That argument would be more convincing if the original poster were not comparing SF to Sweden -- the country that essentially solved those problems in 1950-1980 by having the most liberal and progressive government in the world.
Sick and tired of non-swedes thinking socialists ever did anything for this country. Nothing was "solved" by politics in those years. Quite the opposite, our lean and mean economy faltered until the socialists became fiscally conservative in the 90s.
The sheer arrogance of Swedes dissing US is also annoying. Go to our new ghettos and inspect the great equity the progressives have established lately.
American progressives tend to use Sweden (and Scandanavia generally) as models of how socialism can succeed, probably unaware that Sweden is a highly-productive, modern, capitalist society with capiitalist notions free trade, property rights, investment freedom, and monetary policy. In other words, socialists love to provide examples of socialism that are pretty devoid of actual socialism. Sweden has high taxes and a generous welfare regime, but it doesn't have government ownership of the means of production ("socialism"). That's why Sweden is Sweden.
And Sweden's economic growth rate stagnated after it adopted large social welfare programs in the 1970s, and only somewhat recovered when it instituted market reforms in the late 90s and 2000s, including reductions in social benefits and income tax cuts.
Fiscally conservative ... socialism?? Huh. Now that would be something I'd like to see tried here in the United States!
Waste is treated like an benign abstraction here: an assumed given of "bureaucratic overhead" that nothing can be done about except occasionally talk and handwave over.
I'd guess you'd need to have a culture that encourages whistleblowing, snitches, and oversight to make fiscally conservative socialism work. Such a culture doesn't exist here in the US.
Um, hm? I don't know how you get to "Fiscally conservative socialism". The previous comment said that the socialists (ie. Social Democrats, Left Party - previously known as The Communist Party) became somewhat fiscally conservative.
There is a huge difference in how you would read that. The interpretation that you should go for is "The socialist being less socialist for the time being". In other words, they toned it down briefly. They're certainly at it again now.
That said, there is plenty of waste and bureaucratic excess/largess in Sweden - and it's very hand-wavy and nothing can apparently be done to reduce it when you start talking about it.
The last part of your comment I did not quite understand. What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
If that is what you mean, we have some of that (whistle blowers) - but we also have way more waste than what covers whatever gets surfaced. They're also few and far between..
You injected the "somewhat", not grandparent. But I see that you corrected me because you were nonplussed with the fiscal conservatism at the time it was tried. I don't follow European socialist gyrations, so I'll take your word for it.
> What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
Yes, precisely. The culture of the US still favors lawlessness, and I don't mean that negatively. Unfortunately, for us all to get along in such an unregulated environment, we have to be civil with one another, be fair dealing, and be intolerant of corruption.
But the US system has grown too fat, and too many selfish and corrupt people are taking advantage of the good graces of the rest of the populace. And the corruption is allowed to run unchecked.
Also, the regulations and bureaucracies and debt and corporations have all crept up on us. So the system is no longer operating to spec, and no major redesigns are planned. I just don't see where we go from here. The presidential candidates we've selected are indicative of system failure.
Stockholm is not entirely free from homelessness issues; there are lots of people - largely Roma, according to relatives and my own judgement - begging on the streets and in the train and metro stations. This is not something I used to see there.
I'd say that this is not really a Sweden thing as it's an EU thing. The come mainly from Romania and stay in Sweden for a few months begging for money, then they go back home. As they aren't Swedish citizens, and don't aim to be, (they often got family back home) the systems in place to handle homeless aren't working for them. Really it's countries like Romania that aren't handling it's Romani population very well and tend to have quite unhelpful racist attitudes towards them, making the issue worse.
There are also a few homeless people of Swedish origin, but they are mostly either drug addicts or otherwise mentally ill, making them unable to keep an apartment. Money shouldn't be a big issue as you qualify for social security payouts that cover essentials and rent if you can't get it by other means. However, mentally ill might fail to get this money, it requires a monthly visit at the local social services office and they can require participation in activities as job training as well as accepting any job you can get.
Im homeless and im not ill or anything, i enjoy freedom, i would rather die than have a job or a house or even a car. People assuming all hobos are mentally fucked is same as me assumimg all domestic people have a ferrari, those r just more flashy visible cases...
Sorry, I did not mean to offend anyone. The point wasn't to smear those who are homeless, rather to point out that it's not simply because they are just poor. As poverty can be the reason in other parts of the world.
I see plenty of homeless Swedes every day when I walk from the Stockholm Central Station to my work in Stockholm City - at least five, everyday - and that's a short walk. Sure, it's not San Francisco - but it'd be an incredible lie to say there are no homeless, like the previous comment before you said
I'm not sure if "segregated" is the right word. The economic gap between Stockholm downtown and a suburb is smaller than, say, the gap between Washington D.C. and a small town in West Virginia.
Does that mean the United States is hopelessly economically segregated, with permanently unassimilated redneck populations that refuse to join the urban mainstream? If that's an unfair interpretation, why make the same kind of rhetorical leaps about European cities?
The US is segregated with ghettos in NY, Chicago, Detroit, etc. But I was making a point about Sweden.
If you checked the blog I referred to, entitled "Police: Yes, there ARE No-Go Zones in Sweden" you would learn that there are essentially lawless areas where the police concedes that they have indeed lost control.
The source article from the blog states "In the autumn of 2014 reported the National Police for 55 neighborhoods in 22 cities around the country where "local criminal networks is considered to have a negative impact on the local community." It's about neighborhoods that are characterized by "open drug sales, criminal dealings that manifests itself in serious violence in a public place, various forms of extortion and unlawful influence and acting out grievances against society."
The blog post you mention (the author makes no mystery of his ideas), and the source article, seems to take an official report stating that 55 zones have seen a worrying rise in crime and mixing it with anecdotal evidence and unrelated quotes to come to the conclusion that there are 55 "no-go" zones where "swedish law no longer applies", to spin a particular story for their readers.
Mind, I'm not claiming liberal leaning press is any different and, as with everything, the truth probably stands somewhere in between.
You linked to a blog post with a large illustration depicting a "typical leftist Internet troll".
I've spent over 30 years of my life in Nordic countries. These stories of embedded lawless mini-Afghanistans ruled by local Sharia tyrants don't reflect any reality I've ever seen.
No one is claiming that they are "lawless mini-Afghanistans" in Sweden, as you stated.
(from the article I linked to: "To the best of my knowledge, there are no Shariah patrols in Sweden.")
But there is enough evidence to state that there is segregation.
"Segregation (noun): the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart."
I have traveled all over europe ON FOOT, which usually means i walk trough all sorts of hoods, never ever even once i was in place where i would say its a No-Go, then i visited my aunt in florida for a month and experienced robbery at a gun point, prostitute harassing me, and 'what u looking at' comments, from my experience usa is worse than third world as iv been to morocco and mauritania and senegal and had great experience with free hospital care.
>>But it is now quite segregated (not unlike France with its banlieus) full of not-homeless, but, unfortunately, un-assimilated population.
I'm not convinced that having everyone "assimilated" is a realistic goal. People of different social classes tend to not want to associate themselves with one another. And social class is about more than just income.
Yes, and Canada received many refugees from Syria. That's a far cry from allowing unrestricted migration which is what SF does. There are no border patrols outside the city. You do not need a passport to get in. Other cities literally pack up their homeless and give them free bus tickets to SF!
Sweden, on the other hand, forces people to learn the language before they can even get a job. Those who won't or cannot do that end up in Germany instead.
How is that theoretical slowdown apparent in today's Stockholm?
The city is a buzzing growth center, as wealthy on the surface as San Francisco, but without any of the obvious problems with "homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city" (which the grandparent poster wanted to blame on liberal government).
You make it sound like Sweden in the '80s was a pseudo-Cuba. That was never the case.
Weird that a right-wing liberatarian organization is criticizing liberal social policies...
"The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace... Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."
So if one concluded, based on an impartial examination of economic facts, that free market economics is indeed the best way to foster economic development and standard of living gains, how should one promote such views without become an advocate of free market economics (and thus become discredited in your eyes)?
"based on an impartial examination of economic facts".
That's a bold assumption to make.
Facts are objective by definition, but their interpretation it's often not.
The moment you state your objective if promote free market economics it's clear that you will give an interpretation of facts that goes towards validating that view.
You can promote your views this way, but cannot expect people not to take a critical view of them.
Just read anyhting from Paul Krugman on the NYT, and you will see equally partial interpretations of facts that come to very different conclusions.
>just not expect people to take them at face value,
Of course not. But no one asked you to take the views of the Mises Institute at face value. It appeared to me that you were implying they were biased, meaning not credible, based on the fact that they have endorsed free market economics since the 1950s. Which is an assumption that a group that regularly endorses a particular school of economic thought is biased toward that school of thought for reasons other than sound and impartial economic analysis.
If I was misreading what you were implying, then I of course take my previous comments back.
> That argument would be more convincing if the original poster were not comparing SF to Sweden -- the country that essentially solved those problems in 1950-1980 by having the most liberal and progressive government in the world.
You will find that this type of governance only works in homogeneous societies - where the people can agree and identify with one another (and also have qualities such as good work ethic, social responsibility, love for their country or place, etc).
Once you bring in variously diverse groups into the picture, half of which are only seeking benefits, those same polices tend to produce the opposite effects.
