[ExI] Belief in Market Efficiency

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/2/4 painlord2k at libero.it <painlord2k at libero.it>:

> Look at Sweden, it went from an income of 130% in respect of the mean (100%)
> income of the more developed countries in 1950 to the current 80%. They lost
> 1/3 of their wealth in the process of enacting their welfare state and it is
> dubious they will be able to keep their current status.
> This is happening in all Europe (and in the USA, Canada) in a way or in
> another.

This is a terrible example to use in support of your case. The Swedish
Social Democratic Party, based on a non-revolutionary revision of
Marxism, has been almost continuously in power for most of the
twentieth century, and has overseen Sweden's elevation in that time
from one of the poorest nations in Europe to one of the richest. In
fact, in the post-war period other countries saw how successful the
Swedish model was and tried to copy it, as a result experiencing a
relative increase in living standards so that they were closer to
Sweden's. It is true that there was a financial crisis in the early
nineties characterised by an asset price bubble, which led to bank
nationalisation, devaluation of the currency, and a moderate decrease
in spending and taxation - mostly at the hands of the aforementioned
Social Democratic party. Since then, economic growth in Sweden has
consistently been among the highest in Europe, and per capita GDP is
in the top ten in the world, higher than in the US
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita).
There is no rule in socialism that says the government must
continuously ramp up spending every year, the path that it seems the
US has taken since Reagan's presidency.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou