From: Mikko Särelä (msarela@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Tue Nov 09 2004 - 02:42:26 MST
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, Thomas Buckner wrote:
> In Sweden, the social welfare system goes, as they joke, "from erection
> to resurrection." What you call 'failed socialism' is the overly
> centralized command economies of the Marxist states where despotism and
> information bottlenecks strangled the economy and the ambition of the
> people.
It is not only the overly centralized command economies that failed. Take
your example Sweden for example: When Sweden started their socialist
experiment, they were one of the richest countries in the world. Now take
a look at the following quote:
"As early as 1977, Swedish relative income fell below the average for the
twenty-three rich OECD countries. Swedish economic growth has been below
the OECD average since 1970. The accumulated effect of the slower growth
rate is large. From 1970 to 1998, fifteen countries surpassed or caught up
with Sweden in terms of GDP per capita, while Sweden did not overtake a
single one." Magnus Henrekson of the Stockholm School of Economics in
Stockholm
In case anyone's more interested in reading more, please take a look at
the link below.
http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0412.pdf
Now I realize this is not a list for political discussion. But since there
are some pretty wrong facts presented in here, I believe it right to
correct those.
--
Mikko Särelä
"I too don't really find Monty Python all that exciting, but don't
tell anyone I said that." Anonymous
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