these countries are socialist..and they have great economies
"The economies of the countries of Scandinavia are amongst the strongest in Europe.
There is a
generous welfare system in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
contrast this which the much vaunted economy of the us which is headed for a death debt spiral due to the failure to properly invest payroll tax revenues over the last 40 years
A similar but far more expensive situation exists with
social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This is because—contrary to
popular belief—these programs don’t save workers’ taxes for their retirements. Instead, they
immediately spend the vast majority of those taxes to pay benefits to current recipients. Thus, they are
called “pay-as-you-go” programs.
In stark contrast, the
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains that “federal law requires private pension plans to operate as funded plans, not as pay-as-you-go plans.” The reasons for this, as
explained by the American Academy of Actuaries, are to increase “benefit security” and ensure “intergenerational equity.”
Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, have levied dramatically increased tax burdens on succeeding generations of Americans, thus creating severe generational inequality. And unless
retirement ages are
raised or benefits are reduced in some other way, taxes will need to be increased again to
keep the programs
solvent.
Federal actuaries measure the unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare in several
different ways, but only one of them approximates accrual accounting. This is called the “closed-group” unfunded obligation, which is the money needed to cover the shortfalls for all current taxpayers and beneficiaries in these programs.
In the
words of Harvard Law School professor and federal budget specialist
Howell E. Jackson,
the closed-group measure “reflects the financial burden or liability being passed on to future generations.” These burdens are
$49.8 trillion for Social Security and
$53.9 trillion for Medicare. Placing these figures in context:
Those shortfalls are what remain after the federal government has
paid back with interest all of the money it has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security and Medicare differ from true pensions because taxpayers don’t have a
contractual right to receive these benefits. Nevertheless, paying these benefits is an implied commitment of the federal government, and
federal law requires that these programs be included in the Treasury report.
The Treasury report estimates that the combined closed group unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and some smaller social insurance programs are
$104.2 trillion. This figure doesn’t include intergovernmental debt, which is
consolidated with other data in the report.
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
many of the members of this forum, know nothing of communism, socialism or even capitalism..
for example how many here have read marx, engels, keynes or mises ?
comrade stalin
wall street