Quote: (01-01-2013 05:53 PM)Emancipator Wrote:
Quote: (01-01-2013 05:13 PM)BIGINJAPAN Wrote:
I think Norway is up there because of its no debt, and its super sovereign wealth fund. Fucking thing is like $600,000,000,000. For a tiny country. Give them 20 more years and none of those mother fuckers will ever have to work again because they will all be living off interest. That fund was started in the early 90's and they built it up to that much wealth in 20 years.
Its a shame other countries rich in resources can't accomplish that, ie Canada. More specifically Alberta. Oil around a 100 bucks a barrel for most of 2012 and they are running a deficit of over 3 billion.
I think it would be too hard for Canada to accomplish such a thing, especially when compared to Norway. Norway is a country of under 5 million, with a largely homogeneous culture and population, whereas here in Canada, "Multiculturalism" is an official policy.
It would be hard to implement it in just one province, Quebec managed to have a good welfare state during the Quiet Revolution, but their separatist sentiments led to straining their economy. Alberta did have the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund which received a large chunk of Oil royalties with the goal being similar to Norway's fund. But damn politicians stopped sending off royalties to the fund and it has been largely drained in the past two decades. Alberta and Saskatchewan, more so the latter, both early on pointed to them developing as a welfare state taking advantage of their resource wealth. The 80's sort of ended that unfortunately.
Canada DID do things like this. The bones such as a the CPP, Canada Medicare, Underwritten Tuition (school was not free here but the Govt gave you loans which limited the ability for costs to soar), etc. All of these things were started because at 25-35 million people whom only live on 0.8% of the land surface and abundant resources Canada could easily provide top-notch services for its citizens. The same was true in Australia as well I believe.
What happen in Canada was three events.
1st. To join the G7 Canada had to give up its sovereign right to create its own currency and adopted the private model of the 'Private Central Bank' which was a requirement of all the members in the G7. In those days Canada freely developed infrastructure and funded exploration projects for Gas and Oil. Even in the parts I am from the Crown Corporation invented the first Commercial Fibre Optic network and Cable Video on Demand. The research behind this was all done in 70's with abundant debt-free money.
2nd. Mulroney sold of key Canadian industries for next to nothing in a fire sale to raise cash, and would end up bankrupting the Country in due time (see point 3).
3rd. Canada was basically bankrupt in the early 1990's it had to take out loans from the IMF and with that had to adopt IMF "recovery packages" which lead to the squeezing, gutting, or capping of key Government services. The University one is a key example before then The Govt gave Student loans out at next to no interest. After the IMF conditions Students Loans where now dealt via Private Banks (RBC, CIBC, BMO, etc), the Govt only now could act as middle-man and keep interest payments of the students shoulders. After this move Tuition costs have gone up in a lot of places 120%.
Canada has by some estimates 100 Trillion in untapped wealth in Canada and yet we still run deficits each year. This was all done by design to limit the sovereign power and ability to leverage these resources for the nations good. Instead private bankers leech and get most of the benefits of Canadian resources not Canadian citizens. In Canada we scrape of Royalties while in Norway they develop and sell all of their key resources.
The Norway model is ideal. It is far from socialism making sure your citizens have a good education, good health, and to make sure they have a full stomach is an investment in the future. A nations top resources are its citizens and if they do not invest in their citizens properly they end up going into the shitter in due time.
Quote: (01-01-2013 07:05 PM)ManAbout Wrote:
Quote: (01-01-2013 06:59 PM)Vicious Wrote:
So even if we assume that the US has suffered from" rampant socialism" the main culprits to this would thus be... Republicans!
I would have thought that the sarcasm in my post would have been obvious, given that the top ten countries in that list are hated socialist utopias that the US is afraid of turning into.
The USA is probably the most Socialist nation on earth. Look how much money the pump in to subsidize select areas of the economy. Everything from the roads to the military is heavily fronted and propped up by the Government. The difference is very little goes to benefiting the people, most of it just goes to benefit the extreme wealth .5%.