On 12/29/2018 at 4:19 AM, Nigel Garvie said:

Agreed, I don't think anyone can confidently predict the outcome from this crazy mess. Whatever happens, the fact that it has already caused huge economic and social damage to the country is in my opinion beyond doubt.

  Good undertanding of the current Brexit chaos.  We can now proceed  eagerley , into the next stage of chaos.

          Progress , at last .

15 minutes ago, oilinki said:

Socialism works rather well in Nordic countries, would you agree? It simply means that the wealth of the nation is shared rather fairly between it's people. There are no super rich and no super poor people. 

 

Socialism is an ideology where a country acts as one large village. One person or a family needs help, others help the family until it can do things on it's own.

 

Functional socialism is a trampoline. It allows people to try to do things, they wouldn't dear to try otherwise (this also means capitalism, doing your own business). If things go well, that's good or all the people (as we pay high taxes). If things doesn't go too well.. well, then we'll have to help the guy in need.

 

Venezuela doesn't have functional socialism. It has authoritarian dictatorship, quite like Russia. 

 

You can think many functions in your country, which are based on socialism. The police force, the fire department, NHS. 

 

Military is more of communism. Brothers in arms. One for all, all for one. Unity of the community. That's probably the purest society there is, but it always comes with authoritarian leaders and hierarchy. 

 

You really ought to do a little research before you post rubbish like that.

 

Yes it works well in Finland and how many of them are socialists?

 

https://successstory.com/lists/richest-people-in-finland

 

and Norway

 

https://www.investmenteurope.net/investmenteurope/news/3713627/norway’-400-richest-published-kapital

 

And Sweden

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedes_by_net_worth

7 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

You really ought to do a little research before you post rubbish like that.

 

Yes it works well in Finland and how many of them are socialists?

 

https://successstory.com/lists/richest-people-in-finland

 

and Norway

 

https://www.investmenteurope.net/investmenteurope/news/3713627/norway’-400-richest-published-kapital

 

And Sweden

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedes_by_net_worth

Gini index. Note the difference between Venezuela and Nordic countries.

 

Yes, of course all of us have few very rich people. That however doesn't mean that we are don't share the wealth more fairly towards others. This also means that more money goes to the infrastructure, which benefits all, than in countries where wealth is distributed less fairly.

 

This is data from 2014. It would be interesting to see how it has shifted since then. If you have any newer sources, please post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/media/File:2014_Gini_Index_World_Map,_income_inequality_distribution_by_country_per_World_Bank.svg

31 minutes ago, billd766 said:

 

You really ought to do a little research before you post rubbish like that.

 

Yes it works well in Finland and how many of them are socialists?

 

https://successstory.com/lists/richest-people-in-finland

 

and Norway

 

https://www.investmenteurope.net/investmenteurope/news/3713627/norway’-400-richest-published-kapital

 

And Sweden

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedes_by_net_worth

on the Norway list,

1-2-3-7-8-9 are real doers, they are great makers of future Norway

 

some of them actually vote Labour

 

number 1 lives in London with his 2 daughters - in line to take over the coffers

 

3 minutes ago, melvinmelvin said:

on the Norway list,

1-2-3-7-8-9 are real doers, they are great makers of future Norway

 

some of them actually vote Labour

 

number 1 lives in London with his 2 daughters - in line to take over the coffers

 

On the Finnish list, the top spots were allocated to the people who run 100 year old family business. When you own a lot of factories and service providers, the business value or as they say in the USA "value of a person", is naturally huge. 

 

Without people working for these factories and therefore producing value for the businesses, the value of these factories is far less - only the then empty shells of factories and production lines. 

 

Both the owners and the workers want a fair balance where salaries for the workers and profits for the owners are in fair equilibrium. 

 

That's how people in Nordic countries generally work together, in fair balance. 

3 hours ago, billd766 said:

 

You really ought to do a little research before you post rubbish like that.

 

Yes it works well in Finland and how many of them are socialists?

 

 

This is an interesting tangent covered in the last few posts, and not really about Corbyn's Election ambition, but none the worse for that, Corbyn sees himself as a Socialist indeed. 

 

The problem with the Socialism word is that it means different things to different people. Northern Europeans by and large (Including Scots) just see it as a fair way to run a country, with a social safety net that allows us to feel that we are basically decent people, and not a devil take the hindmost society, like Thatcher's for example. Responsible Capitalism and moderate Socialism work well together and are my no means mutually exclusive. In the US Socialists are seen as being in league with the devil, and the ruling political philosophy appears to be that no one should suffer without giving another American the opportunity to exploit their misfortune.

 

The Gini thing is an eye opener, but it does depend how you measure the gap of course. I thought 1,2 and 3 for inequality were Thailand, India, and Russia at the moment. It is often claimed that US and UK are by far the most unequal societies in the Western world. I wish the information was clearer.