Politics - 18 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
Our school system is socialistic. That's worked so far.
2 :
The USA has to many conservative knuckle heads.
3 :
The size of the population.
4 :
Socialism works for a little while but eventually all socialism fails.
5 :
again and again, i see people who dont understand what socialism even is. Ok. for the fifht time, the nordic countries are not socialist. They are social democratic. Which means that they retain a capitalist economic system, but have a large amount of welfare programs and such. in socialism, there is no capitalism. there are no social welfare programs.
6 :
Those other countries do not have socialism. At best they have socialized medicine because they felt some things should be above profit.
7 :
They aren't socialist. They also have more homogenous socieites. America has too many challenged cultures: several ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S. are overwhelmingly wedded to poverty.
8 :
Sandinavian countries have relatively high economic freedom. The US has a problem with inflationary monetary policy that undermines any growth.
9 :
Intellect.
10 :
those on the dole in the US are too stupid to keep their mouth shut and cash their checks...
11 :
Population, and the people of the countries you named overall are probably more intelligent and don't waste. Tribes were socialist in nature; berry pickers, hunters, fishermen, farmers, wood gatherers....all brought their supplies together daily where they were shared. Understandably it doesn't work in a large complicated country.
12 :
Those nations do not have pure socialism, they are capitalist, like us, but have decided to socialize more programs..such as health care and educational support for those who want to go to college.
13 :
First of all, socialism does work when there is no greed. Trust me, I lived in Sweden for 10 years and if anything, socialism ain't working there, so they do have capitalistic loopholes in order to help bring up their economy again, but then they let it sink back to where it was. A cycle. VOLUNTARY socialism is what has worked in the past, and still does. Several communities in Russia operate under pure socialism, and pretty well too. The Israeli Kibbutz was one of the key factors in bringing Israel "out" of its desert state, and creating fertile land. Socialism only ever works when it isn't forced, mainly because those bitter who ruin the system are the ones forced into it. It's NOT because "everyone is greedy", it's the use of force and violence to achieve ends that's the problem. If America was to take a completely free market, you'd be bound to see large, socialist communities come up and actually operate.
14 :
I am not an expert, but I think a lot of it has to do with size of population and world influence. Countries like Finland, Denmark, etc. can be more socialist because they have fewer expenses. Their smaller populations make it easier to deal with issues involving public education, public healthcare, etc. I think Finland has around 6 million people. The United States has about 307 million, so problems here are much larger in scope and sheer number of people; at a certain point, the size of government needed to solve these problems for us becomes impractical. The same can be said for our military presence. America, along with China and Russia, is one of three countries with the clout to change the state of the world all by itself. As such, we require a large and resource-rich standing army, so we need to divert a lot of our government resources to that end. Countries like Sweden and Denmark have very small military expenses because there is no reason that they need a large army. Who is going to go to war with Denmark, and when will Sweden and its 7 million people be a strong enough force to occupy another country? Those nations just aren't big enough players on the world stage to necessitate such large armies. The United States, on the other hand, certainly needs a vast military presence. As such, we cannot have the kind of government involvement in private matters that socialist countries can. Scandinavia has such wonderful education and healthcare systems because most of their tax contributions go to those causes. As countries with smaller populations, their problems with poverty and such are smaller, so they don't rely as heavily on some of the things we do. Basically, socialism works on a small scale. The USA is simply too big, too complex, and has far too many groups of people with far too many kinds of problems for a system like that to work here. The government could never manage it all, and in trying, they often just complicate things more.
15 :
Did anyone tell Australia. America has always been socialist. Some just can't face facts.
16 :
In what respect does it not work in Australia? Australia's hybrid public/private universal healthcare system is one of the most effective in the world? Progressive tax rates, quality universal education, little in the way of financial limitations on advanced education, have all made Australia a wealthy prospering nation with one of the highest standards of living in the world.
17 :
Population. Those scandinavian countries that people use as evidence in support of socialism each have a population smaller than New York City.
18 :
Denmark does not have socialism. It has a mixed market capitalist economy (one of the most competitive economies in the world) with a large welfare state. The reason why this works is because people trust each other and the government much more than in places like USA where there are large gaps between rich and poor and political leanings.
