc, from more than one source [Poland].

In an aside, Sweden was actually quite helpful in quietly repatriating allied airmen to Britain who bailed over occupied Scandinavia. They weren’t pivotal in the northern European theatre, but they did help, just like Switzerland did [occasionally].

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf

There’s their methodology, it’s quite reasonable and the ideology of the researchers isn’t present, unless you find ideological assumptions in the results. I can’t see any. The only evidence of ideology I could possibly assume is that one of the researchers is from Harvard Business School, and I don’t assume that to involve liberal (U.S.) ideology.

From the PDF – We used Sweden’s income rather than wealth distribution because it provided a clearer contrast to the equal and United States wealth distributions; while more equal than the United States’ wealth distribution, Sweden’s wealth distribution is still extremely top heavy.

Remembering that in the poll Sweden was not mentioned, yet the answers of Americans matched closely to the Swedish numbers. Had Sweden been mentioned I’d bet a tenner that the results would have been different, because then the ideology of the pollees would be in play. How many U.S. conservatives would agree with Swedish numbers if they knew the numbers were Swedish?

the researchers seem to have simply assumed that everybody is in ideological agreement with *them*.

No. They have asked people to take part in a poll and then presented the results.

As for the book you link to

The “book” I linked to is not a book, it’s a journal, a peer reviewed journal. Your writing shows that you are well educated, you should know the difference between a journal and The Spectator (which does have a very blatant ideological bent) or headlines.

Not everybody agrees with my blase attitude towards the income gap

Indeed. Especially those on the “sucks for you” end of the gap and, it seems, the conservatives who took the poll without their ideology getting in the way of them being honest.

How interesting. And polls show that 33% of Americans believe Obama has raised, rather than lowered, their taxes. It’s odd that people don’t really have much connection to what is actually happening to them and rely on the press to shape their reality, a press that is so in the tank for Republicans, that they don’t understand WHY we don’t have this kind of income distribution…

Maybe Americans can’t find Sweden on a map, but they do know about Swedes.
The people who make those nice cars must be doing something right.

We have states in this country that are similar to Sweden in many ways. Comparing them to sweden is appropriate.

Swedes are human beings just like us, they are not three-handed monsters with different breeding patterns. CarsonFire above goes out of his way to argue that they are just like us.

All of your puffery is based on “might have”, you have nothing to back up the claims in your second paragraph, except your attitude.

It’s only class warfare because some of us want to fight back, as opposed to laying down and getting kicked in the head by the rich… the way it is now.

So, people, duped for years, are finally beginning to see that the American experiment in democracy has failed, miserably. Time to scrap the experiment and build a new government model.
But, will the corporate elitist oligarchy permit this to happen. No way, Hosea.

Several years ago I first saw an article on how income distribution, as measured by the Gini coefficient or index (Gini coefficient X 100 = Gini Index), impacted the overall quality of life in a society. The Gini coefficient is a measure of the inequality of a distribution, a value of 0 expressing total equality and a value of 1 maximal inequality. So if income was equally divided among everyone in the US the Gini coefficient would be 0 and if all the income went to just one person the coefficient would be 1. You will never get a coefficient of 0 or 1 but ideally you want to be somewhere in the lower half.

Wikipedia lists Gini indices for the United States at various times, based on US Census Bureau figures.

1929: 45.0 (estimated)
1947: 37.6 (estimated)
1967: 39.7 (first year reported)
1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)
1970: 39.4
1980: 40.3
1990: 42.8
2000: 46.2
2005: 46.9
2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)
2007: 46.3
2008: 46.69

In 2005 the AVERAGE Gini index for the EU was estimated at 31 and for Sweden it was 23. By comparison, back in 2000 Mexico had a Gini index of 51.87 (it’s now back closer to the current US value) and Canada has an index of roughly 32. Where would you prefer to live, in a high Gini country or a low one?

But 51%+ of Americans think Evolution is only a theory. Problem is that 100% of these people don’t understand the meaning of ‘theory’.

Unfortunately, articles like these won’t be read by the huge swath of people who still believe in the neoliberal mantra of market liberalization. While they might agree that the Swedish model is better in principle they are being led down the path of destruction by those who want to maintain the status quo – one where the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are slowly sliding downhill. Any doubts about the evils of income inequality can be cleared up here:
http://theendisalwaysnear.blogspot.com/2010/09/lessons-on-killing-golden-goose.html

Your inability to see the ideological problem in this research may be matched by that of the researchers. That’s what an assumption *is*, unchecked belief. Review this paragraph:

‘The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. “Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States…”‘

This “awareness gap” is the difference of opinion that is simply dismissed by the researchers and the writer here as the result of “erroneous beliefs”. How many polls do you know about that come to conclusions based on assumptions of about the respondent’s erroneous beliefs?

And it’s kind of odd hearing this championed as some kind of exercise in the elimination of ideology from the argument, when every aspect of the promotion of this is clearly ideological. That is, while the researchers’ mistake may have been an honest one, this is clearly being flogged with the wild claims — “92 percent prefer Swedish model to US model when given a choice” — for ideological reasons. The headline is clearly dishonest, and it’s deliberately dishonest in order to promote sharp ideological opinion. I mean, I just can’t see how you can argue that.

Doop de doop de doop…. lovely weather, what’s up? Wow, cool. Yeah, the Aussie Rules grand final was pretty amazing. Hey, would you happen to know of any reports that show that the average American voter has knowledge of the growing income gap in the U.S?

The first theory of economics is: anything will sell at the right price. Now that you have that axiom, go back and read your post. think about it. Hint: you can’t eat gold. Then review the principles of the gold standard and the history of money. In other words, I strongly disagree with your post.

Interesting information. Thank you.

“… just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth.”

That’s the whole story in a nutshell for me. Not only are Americans generally ignorant dumb asses, we’re DELUSIONAL ignorant dumb asses. The bullshit we’re being force fed is that we don’t want to tax the rich more because in America anyone can become rich and I don’t want to be taxed more when I get rich. Besides, if I know the rich are taxed more I won’t aspire to become rich. That’s what Americans believe.

Why? Why do the poor and “middle” classes believe that malarkey? Because they attach the word “Socialism” to it? What a God damned stinking crock of shit. And most Americans take it hook, line, and sinker.

Sometimes I wonder how stupid this nation can be…

no, you won’t be able to eat gold, but with gold you will be able to eat. gold has intrinsic value unlike fiat currency. gold has proven itself as the perfect medium of exchange, it is fairly rare, it is portable, it is malleable, etc…gold has been used throughout human history as a stable form of currency and it will continue to do so when the federal reserve collapses the only thing giving the greenback any value: confidence in it. But hey, you seem to know it all, so don’t buy any gold, I hear there are lots of treasuries for sale…..

Americans prefer corporate rule..that’s how they vote and keep voting.

Time for Carlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk

There is a very easy way to accomplish less disparity; eliminate the elitist, crony capitalism at the top and the regulation and subsidy that feeds it, and allow freer markets to prevail.

Instead, we add even more regulation, preserving the hierarchical status quo and institute even more redistribution policies. Then we wonder why there are so many externalities and the economy grows ever more stagnant.

Just how long do we need to keep that up before we realize that big government married to big business is the problem with no solutions? Too big to fail? For who? At least the billionaires didn’t lose any money.

I’d also like to see the questions posed a little more honestly. Airely’s research is famous for arriving at the outcome he wants but absent the practicality or more likely answer if the entirety of facts were presented.

….soundbites to the low info voter over the last 30+ years has created and maintained the disconnect. Engineered behind the scenes years ago and continued today. Forget the truth, forget the negative effects and get them to vote for corporate interests!

I’m inclined to believe this is parody, since you espouse the exact policies that have caused this wealth disparity as the solution to it. And you simply can’t be that ignorant or deluded. I hope…

This hasn’t been a democracy….it is corporate ruled since Reagan. Get the corps out of govt with total campaign finance reform – no contributions except by REGISTERED VOTERS. No issue advertising except by candidates. No lobbyists, no nothing except registered voters. THEN go after new regs for finance, energy, health/PhRma, education, defense – without the influence of special interests.

oh christ…a Glenn Beck follower. Nothing to see here.

Please do not insult my intelligence, you could not get me to “follow” beck if you paid me.

What Americans are programmed to think:

Tax cuts for the rich = relief
Tax cuts for the poor = socialism, marxism, class warfare etc…

In the hospital called USA the healthiest patients are helped the most. Because as G. Carlin said “they own this fucking place”.

Ask the average tea-bagger why Sweden is so good, and here is their answer (if you can get them to speak candidly): There are fewer ‘minorities’…

Sweden is consistently noted to be one of the happiest country’s in the world. Cradle to grave health care for everyone. And free education through college and beyond as far as you want to go to a PHD. For as much education as you want. Large taxes pay for all of this. And they claim to be content. They have more than enough despite the taxes, because so much is free, they don’t need as high a salary as we do.

We call it socialist here. But in all other industrialized country’s we are the only ones with no cradle to grave health care. And country’s look with awe at what we did these last two years. I have a friend in Canada that wonders why any country would be stupid enough to hate and vilify a leader trying to give them what so many country’s have. And they don’t consider themselves as socialists. She is not the first one to wonder.

Dems, get in touch with your Inner Marx (W.W.K.D.) and drive a frikking truck through the Bush “tax cuts.” Won’t happen, but….ah well.

My favorite old radical poster:

http://cominganarchy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/pyramid_of_capitalist_system.png

Note that the survey is 5 years old. What do you suppose the results of a similar survey would be today after the ignoramus “Tea Party” movement? They’d probably say we shouldn’t tax the rich ANYTHING because they believe the right-wingnut talking points that the rich support the economy and create new jobs. Same old trickle-down economics from the Regan years.

Please, please rich people, send us your crumbs to feed our kids. Please give us minimum wage part-time jobs with no health care flipping greasy burgers that are so cheap that it’s the only thing us poor folk can afford to eat … and fills our bodies with high concentrations of fat that make us fat and send us to our early graves. Thank you. Thank you. A billion times over.

and how is obama’s healthcare plan anything like cradle to grave benefits. It forces you to buy junk insurance from big for profit insurers and hospitals with no mandate for employers to continue to help subsidize this and has no caps on what those insurers can charge whose costs already ran $12-15,000 a year for a family of four and there are no caps on how hi this can go. Do you think those “subsidies” ae going to be enough to actauly let you buy insurance in 2015 when it takes effect. Give me Canada’s system any day for which they pay far less and have better outcomes. But that is not what the hated and vilified Obama gave us. In fact the house dems tell us if he had wanted that they could have given him that instead of the waterdowned give away to big pharma and insurers we got. Gee why would we ever hate that outcome.

It is a mind set For 30 years this country has been led to believe GREED IS GOOD came out of the REGAN days We have to have it NOW ! and CHEAP ! That what makes President Obama so good He gets IT ! Starts with EDUCATION ! Why do you think the Thug party down on PUBLIC SCHOOL Started with REGAN DUMB us down flooded this country with DRUGS (arms for cocain) Out of small sound bites manage to make evreybody think GOVERMENT BAD . Look at CALIFORNIA the CON ceritives got a hold of that state. And now Meg whittman trying to buy her GOVERNSHIP what gets me they all hate goverment why do they want to be a part of goverment certaintly not for we the people. Sorry people Sweeden is THE HAPPIST PLACE ON EARTH (for a reason)

We should be so lucky

Paraphrasing: Most Americans want more equitable wealth distribution, therefore all Americans want to live in a socialist state.

Okay, let me point out the error of logic here, by way of a simple analogy:

Most Americans don’t like being poked in the ass with a sharp stick, therefore all Americans want more lubrication when they bend over and take it from the government.

Wealth inequality is caused by government inequality. Government inequality is caused by fraud, graft, deceit and corruption of public servants and officials; in our case a collusion between large corporations and our ostensibly elected officials. In other words, the root of the problem is corporatism, otherwise known as fascism. In days of yore it was called feudalism.

Different epoch, same douchebags.

Look to “your” government, People. After all, it is yours. It is not BPs nor Halliburtons nor McDonald’s nor WalMarts, but yours. The problem is our government. It is broken.

If it cannot be fixed by electing different people–and we tried that, it didn’t work–then we have the right to abolish it and start a new one. It is our choice to make. The government has no say in the matter. Government has no rights. The People have rights. Government power is derived from the consent of the governed (The People). And if you decide you no longer like what your government is doing with the power you lent it then you simply take it back by withdrawing consent. Because the power is yours to give and yours to taketh away. Without your consent, the government is powerless. In fact, it doesn’t even exist. It just disappears.

I do not consent.

Please join me.

The US, the land of the free and home of the brave is one of the most oppressive nations in the world. In a land that is supposed to be free, the only information we are we are allowed is filtered and selected by the powers that be. This is a far cry from freedom. There is inequality in just about every aspect of our lives, from home ownership, to jobs, promotions for those who are lucky to have jobs, salaries, cost of goods and services, and a host of creature comforts. Even in our daily lives we are spied on, our emails, telephones our movements etc. Some of us are allowed to say and do whatever we choose to do good or bad, while others have to toe the line or face consequences. Income and wealth disparity will NEVER change at least not in our lifetime, because greed and dishonesty are so ingrained that the guilty ones think that it is their right. Humility, integrity, kindness, humanness, generosity and other such attributes are foreign to the majority of wealthy individuals, so the US adopting the Swedish model is more than a stretch.This article failed to point one important facor that there is extremely high taxation in Sweden, and instituting this type of governance in the USA will never be popular with Wall Street, teabaggers, rethuglicans, and Washington lawmakers. Let us not forget that merely thinking about wealthy distribution is offensive and far removed from capitalism, the bedrock of the US financial industry. Guess that becoming as happy and carefree as the Swedes will never be within reach of the citizens of the good old US of A as income disrtibution is not happening here.

Malarchey? And here I thought it was a Plutarchey, Patriarchey, or Oligarchey!

The problems are two-fold at minimum. Most Americans don’t understand just how little they have and how much the richest 20 percent have. Even in terms of percentages it is hard to encapsulate the numbers in terms that most Americans clearly understand. In the last thirty years, productivity has risen much more 55 percent yet the people in the bottom half of the income scale have actually seen their incomes drop and those just above them have seen little or no gain. It is only those in the top twenty percent who have seen any gain in income from the gigantic productivity increases and they have gotten almost all of it and more. Their incomes on average have increased over 250 percent.

The second aspect of this problem is what to do about it. We can talk about taxes or government regulations that might make a difference, but the only mechanism historically that we have had for a more equitable distribution of wealth at the point of the paychecks were the unions. When union membership was at its highest income disparity was at its lowest. Sometime between 1950 and today the word “union” became more demonized and despised than the word “liberal”! I say this as someone who lives in what is commonly considered a “blue state” and have watched so called “fiscally conservative Democrats” continually rant against unions and union backed candidates and candidates who back unions lose elections to “union bashing” Democrats. Unions once represented nearly 40 percent of the workforce that number has shrunk to less than 9 percent of the work force today. Obama promised card check and so far that promise, like so many others, has gone unfulfilled.

The actions necessary to produce the radical restructuring of society that a reduction of incomes inequality are difficult to imagine. Even author Thomas Geoghegan, who recently published a book explaining how the German economy operates and why it has been so successful, called “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life” (2010) punts when it comes to the task of explaining how America might institute not just a more equitable income distribution but a manufacturing sector that gives workers 50% of the composition on corporate boards and voting rights on business decisions including access to business files and business plans, like the Germans have. Indeed to understand just how powerless the American worker is one needs to read this book.

What is apparent from reading several books on this subject and beginning to formulate some of my own views on it is we need a complete revision of the American capitalist system and more importantly, we need a complete revision of our ideology regarding taxes, which is in its general content remarkably similar today to that propounded by Southerners before the Civil War. We pay less in taxes than nearly all industrialized nations and we get much, much less for it. The Germans and French pay about 2 to 4 percent more on average in taxation but they get a massive amount of social products for their money, including, maternity leave even for husbands, nanny care, health care, free education, long term unemployment, welfare and much more generous retirement benefits. In addition, they have much more say in their government generally and are much more interested because they have much greater participation in politics generally. In addition, Germans have 5 weeks of paid vacation and 27 paid holidays a year, including such religious holidays as the Ascension. While Christian America still is constricted to Christmas.

The health care debate shows how hard any changes in America can be. Single payer health care reform as originally envisioned during Obama’s campaign might have been a step in the appropriate direction, but as it was passed the possibility of it aiding substantively with the redistribution of wealth, is now deemed nebulous by skeptics such as myself. We will continue to spend over 17 percent of GDP on health care while large numbers will remain uninsured while Germany with one of the more expensive systems spends less than 11 percent of GDP on insuring everyone.

As Geoghagen notes the German model probably is too complex to be easily transferred to other societies, although some aspects of it have recently been adopted by the European Union. Perhaps the most provocative aspect of his narrative is that Generals in the American occupation Army set up the German workers co-operatives. They set them up especially to make sure that power wasn’t concentrated in the Federal Government. But we don’t see any small government types suggesting that workers in American have more power do we as a counter weight to government power do we. That’s because they want to pretend that big government is the tool of business not the people in any discernible way. You won’t see the Tea Party or such leaders like Dick Army doing anything that actually empowers people at the point of their paycheck. Instead of getting a bigger share of the pie, they want to lower taxes while shifting more of the burden of living to the individual and shifting more of the profit to the rich.

In addition, Geoghagen suggests that America’s problem is structural and associated with capital flows. In the UK and the USA capital flows, which follow the money, have consistently moved from productive industries to the financial services sector, (that is, from supporting and creating jobs that were typically union jobs to supporting and creating non-union jobs) or our obsession with “services”–what Rudolf Hilferding termed “finance capital” in the his 1910 book on the phenomenon.

Without going deeper into the intricacies of all this, it is enough to already suggest that most people don’t have a clue about what it will take to change the current situation. Perhaps the first thing that needs to be changed is the mindset that says “I refuse to be taxed to help anyone else, even if it will help me just as much.” This resistance to government at the individual level prevents government, even when other governments have shown it is capable, from making social programs affordable because economies of scale, is eschewed in America, even in the new health care legislation, economies of scale in purchasing and dispensing were left out of the bill. The American ideology is killing us, and until people agree to adopt a different ideology and stop being influenced by the fear of “socialism” and the rancid aftertaste of racism and elitism the chances of any substantive changes are very slim.

We will remain as we are with the rich getting stupendously richer and the rest of the population living in extreme denial, just so black, latino/latina and similar non-white “others,” who have been demonized for generations as shiftless and lazy don’t get any social services paid for by the white America taxpayers.

So if people want to take their government in the direction indicated by the research it’s their government so take it away?Fortunately, even in the Swedish model you’d be empowered to register your objections, and we’d be empowered to indicate our opinion that the final 6 letters of your screen name tell the story. Not sure where the research report mentioned “government inequality”.Maybe that stick in your analogy would prove useful for probing the source of that statement.Otherwise quite a nice rant.Little off the beam,but quite a nice little rant.

I liked your ‘comment’, liked it enough to click the little ‘liked’ button. Much of what you said makes sense and as a fellow skeptic, I agree with in regard to the United States current predicament.

However, your comment was too long. I’m wondering if there’s a facility within RawStory to offer a blog posting and turn your comment into an actual article. That way — for me at least — it’d hopefully get some editing to eliminate the filler, correct the typos and reduce the whole to a powerful and concise piece.

This is constructive criticism and I hope you take it as intended. And I hope RawStory’s editors note that there are some commenters reading their site that can contribute articles and not just throwaway comments.

How about tax cuts for the MIDDLE CLASS, the number one driver for both ends?

show the ‘let them eat cake’ crowd the guilotine! but here’s an even better solution… hire a group of the very best hackers on earth and have them destroy the global economic and banking structure so that not a single electronic dollar remains. this would immediately end the empire(s) and we could take advantage of the chaos to overthrow every government, disarm and demilitarize the planet; rein in the corporations and… level the playing field worldwide by giving everyone $1 milllion to spend. got it? among other truly great things about this is that such goons as the 4 walton heirs to the walmart fotune would suddenly no longer be worth $130 billion but would have to live on the same million as everyone else.

Hmm, nice idea… I think.

However, don’t you think that the American experience of holding office comes part and parcel with corruption since, oh, I don’t know, the founding fathers fellow politicians, since the impeachment process was initiated at the convention in Philadelphia of 1787, as the constitutional remedy for corrupt politicians? A highly enlightened position to take, but nevertheless a necessary one.

Look at New York as an example of the first large city on the continent and you’ll see corruption writ large. From the 1860s through the 1870s, Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall Democratic machine enrolled Irish immigrants [loyal to Tammany politicians] as citizens, so they could vote in elections. And vote for the same corrupt politicians.

It got so bad they didn’t bother hiding it. As Albert Paine, author and biographer commented, on the construction cost of the New York County Courthouse. It begun in 1861, grew to nearly $13 million (about $178 million in today’s dollars). “A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $4.9 million today) for one month’s work in a building with very little woodwork … a plasterer got $133,187 ($1.82 million) for two days’ work”.Take Los Angeles from the turn of the century up to WWII… once considered a “wild west” town where anything goes, particularly with the LAPD. Some would argue little has changed.

Take Chicago… corrupt police and politicians in league with mobsters and bootleggers. Some would argue — a la Blagojevich — it’s the same now.

Wouldn’t you say this kind of corruption is endemic in American society from the earliest days of the country?

how can americans not be aware of the income gap? all you have to do is look at your paycheck every week and see what you earn compared to the people at the very top. i doubt this is accurate thats all the cable nes shows have been talking about is the income disparity. only a person who wishes to remainwith their head in the sand thinks this

Going to be very interesting to find out who really rules the roost when people decide that capitalism is too corrupt to be in power

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Excellent post.

The upshot of it is, there ain’t no way to fix our current inequitable situation that is palatable to small-minded, short-sighted Americans … or corporate America or our paid-for politicians.

Most Americans wouldn’t read enough to educate themselves and fewer still would understand what they just read. If it can’t be said in 25 words or less with nothing larger than 2-syllable words AND a catchy tag line, it ain’t gonna get attention.

We’re sunk. The only possibility for systemic change is, in my humble opinion, total and utter collapse of the current corrupt system which would require rebuilding from the bottom up at a much more local and small scale.

Dems, take this and drive a truck thru the Bush tax cuts with it
(won’t happen but should)

We already know the answer to that. It’s called Homeland Security and the National Security State.

Americans may want wealth distribution like Sweden’s, but not if it means they have to give up hating gays and minorities.

Oh, OK. I should just accept it then.

I restore my consent.

Let the idiocy resume.

Quick!

Roll out the next economic -ism!

Phew – that buys us another couple centuries…

I disagree with just about everything you write.

You want more taxes and more government.

The reason the Unions became irrelevant was not because of Reagan, it was because of the Unions. If workers really wanted to keep them, they would have fought back. The fact is, most people were tired of the politics, and the lack of any tangible benefit. Those that whine for the days when the Union was strong probably just don’t want to work hard and earn a good salary to take care of themselves. They want this benefit and that, that they want the employer to pay for, and they want the government to hold the employer’s money or business hostage if they don’t. I can see some employees being able to negotiate certain benefits as part of their salary, but they shouldn’t just expect it as a given. Why do you think wages are down? Who the hell can afford to pay good salaries with all the god damn overhead for every employee hired? Damn, is it that hard to see the crux of the matter? There is no free ride! Someone has to pay for it, and ultimately it is You. One way or another, all these “free” benefits come back to haunt you in terms of the dollars they suck out of your pocket, and all along the way, every middle man involved that you insert raises the costs another 10-50%. Yet your remedy is more middle men, and more dollars away from your pocket.

I believe in the philosophy that if you’re worth it, the company you work for will strive to keep you employed there. Good workers are hard to find. If not, don’t take it personally. Either suck it up and do the best job you can or go find another job if you don’t think your talents are being properly recognized. No one is forcing anyone to work anywhere (except for slave runners). Better yet, start your own business or trade. Never work for anyone else ever again and experience true freedom (at least where the rat race is concerned).

Now, obviously we have a problem with oligarchy in this country. Trying to fix this with higher taxes, ostensibly on this oligarchy, is foolish and counterproductive. First of all, the oligarchy is never going to institute taxes on themselves. They’ll add enough specific loopholes to ensure that all of their investments remain safe (heck, they may even pass themselves a general waiver), then make sure the tax hits the bottom 20% of wealth holders. So more money will flow from the many to the few.

After all this time and you still haven’t figured out the game! Shame on you.

The solution is less government. Even no government. If everyone agrees to follow the Golden Rule and be nice to each other, we can live just fine with a skeleton government that simply records titles and things like that, assembles juries, and takes care of general bullshit. For those who don’t want to follow the simple rules that Mom taught us, that’s what guns are for. Those types will evolve away quickly. I firmly believe Darwin’s Origin of Species theory applies here.

Let’s start looking at solutions towards simplicity. All I see are people stuck in the same hamster wheel, adding more and more complexity to the system, spinning the wheel faster and faster, until WHHOOOOPSSS!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avTzrwNwMNk&feature=related

Time to get off the wheel.

well said. this class warfare has got to end. What people do not realize is that the only way it is possible for these uber-rich monopolies/corporations to exist is through government subsidies and lobbying. And what do they cry for when the disparity reaches crisis levels? more government intervention, the very thing that enabled these slimy corporations to rape us in the first place!

For some reason they see government regulators as the good guys and big corporations/the super rich as the bad guys, when the reality is that they work together to screw us! Less gov intervention in the free market means these corporations would not be able to lobby and bribe their way into monopolies, etc.

If you’re reading this you’re probably wealthier that one half of the planet. Envy. greed and the sense of entitlement is part of the problem. Stop whinning and get on with your life.

How can americans not be aware? really? You must have the idea that americans aren’t stupid. How do you think the republicans get elected? The rich don’t have the numbers to elect them. The republicans pray on people’s stupidity, bigotry and hate. OMG keep gov out of our daily lives unless it has to do with Marrige, or religion then they want the government to actually change the constitution in order to force people to live the way they want them too. Sadly as long as the majority in this country is willing to be bigots, haters and be stupid republicans will continue to win elections.

The study just shows that Americans want something in return for their tax dollars. If the annual expenditure amounted to any type of substantial public works then the income inequality would barely be noticed. Yet, year after year the average American pays thousands of dollars of their hard earned money to the government and get very little in return. Health care is poor, Education is just as bad, national infrastructure is at the breaking point. What do we get for our money paid? Endless foreign wars against a vague enemy and dead brothers/sisters/husbands/wives/daughters. Americans aren’t tired of capitalism, they’re tired of a government who thinks tax money is their play thing.

Don’t like government? Move to Mogadishu.

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It is the rich who won’t listen. Maybe we need to bring back the French Revolution. Maybe a basket of bloody heads from a Guillotine will get their attention.

I understand your criticism. My effort as very rough and should be not just a post but an but an essay, maybe even a book. I was working on a something like a still rough revision when I was (rudely) interrupted so rather than waiting for hours to return to it or not, I just posted it in its rough, wordy, half finished form. It represents a very rough sketch of some ideas that I have been trying to conceptualize for a couple of years or so now, ever since I read an essay entitled “Culture and Finance Capital” in Fredric Jameson’s small book, “The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998″ (1998), in which he discusses some of the problems I alluded to here in conjunction with his readings of Giovanni Arrighi’s “The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Time (1994); Robert Fitch’s “The Assassination of New York” (1993); the aforementioned “Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development” (1910); and Georg Simmel’s “The Philosophy of Money” (1900); and several other lengthy and equally obscure texts.

What Jameson did well, was frame the issue in terms that were totally new for me and convince me that I had been thinking about these things in ways that were unproductive and wrong-headed. He changed my perspective on how I understood what was happening not just in terms of jobs being outsourced, which, as he explained, was not a cause but a symptom and result of a much more serious problem: the movement of investors from productive capital to finance capital and how this phenomenon was the foundation for a different way of thinking about our culture; a way that most popular discussions by economists and pundits were missing or avoiding. Jameson wrote his analysis during Clinton’s second term when most people were all agog about the changes instituted by Robert Rubin and others and some people thought, forgetting completely “the roaring twenties,” that the DOW would continue to rise uninterrupted forever.

Acquiring and reading these texts mentioned by Jameson represented an investment of money and time and was a lot of information to hold in my mind while continuing to read about the current state of the American economy and how we got here in a less rarefied, less abstract, if more popular, vocabulary. I realize better than anyone that I have not done this topic justice in any real sense, but I had to start somewhere.

Think of my effort in terms of Samuel Johnson’s infamous dog who walked on its hind legs–it’s not that I did it so badly, but that I did it at all.

So your answer to America’s problem (though I’m not sure you even agreed we have a problem to begin with) is anarchy? Huh? Really? Or as you say, everyone just follows the Golden Rule (them that gots the gold makes the rules). I think you’ve way oversimplified the situation we face and are more than a little naive with solutions.

You know absolutely nothing about unions or why they disappeared. If you think they are irrelevant then get behind card check and stop bashing unions. Let people actually vote without corporate interference to have or maintain unions. Don’t stack the deck against unions engage in dismantling unions through plant closings, movements to the South where unions are anathema and doing everything possible to destroy and demonize unions. Then when people can freely choose whether to be in a union or not without the threat of losing their jobs if they choose a union we will find out just how irrelevant unions are. In other words, put your money where your mouth is!

But I do agree with your name–you have hit the nail on the head with it!

Thanks for the useless ad hominem. You could have backed up the points you tried to make, but you didn’t. You just got angry and vomited a bunch of nonesense.

Workers can certainly have the right to form unions as long as employers have the right to choose not to negotiate with them.

The employer has rights, too. Without the employer, there are no employees. Stop thinking everyone and everything is a big corporation hell bent on enslaving workers. There are regular folks out here who make their own living running their own business. We treat employees fairly. Stop demonizing employers, or go start your own business and make it Union friendly.

You are railing against the oligarchy. I’m not your enemy. Aim your words appropriately.

I think you’re so used to uselessly complex solutions that you can’t see how simply things can be fixed if you eliminate all the nonsense. You comprehended nothing of what I said. You’re still trapped in the game. Snap out of it.

I normally wouldn’t bother responding to a comment that was obviously intended to be puerile, but in this case I will, just to point out that Mogadishu was doing fine until the US came along and turned it into a war zone.

You’re like the Raw Story equivalent of the Rush Limbaugh “dittohead”.

Why is there not an “Don’t Like” button?

How about just stop paying taxes? Why don’t we vote ourselves in a law that abolishes the IRS and institutes an apportioned tax, as required by the Constitution?

We can do that, you know. We are The People.

I wonder if this means anything to Americans? Here’s a devastating critique of Sweden’s impoverishing “Third Way” written in 2002 by economist William Anderson:

“According to a recent study, however, the cat is out of the bag. Relative to household in the United States, Swedish family income is considerably less. In fact, the study concludes, average income in Sweden is less than average income for black Americans, which comprise the lowest-income socioeconomic group in this country.

The research came from the Swedish Institute of Trade, which, according to Reuters, “compared official U.S. and Swedish statistics on household income as well as gross domestic product, private consumption and retail spending per capita between 1980 and 1999.”

The study used “fixed prices and purchasing power parity adjusted data,” and found that “the median household income in Sweden at the end of the 1990s was the equivalent of $26,800, compared with a median of $39,400 for U.S. households.” Furthermore, the study points out that Swedish productivity has fallen rapidly relative to per capital productivity in the USA.”

So, not only is their average household income nothing to rave about, but there average per-capita income is lousy too. Now I understand that household income can be an unreliable measure of wealth since the numbers are skewed toward larger families. Regardless, disparities still surface on the per-capita level. Swedish per-capita income is only 80% of that in the United States(http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10462). Maybe that’s because Sweden generally has one of the worst performing economies in Europe. According to a 2005 piece in The Brussels Journal, Sweden was unable to create any new jobs between 1981 and 2003(http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/510). In 1995, Sweden was in 17th place in terms of economic growth among OECD countries and only managed to crawl up to the 14th place spot a decade later.(http://www.res.org.uk/society/mediabriefings/pdfs/1996/November/Henreksen.pdf).

But what about their enviously low unemployment rate? It’s likely a crock too. Apparently(as of 2006), it was closer to 15% than the reported 5.5%(http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/scandinavian-irony-socialism-meets-liberalization/)

Furthermore, Sweden can’t possibly be prosperous when “one-fifth of the workforce stays home” on a daily basis(http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/scandinavian-irony-socialism-meets-liberalization/). What’s most ironic is though is the fact that as America drifts closer to the Swedish model, the Swedes are trying to liberalize their economy. In the past few years, Sweden has been reducing the scope of their bureaucracy by getting rid of burdensome taxes like the “wealth” tax and the inheritance tax. Also, Sweden’s financial markets, telecom, electricity, road transport, and taxi services have all been recently deregulated. Even some welfare benefits have been reduced. All I can say, is that we are behind the curve yet again and should be looking to liberalize and deregulate like our Swedish friends instead of further hampering and regulating our markets.

Come on, it’s just rediculous to compare household incomes to a country with so much more singles.

I’ll focus on what is actually correct in your comment (maybe because I probably share a lot of you ideological positions):

1. Yes, american income per capita is higher, but you also work more (Less vacation, longer hours) The problem to focus on are the higher taxes. We are however lowering them now as you say

2. Yes, the unemployment statistics is in my opinion a bit polished. (Hardly three times the reported though) This is mostly because there are a lot of activities that you can be put into which are not actual jobs, but keep you from being counted as unemployed.
.
3. For some years we have had a system were sick leave was almost encouraged. This of course affected total number of working hours negatively. This problem has now been adressed.

This is not a time to call the Swedish economy one of the weaker in Europe, did it slip by you how we handled the financial crash recently?

I’m not sure that is wise either…seems to me be a way to add to the nationaldebt.

That means they want 95% of everyone poor and that they think they’ll be in the 5% that are not.

Taxes is just a distraction. Americans deserve more for their hard work.

Uh US unemployment is counted as people who are on unemployment which runs out after a time. Also various states only count people as unemployed if they were at an occupation for a year and had lost their jobs. If they started a new job and had less then a year then lost it they are not counted as unemployed.

People are on odd jobs are not counted as employed either. There are massive problems with how the US calcuates unemployment while other countries count retired, disabled, people who have given up looking for work as unemployed and even mention who they count.

You may want to bother to do some fact checking.

Numerous things in your little rant are known to be false.

Sweden counts disabled people as unemployed while the US doesn’t. They also count people who have given up looking for work which the US doesn’t. Real US unemployment has always been figured to be two to three times higher then reported.

Sweden has many benefit programs that mean they don’t pay for things like college, also their workers get paid more including paid vacations so they live better then people in the US who don’t get paid vacations, don’t get numerous benefits that make work more desirable in Sweden then in the US.

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm
Oh Sweden btw has over 9 million people yet it’s army used to have a requirement to have a million people back during the cold war era. Sweden spends a lot of money on it’s military and the country is considered one of the most fortified countries in the world it’s just cloaked.

Also Sweden is the 2nd most competitive economy in the world. Your economic data is incorrect.

Income disparity has nothing to do with tax rates. That is just a distraction from the real issue. If everyones taxes were lowered it would not change the the skewed distribution at all. It would probably make it worse. The current model is not sustainable in the long run.

Taxes and discussion of them have become the red herring of American discourse. Wages, real income, for the middle class in the US have not risen. The middle class has been pushed to buy on credit rather than on increased rewards for their hard work. The increased income has gone to the ruling/CEO class in the form of 300-500 times the wages of the people who actually do the work. It is time for all “worker” to lay down their “to do” lists from “management” and say “do it your self”. Of course most upper and even mid-level managers are incapable of actually producing anything (I have a lot of work experience and this is too true, sadly) so business/commerce will stop until the actual workers go back to work. After Katrina it wasn’t the poobahs who were exhorted to get back to the disaster and get things going again, it was the clerks, the lower level workers, the public safety workers, etc. who were needed. Fuck the top 2%, we don’t need them and they aren’t worth what they steal.

Why do you think withholding taxes were begun? So you pay up front..

Wow. That’s a lot of wrong to fit inside one blog post.

I own a business. I have 40 employees. None of them live up to the qualities you rhapsodize, none of them are irreplaceable. None of them are in a position to negotiate anything with me that I don’t choose to negotiate. That’s the simple fact of it. If they get a bonus, it’s because I choose to give it. If they get a pay raise, it’s because I choose to give it. And that’s what you jingoistic, anti-government ideologues don’t get. Labor has no power in the market place. I don’t know what you do for a living but I do know one thing, you’re replaceable. Unless we as a society choose to make labor valuable, it won’t be.

There is a meme out there that given a little education, anyone can become a bio-tech entrepreneur. That’s simply not the case. Most people do not have the intelligence or the personality to compete in that arena. For several generations we had people whose livelihood consisted of 30 years on an assembly line. They were unionized, had health care and pensions and lived in nice neighborhoods. They bought a new car every few years, raised healthy kids and went to PTA meetings. And then we got the bright idea that we could get that labor cheaper if we bought it in Mexico, Asia, wherever. And those people lost their jobs. Our tax base eroded. Our schools disintegrated. Our social safety net collapsed. People flocked to religion and became gun nuts and elected idiots to high office. And for what, so you can get a t-shirt at Old Navy for six bucks? As a society, we need to be diverse enough in our industry to allow anyone to become a productive member. If we are completely Darwinian, will have three strata, the fabulously wealthy, the highly educated and trained professionals who support them, and the poor. And we will destroy this country; we’re well on the way today.

Unquestionably, capitalism has been a powerful force for good. The notion that it shouldn’t be regulated and controlled (think about it, without government control, we have no FDA, no EPA, no OSHA, no building inspectors, etc. and of course, let’s not forget about the excesses of Enron, Goldman/Lehman/AIG, BP, et al) The rigid, ideological adherence to free market capitalism is as pernicious as rigid adherence to any ideology. Our government is us and we need to use it to craft a society that allows its best to soar and keeps its weakest afloat. I can’t imagine living in the society you describe in your post.

Regarding Mogadishu, what are you reading that had Somalia doing “just fine” at any time in the last 50 years, shit, what are you reading that had Somalia doing “just fine” at any time?

I agree with you that the US unemployment rate is at least double the official rate, but many people still love using the lower, more dishonest numbers. The Swedish unemployment numbers are no different.

Still, in 2008, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics compared per-capita GDP among 17 different countries and found the US to be at the number two spot at $46,800 per capita. Sweden on the other hand was in 8th place at $36,900 per capita(http://www.bls.gov/fls/flsgdp.pdf). The same report also compared per-capita GDP for those that were employed. The US maintained its 2nd place spot at $97,100 whereas Sweden slipped to the 9th spot with $74,700. That’s certainly a significant difference.

Here’s a good historical and statistical report coming from the Swedish free market think tank simply called Timbro (http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665891.pdf) describing the Swedish economic model:

“Allowing, on top of this, for the fiscal effects, an even more disturbing picture emerges.
Real net wages in Sweden have stagnated since 1975, but wage costs (gross wages plus
payroll taxes and National Insurance contributions) have grown steadily, by more than 50
per cent. This means that the entire post-1975 productivity increase has been eaten up by
the public sector through imposts on labour. Adding to this the effects of income and value added taxation, meant that by 1990 the absurd situation had been reached of the most productive, best-paid workers retaining, after all direct and indirect taxes, only 21 out of every 100 newly earned kronor.”

In reality, all of Sweden’s economic prosperity came before the arrival of their welfare state in the 1970s. From 1860-1910, real hourly earnings improved 25% with each passing decade and the life expectancy increased from 55 to 67 years. Per-capita growth was improving by 3.26% a year between the years 1948 and 1973, which was the highest growth rate in Swedish history. Comparable prosperity didn’t return(although it hasn’t fully returned) until their “Great Depression” in the 1990s. The improved performance since the crash has been illustrative of a natural rebound effect that occurs once bad investments are purged. This rebound has recently been coupled with the gradual disassembly of their bureaucracy to further help spur economic progress(http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-new-sweden/).

Finally, it’s odd that you mention Sweden’s military in such a light considering their not having participated in a war since 1809. In fact, Sweden has enjoyed longer peacetime than any other country, including Switzerland(http://mises.org/daily/2259). Their 200 year avoidance of war has offset their armament accumulations. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have been appropriated from the citizens’ private capital to help fund the War on Terror?

I agree with you that the US unemployment rate is at least double the official rate, but many people still love using the lower, more dishonest numbers. The Swedish unemployment numbers are no different.

Still, in 2008, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics compared per-capita GDP among 17 different countries and found the US to be at the number two spot at $46,800 per capita. Sweden on the other hand was in 8th place at $36,900 per capita(http://www.bls.gov/fls/flsgdp.pdf). The same report also compared per-capita GDP for those that were employed. The US maintained its 2nd place spot at $97,100 whereas Sweden slipped to the 9th spot with $74,700. That’s certainly a significant difference.

Here’s a good historical and statistical report coming from the Swedish free market think tank simply called Timbro (http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665891.pdf) describing the Swedish economic model:

“Allowing, on top of this, for the fiscal effects, an even more disturbing picture emerges.
Real net wages in Sweden have stagnated since 1975, but wage costs (gross wages plus
payroll taxes and National Insurance contributions) have grown steadily, by more than 50
per cent. This means that the entire post-1975 productivity increase has been eaten up by
the public sector through imposts on labour. Adding to this the effects of income and value added taxation, meant that by 1990 the absurd situation had been reached of the most productive, best-paid workers retaining, after all direct and indirect taxes, only 21 out of every 100 newly earned kronor.

In reality, all of Sweden’s economic prosperity came before the arrival of their welfare state in the 1970s. From 1860-1910, real hourly earnings improved 25% with each passing decade and the life expectancy increased from 55 to 67 years. Per-capita growth was improving by 3.26% a year between the years 1948 and 1973, which was the highest growth rate in Swedish history. Comparable prosperity didn’t return(although it hasn’t fully returned) until their “Great Depression” in the 1990s. The improved performance since the crash has been illustrative of a natural rebound effect that occurs once bad investments are purged. This rebound has recently been coupled with the gradual disassembly of their bureaucracy to further help spur economic progress(http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-new-sweden/).

Finally, it’s odd that you mention Sweden’s military in such a light considering their not having participated in a war since 1809. In fact, Sweden has enjoyed longer peacetime than any other country, including Switzerland(http://mises.org/daily/2259). Their 200 year avoidance of war has offset their armament accumulations. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have been appropriated from the citizens’ private capital to help fund the War on Terror?

Yeah thats right smart man, spend all your money on gold and when the crooks destroy public confidence in gold by mixing it with semi precious metals and selling it for full price at least you’ll have something pretty to look at while you starve to death. In a wild west economy investing in a single commodity is stupid, even Ron Paul acknowleges that.

Still waiting for leadership that helps the middle class. The poor have already found their man, but I have not.

They still have seent troops on peace keeping missions. They still have an army and during the Cold War they did spend a lot of money on defense. They were considered capable of raisinga million troops in time of war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Armed_Forces
Sweden like other countries had a real estate bubble. The economic collapse in the US affected many other countries as did the Great Depression.

Who says I have all my money in gold? And you are confusing gold with fiat dollars, remember gold has intrinsic value, it does not need “public confidence” to be worth something. Also, one should make sure they are buying their gold from a reputable and trusted source, always do your research! I am not trying to be antagonistic with you, we all have our opinions, and mine is that those who trade their fiat dollars for commodities will not be wiped out when the fed destroys the dollar.

Sure, that’s all fine and good but Sweden’s latest $6.1 billion military expenditure at 1.3%GDP pales to America’s $663 billion expenditure at 4.3% GDP. Thankfully, America has been productive enough that our ungodly defense spending hasn’t crippled us in terms of GDP. I can only imagine how better off we’d likely be right now if we hadn’t squandered trillions on a futile war(not to mention the civil liberties we’ve sacrificed along the way too). I can also imagine how much better off Sweden would be if they weren’t so insistent on diverting so many resources(labor and capital goods) to purposeless defense spending.

Also, all bubbles are caused by government banking policies. In other words, currency debasement is what ultimately destroys economies, not free trade. Coin clipping helped destroy the Roman denarius and Rome itself. The early 17th century Tulipmania was fueled by coin clipping to help fund the Thirty Years War. The American Continental Congress’ “Continental” currency was created to help pay for the Revolutionary War but it wasn’t backed by tangible assets and was printed wildly to the point that hyperinflation ensued(by 1790, a Continental was only worth 1% of its original face value)There has never been a bust that was not initiated by a government’s credit expansion.

Yeah, let’s go back to the quasi-communist statist models that did oh soooooo well in the last century. Get over yourself. Capitalism is not the issue here.

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Sigh… Another person convinced that Obama is giving money to the “undeserving.” He cut your taxes, FYI.

Interesting because I just saw Ralph Nader in Stockholm and he was comparing the Swedish benefits versus the American benefits. He was amazing. I live in Sweden. I make good money and pay lots of taxes, and I get a lot back, so I’m happy:-)

igrobertson,

Just as this HBS study shows that American’s are uniformed and dissilusioned about the state of wealth distribution in the US you show an incredible level of ignorant and uniformed/uneducated view of Sweden as well.

To set a few records straight:

(0) Notable rankings

Sweden is the 5th highest “Quality of life” country in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index
Sweden is the 2nd most competitive country in the world: http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm

Sweden is the 5th most “lievable” country in the world: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778562.html
Sweden is the 4th least corrupt country in the world: http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/2007-transparency-international-corruption-perceptions.html

Sweden has the smallest gender gap in the world: http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Gender%20Gap/index.htm
Sweden is the 2nd best country in the world to be a child: http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf
Sweden is the most developed country in the world of information communication and technology: http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm

Sweden is the 4th greenest country in the world: http://epi.yale.edu/Countries
Sweden has the 4th most innovative economy in the world: http://www.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=eiu_Cisco_Innovation_Transforming_the_way_business&rf=0

Sweden is the 10th safest and most peaceful contry in the world: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi-data/#/2010/scor

(1) Real GDP (% YoY)

_____________ 2009____ 2010____ 2011
Sweden_______ -4.40____ 2.35____ 2.50
Euro zone____ -3.90____ 1.20____ 1.50
US___________ -2.40____ 3.00____ 3.00
UK___________ -4.80____ 1.20____ 2.10

Comment: Sweden has been hit as hard as the Euro-zone and UK by the crisis as can be seen in the 2009 number, but is expected to rebound rather quickly and stongly and is in a better ‘bounce back’ position than the Euro-zone and the UK, but lagging the US in strenght. This strong ‘bounce back’ position is much due to the country’s strong public finances and sucessful export sector. (see below)

(2) CPI/Inflation (% YoY)

_____________ 2009____ 2010____ 2011
Sweden_______ -0.28____ 1.20____ 2.30
Euro zone____ 0.29____ 1.30____ 1.50
US___________ -0.35____ 2.15____ 2.00
UK___________ 2.18____ 2.50____ 1.60

Comment: Inflation picture looks rather subdued with a modest pick up but still within Riksbanken’s (the central bank of Sweden) target range. Higher expected inflation in Sweden an US compared to Euro-zone and the UK as growth prospects looks better in Sweden and US, and overshots US in 2011 probably as wage preassure will increase in Sweden faster, due to unions and the in general less flexible labour market. However, with recent reforms inflation tendencies in Sweden are not as bad as they have been in previous cycles.

(3) Unemployment (%)

_____________ 2009____ 2010____ 2011
Sweden_______ 8.30____ 9.70____ 9.65
Euro zone____ 9.42____ 10.40____ 10.50
US___________ 9.30____ 9.80____ 9.10
UK___________ 7.52____ 8.10____ 7.90

Comment: High across the board. Way too high and HAS to come down, unless these economises will crumble. Sweden, which has a history of being laggard in pushing down unemployment, again due to less flexible labour market, despite better growh and public finances (see below) picture. Again, recent reforms, should push unemployment down faster than in previous cycles and Sweden is well positioned to benefit in growth pick up in both Asia, Germany and Eastern Europe with its strong export industry well positioned in these markets.

(4) Fiscal budget balance as % of GDP

_____________ 2009____ 2010____ 2011
Sweden_______ -2.10____ -3.30____ -2.70
Euro zone____ -2.00____ -6.90____ -6.10
US___________ -10.20____ -9.53____ -7.25
UK___________ -11.60____ -11.90____ -9.40

Comment: Public finances are by far the healthiest in Sweden, and by far the worst in the UK, partly due to limited bail out cost of banks, auto industry and other sectors in Sweden. This will translate to a HUGE competitve edge in the years ahead when the battered economies (especially US and UK and some Euro members) are struggling to rebuild.

(5) External/current acct balance (% of GDP)

_____________ 2009____ 2010____ 2011
Sweden_______ 7.30____ 7.00____ 7.99
Euro zone____ -0.70____ -0.50____ -0.15
US___________ 0.00____ -3.30____ -3.40
UK___________ -1.75____ -2.00____ -1.20

Comment: Sweden’s export industry is well and alive and is as ever a source of strenght for the country. With a strong reading of the current account surplus of 7-8% this is a source of strong support of the Krona. As a matter of fact, Sweden, is the only country/area in the list that has a current account surplus, and it is expected to/will increase as the global economy picks up. This is also good news for anyone who is hoping for a stronger Krona mid to long term.

(6) GDP per Capita (Constant prices in USD)

_____________ Latest reported
Sweden_______ 32,258
US___________ 37,867
UK___________ 28,955

Comment: Sweden’s GDP per capita is 85% of the US, and given the number of hours worked are significantly higher (Swedes work on average 7 hours/day and have 5-6 weeks of holiday + public holidays). Add to this that the averages Swede does not have to spend any/much money on providing high quality education and healthcare – just examples of wellfare benefits accesible by all and virtually free/paid for through taxes.

“no, you won’t be able to eat gold, but with gold you will be able to eat.”

If you have gold and I have food, I’m going to laugh at you, wait for you to starve, and take your gold.

It seems that the US has a homogeneous view on this is. It’s compatible with the old saw, “Everyone thinks that they are middle class.”
There were some oil company high level flunkies that liked the fact they were castigated so that they could do the right thing. This involved pollution. They didn’t want to do what they did but it made more profits which was the corporate goal, not necessarily their personal ones. When confronted they caved in with relief.
What we need is for the governments to PROMOTE good behavior. A start is to realize that altruism is a basic need for both parties involved. We don’t object to sharing IF it promotes long term results which works for both.
Income inequality doesn’t.
I understand the rich in some ways.
I don’t want poor kids to starve but I don’t want to support every one of them. I don’t mind helping someone who is down but they also need to want to get up. Essentially, I don’t want to be a sucker but I do want to help.
I think that I don’t need more of everything. I do want some things, you don’t have to give them to me. I am willing to earn them. If I end up busted, I would like to get food stamps to take back to my garage apartment (not my current circumstances) and have a chance to recover .
I do not want to bail out the banksters. I believe that they deserve a short rope. I do not want to cause harm to the intel mafia members but I don’t see why we think they DO ANYTHING for us.
I’m tired of the stupidity of everyone due to the massive non/dis-information campaigns we endure with MSM.
I took a driver’s class once and I learned this one thing which actually was of value. There are three kinds of drivers, Children (who do what they want without forethought), Parents (who feel they need rule everyone else) and adults.
Adults just want the system to work for everybody. Let’s be adults.

Omission of Data that would give some balance to you argument.
How is it the Nanny state has better Economic model then Citizen.
Socialism and Free Markets are Apple and Oranges, please keep
your Oranges. :)

My son finished his MBA and has good credentials (CEO/consultant, etc.). It took over a year for him to find a decent job.
He collected Unemployment for some time and finally began working in a supermarket bakery just to do something prior to his improved circumstances.
He said he was tired of smiling while offering cookies to children to fulfill part of his professional responsibilities. It affected him badly and has caused harm in multiple ways to him and his family to have dropped that far while following a path which EVERYBODY said was the way to go.

Garbage.

You confirm some of my points, then launch into a tirade against my larger point that misses entirely.

Then you finally come back to a position: that we need government to keep our weakest afloat, and to provide regulatory agencies. I say you are full of shit and have had your eyes closed and ears shut for the past 30 years as the government became so onerous as to be useless in its present form. Not only do we need less regulation, we need no regulation, at least where government is concerned.

You don’t even realize that the replacement for government is already here, and it’s called the Internet.

That’s OK, most people don’t understand this yet either. But for those who do, our impatience in waiting for the rest of you lunkheads to catch up is becoming unbearable. Please hurry your personal evolution.

With “Nanny state” I have to assume that you refer to the US with it’s state owned banking and automobile sector, with a Government snooping on its citizens and with a population force fed a biased and selective news and information flow of the state of the nation (as this HBS study is showing so many Americans are dissilutioned and illinformed about) and occasionaly, but only occasionaly, some twisted and spun story about the world outside the Fortress, only desinged to keep the state of delusion intact. With the sad result that so many Americans has surrendered their own capacity to think, reflect and form their own opinions with a critical mindset.

Or are you arguing that the better economic model is one which can not afford to provide millions of its citizens with basic health care, quality education and equal and just opprtunity to earn a decent living and live a dignified and happy life?

And you clearly have no clue what so ever what you are talking about, in regards to socialism (have you heard of social democracy and do you understand the difference?) or free markets (like a state owned banking and automotive sector and a heavily state subsidised energy and transportation sectors?).

The Swedish economic model is one where free markets play a dominant role in all sectors of the economy where the size of the market is large enough promote fair compeition that benefits the consumers. Even in healthcare, wellfare and educational sectors (in which Government through social benefits schemes is dominant) their are private alternatives to ensure healthy competiton and quality of service.

You, James Weatherford, are just one of those dumb asses that gives Americans a bad name overseas. But keep forcefeeding yourself oranges and Fox “news”. And enjoy your Tea Party and keep your ignoranceand delusion well and alive!

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Garbage? Hmmm, a strong argument there. Perhaps you could take a breath and do me a favor and explain how the internet replaces government. The fact that our government is currently “useless” — an observation I agree with — does not justify an argument that government has no value. Certainly, I would like to believe that our government and all of its various functions are an unnecessary expense, and that if we simply deregulate markets and allow the magic of the internet to flourish, that the regulatory, economic, military, entitlement (do we just cutoff people on Social Security and Medicare, or how do we deal with that?) and emergency response functions (not to mention road repair and education, etc.) will magically occur. I mean, shit, the internet’s free. Who wouldn’t like that idea? But I’m not seeing it. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a “lunkhead” but to me the very fact that our economic and social decay runs parallel with our political decay would suggest a possible correlation. The fact that so many of our major accomplishments as a nation — our continuing unity (Civil War), our national parks, rural electrification, our interstate highway system, our University and public education systems, hydroelectric power, significant roles in two world wars, nuclear power, man on the moon, blah, blah, blah, are all accomplishments made by Americans working together through the vehicle of government. And now as we enter a period of serious industrial competition from the rest of the world along with climate threats, water and energy shortages, overpopulation, and all the rest, to leave the future of our country, hell the future of our species and our planet, to the vagaries of the market place seems, well, naïve.

And just to be clear, when the Bush tax cuts expire, my taxes will go up (without complaint). Which suggests that I compete at least reasonably well in the market place. And as a competitor in the market place, I’ve learned a couple of things. One of the basics is that capital is amoral. Capital doesn’t do the right thing (except maybe Ben & Jerry’s, but I suspect that’s just marketing). Capital protects and promotes capital and that’s all it does. Capital will without conscience kill, maim and bankrupt. It does it all the time. It’s called doing business. Back to my list, Enron, Goldman/Lehman/AIG, the entire tobacco industry (and this from a cigar smoker!), Exon, BP and fellow travelers, United Health Care, etc., are you arguing that you would prefer that the idiots who operate these companies have zero checks and balances? Are you serious? Remember, if they piss you off, you can’t vote them out of office. I think the better idea would be to start doing the hard work of being an American and a patriot, the same hard work done for us by our forebears, the same hard work that has seen this country through many bitter times in the past, the hard work of re-imagining and reconstructing the greatest experiment in justice and human rights the world has ever known. Or we can throw it all away and hope that we get our needs met through the internet.

I guess you’ve got a decision to make.

Steve

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Sweden does not have a high suicide rate. That’s a myth that originated in the US in the 50′s.

So many of the comments here are just further examples of what the Harvard researchers proved in the first place – that most Americans are seriously out of touch with reality.

LoL, the survey question was phrased, “Which would you rather have– A Swedish model or what you’ve got now?” and 92% chose the Swedish “model” :-)

Martin: Wrong. Interesting you make things up out of the blue like that only to make a story fit your bias. Sometimes reality is good for you.

“For the first task, we created three unlabeled pie charts of wealth distributions, one of which depicted a perfectly equal distribution of wealth. Unbeknownst to respondents, a second distribution reflected the wealth distribution in the United States; in order to create a distribution with a level of inequality that clearly fell in between these two charts, we constructed a third pie chart from the income distribution of Sweden (Figure 1).2 We presented respondents with the three pair-wise combinations of these pie charts (in random order) and asked them to choose which nation they would rather join given a “Rawls constraint” for determining a just society.”

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf

But I guess you, as so many other posters here are only confirming the HBS researchers conclusions, that your ignorance of the state of reality lead you to act/opine against your self-interest from a rational point of view.

“Given the consensus among disparate groups on the gap between an ideal distribution of wealth and the actual level of wealth inequality, why don’t more Americans – especially those with low income – advocate for greater redistribution of wealth? First, our results demonstrate that Americans appear to drastically underestimate the current level of wealth inequality, suggesting they may simply be unaware of the gap. Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States (Benabou & Ok, 2001; Charles & Hurst, 2003; Keister, 2005), beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth. Third, despite the fact that conservatives and liberals in our sample agree that the current level of inequality far from ideal, public disagreements about the causes of that inequality may drown out this consensus (Alesina & Angeletos, 2005; Piketty, 1995). Finally, and more broadly, Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes towards economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences (Bartels, 2005; Fong, 2001), suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap.”

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[...] US vs Sweden [...]

[...] US vs Sweden [...]

[...] in the form of assets, homes or cash? Do you really think this is a good thing for our country? Study: Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden | Raw Story Americans Underestimate U.S. Wealth Inequality : [...]

[...]   Knowing how delusional Americans are, it should be no surprise that a recent poll found ignorance concerning the level of wealth inequality in the U.S.: Study: Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden [...]

[...] only do Americans know nothing about how income is distributed in the US, but also that they’d prefer the Swedish model of income distribution to the American one. Those dirty commie bastards, thinkin’ that them dirty Swedes have it better [...]

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