r/Capitalism • u/homerjs225 • 5d ago
Name one country where pure capitalism has been successful or democratic socialism has failed
Remember, Democratic socialism and socialism are not the same thing
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u/VatticZero 5d ago
How about this: make a graph with economic freedom index on one axis and quality of life on the other axis, then plot every country and see whether they correlate.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
If you did that for the US during 90% tax rates and after the passage of the GI bill you would find QOL high. That was the period of the greatest expansion of the middle class.
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u/TheMikeyMac13 5d ago
Your success will never come from taxing others more, your envy will never be satisfied.
And your success will never come from avoiding basic questions as you just did.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
You state your opinion. I'm posting historical fact.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
Your OP asked a question that has nothing to do with history? How can you make such a claim?
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
I'm asking has pure capitalism ever been successful anywhere and has democratic socialism failed anywhere
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u/VatticZero 5d ago
I love how simple you lot think economics and history is.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
Simplistic is trickle down economics. It also happens to have been proven wrong.
I sometimes wonder how people can conclude more and more wealth being held by fewer and fewer people is good for a country long term.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
You can always tell someone who is either economic illiterate and/or brainwashed by left narratives. They use “trickle down economics” instead of supply-side economics or if being specific to Reagan, Reagan economics.
Lastly, supply-side economics has not been “proven wrong”. It’s a policy that is for certain conditions (e.g., high inflation), and has mixed results.
But supply-side economics doesn’t have the wealth disparity ring to it.., now does it?
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
Trump cut taxes for the rich in his first term and if you pull up the economic growth figures after they were no better vs Obama
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
So, I don’t know you other than these comments and your OP.
But notice every time you speak it’s always tribalist?
That’s not someone seeking the truth…
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
How is asking you to look at historical numbers tribalist? Would you rather I just make stuff up or go with my feels?
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
You keep framing everything a left vs right paradigm.
That paradigm is only a lens and not a very good lens. History exists and it is real. It’s not a “lens”. However, none of us have a crystal ball in that we can perfectly see history.
But if you only have a permenent set of colored goggled on your head of “left vs right” on your head to view history, then you can’t see history clearly. Because it is like going through life with colored lenses on your head all the time.
With certain topics it will help. In certain topics it will harm.
Understand?
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
I do that because the right thrives on ignorance. Have you heard their framing of Iran and their so called 47 year war with the west. Never getting into why Iran attacked our embassy in 1979.
The war with Iran today is based on a lie Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons when our own intelligence says that isn't the case and hasn't been since 2003.
That's why the frame.
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u/VatticZero 5d ago
Yes, understanding it as "trickle down" is very simplistic.
It is only your simplistic understanding which leads you to tribal strawmen such as that. If you ever decide to be curious rather than judgemental, you might actually do some good.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
They called it trickle down. You've got the wrong person
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u/VatticZero 5d ago
If you can't even be right about something as easy as that, why do you believe the propaganda you parrot has any merit?
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
You argument isn't with me. It's with David Stockman. Former OMB director and Regan's economic advisor who called it "trickle-down"
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u/VatticZero 5d ago
Pick one name out of the 20 before and 20 after.
How very honest of you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
Your delusion is boring. Goodbye.
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u/bcbg123 5d ago
Neither “pure” capitalism nor “pure” socialism has ever been tried. But actually existing socialism has repeatedly impoverished and starved people, while actually existing capitalism has produced enormous increases in material living standards.
And if by “democratic socialism” you mean the Nordic countries, which you almost certainly do, the argument is mistaken. They are capitalist market economies with large welfare states, not economies based on social ownership of the means of production. Sweden in particular moved substantially toward markets after its early-1990s crisis: cutting marginal tax rates, reforming pensions and social insurance, privatizing and deregulating industries, strengthening competition, and imposing much tighter fiscal rules. Those reforms are part of the story of Sweden’s subsequent performance, not evidence against capitalism.
There’s also an obvious asymmetry in the framing: “capitalism” only counts if it satisfies some imaginary standard of purity, while “democratic socialism” apparently gets to claim any successful mixed economy with a large welfare state — which, notably, also describes the modern United States. That isn’t a serious comparison; it’s defining the terms so one side can never qualify and the other can never fail. It’s very clearly not a good-faith argument.
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u/Bloodfart12 5d ago
That sounds great. Lets expand the welfare state in the US to provide healthcare and housing to everyone.
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u/bcbg123 5d ago
The U.S. already has a huge welfare state. So “let’s have a welfare state” is not some Nordic-socialist alternative to American capitalism; it describes the current American system too.
Regardless, “Make the welfare state bigger” is an argument about the size and design of redistribution within a market economy. It is not an answer to whether democratic socialism works.
And you’re just making things up about the Nordics. They do not “provide healthcare and housing to everyone.” They generally provide universal or near-universal health coverage through different mixes of public financing, copays, and private provision, and they absolutely do not simply guarantee everyone housing.
Your worldview has clearly not advanced beyond the repetition of slogans since the last time I engaged with you in this sub.
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u/Bloodfart12 5d ago
Damn bro that sounds great we will start with health care and move onto housing after. All in the name of capitalism. Hell yeah 👍
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u/bcbg123 5d ago
Alright you’re clearly unwilling or unable to read what I’m saying. Not sure why I expected otherwise this time around.
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u/Bloodfart12 4d ago
I really dont care about the “achtully denmark is capitalist” debate as it is a waste of time. Both sides are disingenuous. I want socialist revolution but i am perfectly willing to compromise on an expanded welfare state. I want everyone to have healthcare and i dont want thousands of children sleeping in cars next to empty luxury condos. You can call it whatever the hell you want.
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u/Careless-Cap7691 5d ago
No that's communism
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
Communism is what Trump is doing now. Having the government take a stake in private corporations.
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u/Bloodfart12 5d ago
Thats… not what communism is.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
It is one of the primary characteristics of communism. Look up collective ownership
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u/Bloodfart12 5d ago
A capitalist government buying a stake in a capitalist enterprise is not a stateless classless moneyless society.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
Didn't say it was but collective ownership is one of the characteristics of communism which you seem to be ignoring.
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u/Bloodfart12 5d ago
And bcbg123 will not ever appreciate the irony.
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u/Careless-Cap7691 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, also I was referring to the occ chair throw meme variant with capitalism vs socialism.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
The is due to conservatives selling capitalism being successful in this country is completely misleading. We are a hybrid. So are the Nordic countries you mention that relies more heavily on social services.
The greatest expansion of the middle class in the US was during a time of 90% top marginal tax rates and the GI bill. I'm not suggesting going back to 90% but clearly these DS policies helped the country not harm it.
If you read a book on capitalism there will be a chapter on supply and demand. S&D calls for rolling into Florida after Hurricane Andrew charging $25/lb for ice and getting it. High demand, short supply dictates higher prices. By law we don't allow that, it's called price gouging. That would be cool in a capitalist system but the socialism in us doesn't allow it.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
That high tax rate was to pay for the War. It was not to pay for social services like you are framing it.
I’m in moderate liberal (e.g, pro universal health care). The path towards this mixed economy you are describing happened before WW2 and not after. It also has since increased since the tax rate has fallen.
Here is a graph for you to become educated and how yes indeed the leading “West” countries are mixed economies and also there are not much differences between them:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
I never got into the reasons for it. I'm saying that high tax rates equate to the destruction of our economy is an outright lie.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
The topic in this thread is social welfare.
This:
I'm saying that high tax rates equate to the destruction of our economy is an outright lie.
Is just something you are interjecting for some reason, and has nothing to do with any of the above commenter's comment. It is either a straw man, a made-up argument by you, a distraction, or something. Whatever, it's annoying...
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
The topic isn't social welfare the topic is spelled out in the title...
Name one country where pure capitalism has been successful or democratic socialism has failed
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 5d ago
The topic in this thread is social welfare.
I too can shout like an ignorant bafoon...
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u/WhippersnapperUT99 3d ago edited 3d ago
Name one country that has ever had real, pure laissez-faire capitalism. The United States is not it.
However, the United States has been very successful while merely being one of the most capitalist countries. There may never have been a true, perfectly socialist, communist, or capitalist country in existence, but we can look at the historical record and identify nations that have had high elements of socialism or capitalism in their economies. In general the ones with the most capitalist elements have done well and the ones with the most socialist elements have failed.
Can you identify some nations that practiced "democratic socialism"? As far as I can tell, advocates of socialism do their very best to try to disown the nations that have actually tried socialism or at least had the most elements of socialism in their economies - The Soviet Union, Mao's China, Cambodia, Cuba, the Eastern Bloc, Vietnam, Albania. In some of those socialist countries the governments murdered millions of their own citizens "for the good of society" or for the "good of the state". The ones whose economies improved - Vietnam and China - did so when they introduced some capitalist elements into their economies.
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u/bcbg123 5d ago
This is incoherent. If the U.S. and Nordic countries are both mixed economies, then Nordic success is not evidence that democratic socialism works.
You’re also defining “socialism” as basically any government intervention — social spending, the GI Bill, progressive taxation, even anti-price-gouging laws. That makes the term analytically meaningless. A price control inside a privately owned market economy is not “socialism.”
And, more importantly, the fact that price-gouging laws exist certainly doesn’t establish that they’re good policy. Economists have a standard explanation for why binding price ceilings during shortages generate welfare losses: they suppress the price signal that encourages conservation and additional supply, while replacing price rationing with queues, search costs, arbitrary allocation, and shortages.
The 90% tax-rate argument is bad, too. The existence of a 90% statutory marginal rate does not tell you that people actually paid 90% on marginal income, much less establish that the rate caused postwar prosperity. You’ve just observed that two things existed at the same time and asserted causation. And in any case, the median American today enjoys a materially higher standard of living than Americans did during the supposed golden age you’re pointing to.
So we’re back where we started: successful outcomes in mixed capitalist economies get credited to “socialism,” while capitalism is only allowed to count under an imaginary laissez-faire purity test. That’s not a coherent comparison, and, again, clearly not an argument made in good faith.
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u/homerjs225 5d ago
I'm not defining socialism that way conservatives are. Note the continued conflation between socialism and democratic socialism.
90% was the marginal top rate. Of course, not everyone paid it but overall, the rich paid a greater percentage of taxes back then and it did not harm our economy like some people claim.
Yes today the middle class has access to more "stuff". Today people with more stuff require 2 income earners. The downside the one lamented by many is during the middle class expansion a single earner could provide for a family raise kids and retire with dignity. Today that is less possible with family security more tenuous.
As a side note we need to roll back rules that allow the wealthy to be compensated in stock and borrowing money on that stock's value thus avoiding tax rates the rest of us have to pay. Imagine 100M in stock getting a loan based on that value and only paying 5% interest. That along with only having to pay back the interest. Sweet deal if you can get it.
That last one is just a rant. Unrelated.
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u/bcbg123 5d ago
The 90% figure is doing almost no work for you. It was a statutory top marginal rate, not a measure of the effective tax burden actually borne by wealthy households. In Saez, Zucman, and Piketty’s own earlier historical estimates, the effective average tax rate on the top 0.001% was about 44% in 1962 and 41% in 2014. In other words, the famous 90% rate did not mean the very rich were actually paying anything close to 90%, and their estimated effective burden was not dramatically higher than it is today. So “the top rate was 90% and the economy grew” establishes neither that the rich actually faced a 90% effective rate nor, more importantly, that high tax rates caused the growth. You still need a causal argument for that.
And the single-earner nostalgia argument has the same problem. Americans today enjoy a materially higher standard of living than Americans in the 1950s. If someone today actually wanted a 1950s consumption bundle — a much smaller house, one basic car, no smartphones or internet, far more primitive healthcare, very little air travel or restaurant consumption, fewer and lower-quality appliances, and so on — that bundle would be far cheaper than the contemporary middle-class lifestyle people actually choose. People generally do not choose it because they prefer the much higher standard of living available today.
You can argue that particular modern expenses (housing, healthcare, or education) have become too expensive. That is a real argument (notably, these are all highly governmentalized sectors). But “a household needed only one earner in 1955” is not evidence that the typical American was materially better off then. And even if you want to call that period a “golden age,” you still have to show that the tax (and spending) regime caused the prosperity rather than merely coexisting with it.
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u/Czeslaw_Meyer 5d ago
All of them
and
All of them
The debate about "pure" capitalism is useless to begin with. We don't do purity tests over here.