I was just reading how the government of Germany has a program where small and medium sized companies are given incentives to hire workers or to avoid laying them off. In this way more of the available workforce is employed and the companies can grow because of access to cheap (for them) labour.
There is universal government health care so the companies are not burdened by having to pay for employee benefits. The businesses can use that money from growth and innovation. Providing basic universal care is thought to be a right of citizenship. There is not a profit motive to health care. Employees that are healthier can work more years and again, avoid being a burden on the system.
The cost to the government is small because with everyone working the government can collect tax revenue and provide basic services for their people. The money that is going out is replaced several times over. They aren't paying significant unemployment benefits or welfare benefits that are only a drain on their coffers.
Sure you pay more in taxes in such socialist countries but the returns are worth it. The roads get fixed when they need it. Snow and garbage get removed in in a timely fashion The schools get what they need to properly educate the next generation of workers. This in turn allows the elderly to be given the care and security they need as a reward for all the years they paid into the system.
There is real regulation on large corporations that keep them from the making obscene amount of profit while ignoring such things as the environment. If the corporations want to do business in Germany they have to play by the rules.
This all leads to more people feeling confident in their future. They are not afraid to spend and that spending is what keeps the economy booming.
QUALITY of life people. There is more sharing of the wealth by all instead of hording of the wealth by a few.
Maybe a little socialism isn't such a bad thing. Don't you think?
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6 comments:
Sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, it is too good to be true.
Angela Merkel quote upon announcing German austerity measures including spending cuts. From Time Magazine:
"These are serious times, these are difficult times. We can't afford everything that we want if we also want to look after our future."
"We've lived beyond our means over the past few years," Guido Westerwelle, Vice Chancellor and leader of Merkel's coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), bluntly told a news conference on Monday.
German has the strongest Economy in the EU, and it can't make the Socialist System work as promised. Google "Greece Debt Crisis" or "Spain Debt Crisis", or "Italy Debt Crisis" for an idea of what spending more than you make brings with it. The bailouts and associated "austerity" measures undertaken throughout the entire EU system get even more pronounced outside Germany.
Extremely bad things happen when Public Debt becomes too large compared with GDP. Catastrophic things happen when Debt exceeds GDP. Its not a question of "if", just a question of "when". No ammount of social program based outcry will change that economic fact.
Solutions offered by the Left run along the lines of taxing more of the evil rich people to continue the supply of free stuff paid for by other peoples money. Basically do more of what brought on the problem in the hopes that the problem will go away.
It doesn't go away, as the EU is discovering the hard way.
I can imagine a world where my truck runs on dog poop. How great would that be? Dog poop is free. Wouldn't need to spend my money on gas....
Can't escape the fact that no matter how great I think it would be, my truck still won't run on dog poop.
I guess you are right. Best to scrap the whole thing and go to a pure capitalist model where dog eats dog (and whatever poop he can produce). Ypu've convinced me that for profit heath care and no taxes for everyone is the way to go. Vive le Corporation. May they be generous with the scraps from their table.
It doesn't have to be the all or nothing - Embrace socialism or everyone will die - sort of scenario that's always put forth by the Left.
Just look at the State where I live, Texas. Texas is not perfect, it just looks perfect next to the plight of more liberal, socialist, leaning areas of the US. There are things we could do better, but moving to the Left seems foolish in light of the relative success/failure of the two schemes in practice.
Texas is growing. 25% of the jobs created in the United States in the current economy have been created in Texas. We've been at or below the National Unemployment rate for 46 consecutive months.
Why is that? Because Texas makes a friendly environment for business, they don't treat job creators as "the enemy of the people". They don't tax the crap out of working people to fill the public trough - at least not to the extent more liberal crap holes like New York and California do. We have a sales tax system, instead of the ridiculous progressive income tax. This generates revenue based on consumption - where everyone pitches in - rather than taxing effort and success.
We have a diverse economy as a result, that is less prone to failure because of a downturn in one market.
It seems on the surface that the Welfare state looks out for the little guy. In practice, though, the welfare state decides what people should get and how much they'll get of it. I'll take a more Conservative road based on the results the two systems produce in real life.
I've said it before. Progressivism measures the compassion of a society by how many people can belly up to the trough. Conservatism measures the compassion of a society by how few people need to.
Like I said. You win. Now I can move to Arizona and have that liver transplant....oh that's right I can't because the governor stopped that program.
Yup, Texas is a tax-free land of milk and honey. Or at least, it was, before their budget developed a 25 billion dollar deficit. That's 25% of Texas's current budget. Texas's wonderful economy is like Ireland's: a time-bomb waiting to happen. Texas already spends less on education than just about every other state in the country, but since they won't raise taxes, they'll cut that even more. I'm sure that economy will keep right on clicking, though, as generationally, Texans become stupider and sicker with each passing year.
But then, I live in a liberal crap-hole, not in low-tax heaven Texas, where the onus is put on those who make less money by their idiotic sales-tax system.
Yep.. Texas does have a deficit. Not surprising considering the recesion that continues to linger despite the dump trucks of money the Liberals tried to bury it under - with no "shovel ready jobs" or halting of the unemployment rate at 8% like they promised.
Texas overspent. We've done it before. Not a good thing and we have to fix it. Not by damaging the job creation atmosphere that is keeping us head and shoulders above the rest of the nation, though. They will do it by cutting spending, because *spending* is why we have a deficit.
As for education - I'm not happy with the state of education in Texas either. We need to fix that problem. The liberal "solution" to education problems is to dump money - preferably someone elses - at it and feel good.
The United States ranks 3rd in the world for $'s spent per secondary school student, and 4th in the world per primary student. If you don't like the quality of our education system you can't blame that on how much money is being spent on it. Our scores are low, but our self esteem rankings are really high by comparison. Doesn't take a genius to see where the emphasis of our education system is directed.
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