Hugo

I think that even if it had been, it would have been unproductive for the Axis to do so. Consider the vast numbers of aircraft and aircrew lost in the bombing of Germany. German anti-air defences were inferior to those of the Allies, and unlike the Allies, the Germans did not have virtually limitless supplies of aircraft and personnel to send over enemy territory every night. Toynbee's World in March 1939 puts the relative industrial war potential of the USA at 41.7%, Germany at 14.4%, the USSR at 14.0%, the UK at 10.2%, France at 4.2%, Japan at 3.5% and Italy at 2.5%. In their ability to produce war materiel and trained personnel the USA alone was far greater than all Axis powers combined. You could even add the strength of the USSR and France to them and they still could not match the USA. WWII was a war of production. Hitler could not launch Sealion. Every time he attempted to mass invasion barges, RAF Bomber Command would appear over the ports in question and bomb them to pieces. Even if he could have achieved air superiority, the Royal Navy would have sunk the invasion fleet in the Channel (air power being largely ineffective in naval warfare in 1940, and the Kriegsmarine being no match for the Royal Navy in quality or quantity). I don't believe that would have been the case. Had Britain been invaded, the Royal Navy would have either fought to the last, scuttled the fleet or just set sail for New England. In any case, given the achievements of the USA in naval production it would not have made any difference. The fact as I see it is that the script for WWII was written before the first shot was fired. The Axis was doomed to lose, and whichever side the USA picked would be the winning side - and it was a foregone conclusion which side it would pick.

I don't think that "Judeo-Christian" is a good term. They have common origins, but so does everything if you go back far enough. As bodies of law, the two faiths are very different. Jewish law is very concerned with cultural integrity and the preservation of religious and ethnic identity. Christian law, however, is not concerned with creed or race but focuses strictly on ethics. There's not really much of a difference between forming a marriage between several people and forming a company between several people. As to your second remark, human beings cannot be property, because to be property is to relinquish free will and free will cannot be set aside. Even if one consented to be "property", the act of consent is itself an act of free will. It doesn't matter if you don't see the point. They do. Perhaps I want to start a company whose stated goal is putting things on top of other things (if anyone remembers that Monty Python sketch). Perhaps you don't see the point. Does that give you the right to stop me doing it? Society is not capable of being, feeling or doing anything. It's an aggregate. What you mean is that some individuals are not ready for that, and that is to their shame, because it means that they have not yet come to accept that their will is of no greater importance or power than that of another human being. My youngest son, who is two, tends to think that way. It is disappointing that there are so many people who have the attitudes of two-year-olds. Marriage is a cultural institution. Such institutions are descriptive, not prescriptive, so they reflect the people who enter into them and do not dictate to them. The physical laws are prescriptive. You can't fly, no matter what you do. The laws of men are descriptive, because they reflect mutable values and ideas.

Plenty of people have made that mistake. Admiral Yamamoto made a far better assessment than the Japanese and the Germans who believed that America was a decadent and weak culture. Yes, his hope was that he could persuade the British and the Americans to ally with him against the Soviets. He remained delusionally hopeful about this until the day of his death. Hitler's final years are marked by increasing insanity, paranoia, delusion and probably increasing schizophrenia, along with increased physical frailty and drug addiction. I wouldn't put too much stock into anything he said or believed after 1942. This is not true. The Wehrmacht waited for overcast weather to keep the vastly superior Allied air forces on the ground before starting their assault. The sheer surprise of their attack got them quite far, except at Bastogne where, as you noted, the 101st Airborne Division put up a dogged resistance. However, their fuel and ammunition soon became too low to keep up the pace, and when the weather cleared Allied air power halted the advance altogether. Then Patton, who had disengaged in the Saar shortly before and quickly moved to the Ardennes, flung his army into battle and pushed the Germans back again. Well, the historical fact remains that WWII was unwinnable without the USA. It is also probable that even if Hitler had knocked Britain and the USSR out of the war, the USA would still have been able to defeat Germany and Japan in the end.

This one doesn't seem to show 1990-2003 growth that you cited. For the 1980-2000 growth, Norway posts slightly higher than the US, all other Nordic countries significantly lower. For 1998-2002, Sweden matches the US, all other Nordic countries are significantly lower, although it's only fair to state that the US has had economic disruptions in that time (9/11 etc.) that the Nordic countries did not have. For 1975-2000, all Nordic countries post significantly lower than the US, except Norway at only .6% higher. In any case, these figures are misleading because of the proportions of public to private sector activity. The public sector is inherently unproductive compared to the private because it lacks price signals and cannot allocate resources as efficiently to consumer demands as the private sector can. In fact, some prominent economists including, I believe, Murray Rothbard and others, have suggested that public sector growth needs to be subtracted from overall economic growth. Leafing through the 1960-2000 figures of per-capita GDP, Denmark never equals the USA. In fact I don't think Denmark ever reached 85% of the per capita GDP of the USA. Norway and Sweden perform a little better but still never come close to the USA.

I have offered you sources that show expenditure of the lowest quintile today is the same as that of the middle quintile in 1973 adjusted for inflation. I would like to see your sources. Birkhauser and Finegan find that, on average, a person who starts a minimum-wage job will have increased his wage by 30% within 12 months. Low-income earners become average-income earners within a few years and advance to become high-income earners in middle age. This phenomenon is well-documented. A search on the Cato Institute for "living wage" or "minimum wage" should bring up reams of studies for you. "Worth" is entirely subjective and depends upon the beholder, his preferences and his circumstances. What is a litre of water worth to you right now? What is it worth when you are alone in a desert? If worth was objective, trade would not exist. If you can show me a single laissez-faire government since WWII - or even the turn of the century - I would believe that the "right" had ever been in control. The Western economies have been in the hands of monetarists, Keynesians and socialists for decades. Nationmaster measures Sweden's GDP growth 1970-2000 as 1.4%, Denmark as 1.6%, the US as 2.0%. Nationmaster Perhaps you could be more precise as to where you found these figures.

Blackdog, perhaps you'd be interested in reviewing my post here.

You are perfectly correct. I was trying to illustrate that it does not particularly matter how strange or perverse one finds a contract that does not involve them, because it does not give them a right to interfere. Well, this is the problem with governmental interference, isn't it? If the state interferes in one place, it creates consequences somewhere else, and so it has to interfere again, and again, and again. Refer to Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Which source would that be? The Heritage Foundation? UNICEF? The CCSD? David Orchard? Nationmaster? The CIA Factbook? Or perhaps I have missed one of the sources you alluded to, or maybe you were quoting from these mysterious oracles again that, for some reason, you cannot name? I assume that's what your excuses-for-not-answering-direct-questions-rolodex card says for today. When I take the time to copy-and-paste your original words into my post, it's utterly laughable that you would even claim that I had distorted what you had said. It's even more of a joke when you purposely avoid quoting a single word of my posts in your rebuttals. Oh, and if you're going to evade answering anything with unfounded allegations, it helps if you don't accuse other people of evading you whilst you are evading them. It makes you look even more hypocritical. The problem these days is that state benefits are now across the board too. Every country is seeing the same situation, and every country is becoming increasingly socialist, with lobbyists and politicians crying for increasing socialist measures every day. Based on what? My source says they are pretty much universal. In fact, he alleges it is more the case for working classes since a 25% sales tax, the lowest income tax rate being 46% and a 205% tax on owning a car (plus biannual weight fees, triple the American cost of gasoline, green taxes etc.) have a far greater impact on poorer people and are a positive discouragement to starting a family - it just costs too much for most working-class people.

Where have you exposed this as an absurdity? You said that the impact of Bill Gates upon your perception of poverty would be "miniscule" (the full quote was "Bill Gates getting another billion dollars is completely irrelevant. The effect is miniscule and it would not be another billion dollars of income. Ask yoursel rather should Bill Gates be allowed to acquire another billion dollars of income if it were to be of income."). However, miniscule or not, it will have a measurable effect according to your methodology. My question is therefore this: how can increased wealth for Bill Gates suddenly plunge even one person into "poverty" (one person being indeed miniscule on a macroeconomic level) without the slightest change in his own material circumstances? You repeatedly fail to address this discrepancy. This is not true. I claim that you must support the war in Iraq because you claimed that nothing more than action by the British government was sufficient evidence for the truth of a given piece of information, be that an assessment of British poverty or an assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. My question is this: if the British government acted on faulty information when it invaded Iraq, why is it inconceivable that it did so when it created a new anti-poverty programme? What is the source for this? The GDP growth this year for the Nordic countries is as follows (from the CIA World Factbook): Finland: 1.9% Sweden: 1.7% Denmark: 0.0% Norway: 0.6% And for the USA, 3.1%. Since 1950, Swedish GDP growth has been below OECD average (source: OECD; H.D. Dixon, Controversies in Macroeconomics: Growth, Trade and Policy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)). Walter Korpi notes that similar lags began in other countries with initially high GDP growth rates in about 1970, including Denmark (Walter Korpi, "Eurosclerosis and the Sclerosis of Objectivity," Economic Journal, no. 439 (1996): 1731), although the Swedish "lag" has been present since 1950, trailing the OECD average by 0.3 in 1950-1968 and by 0.4 between 1968 and 1973. You said: Basically, you alleged that the USA has "millions" of elderly poor because state benefits are "pitiful." Why - because of a high employment rate and private pension plans? This doesn't exactly make a good argument for state pensions, now, does it? This is the allegation of Per Henrik Hansen of the Copenhagen Business School, who has studied the matter in great detail. He shows that there is a close correlation between increasing state benefits and the decline in marriage and childbirth rates and climbing divorce rates and childbearing ages.

This notion of a right to marry does not make sense to me. A marriage is essentially a contract. Two or more people agree to live together, to share certain things and whatever else they might agree to. In any case, it is an agreement that all parties concerned freely enter into. Why would another party be able to grant or withhold a "right" to enter into an agreement that has nothing to do with them? That being said, let gays marry. Let polygamists marry. If there actually is anybody out there who wants to marry their dog or their car, let them marry it. If a brother and a sister really want to get married, let them. If people want to be married by a priest, or a vicar, or Fat Elvis, or the Grand High Poobah of McGuffin, or just some guy on the street who agreed to be a witness, that's their business too. It certainly isn't any of my business, or any of government's business, and to say otherwise is to say that the people most directly affected by a contract have less right to define it or enter into it than persons affected far less.

It is not irrelevant, because it proves how your measure of poverty is wrong. According to your methods, Bangladesh should have far less poverty than the USA or Sweden. According to my methods, it should have far more. If your modes of calculation have to have "exceptions" made for them that include probably two-thirds of the planet they are derelict. I'm glad to hear it. Perhaps then you'll tell me how you define poverty, exactly, and how many people in the US you consider to be poor. "The old" is an aggregate. They cannot be said, as a group, to have done anything. There are many old people who haven't worked for a day in their lives. People are individuals, not faceless herds. Saving for retirement will grant people in old age a reward proportionate to what they contributed in life. A state pension grants a reward that in no way reflects what a person has done in life. The Japanese economy is suffering ills because it is a mixed and planned economy, like the Scandinavian countries. Japanese economic growth has been negative for six years because government interference in business will not allow malinvestments to be liquidated and for resources to be reallocated to profitable lines of business according to consumer demand. This is not true. You claim that a nation that does not provide a state pension condemns its aged to poverty. Japan does not and its aged are not condemned to poverty. QED. Comparison of the average expenditure per person of the lowest quintile in 2001 with the middle quintile in 1973. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Integrated Diary and Interview Survey Data, 1972-73, Bulletin No. 1992, released in 1979, and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures in 2001, Report No. 966, April 2003. Figures adjusted for inflation by the personal consumption expenditure index. Perhaps you'll list your sources now. Because that is the only way to make all incomes exactly equal, and that is what you say is the only cure for poverty. Most of the important discoveries in the world were made because people rejected popular notions and preconceived ideas. There is no harm in doing so. If the idea is right, it will be borne out anyway. If wrong, an important leap forward may be made. The Forum Rules clearly state: Since you won't or can't do that, we should disregard what you have said. After all, you can claim absolutely anything if you don't have to prove it. I assume you think the invasion of Iraq was justified, then? I mean, if the British government had acted on intelligence that Saddam had WMD, that information must have been "beyond question." Quite the climb-down from your previous position on the matter, I must say. If Bill Gates were to acquire an extra billion dollars of income this would, according to your definition of poverty, add several people to the ranks of the "poor" by raising the average income, even though their material circumstances had not changed at all. Stop squirming and explain this discrepancy in your argument. How can a person become "poor" one day when they were not the day before without any change in their material circumstances? There is no point making these sorts of accusations. I could simply say that you support poverty and misery for people because you advocate destroying the economic method by which wealth and prosperity for all is created. However, I know that your motives are not evil, so I wouldn't try to assassinate your character by alleging such. No, it has not. This is why the Nordic states, Japan, Germany and so forth are in economic stagnation, because of government attempts to interfere in the economy. Government lacks the price mechanism for consumer feedback, and because of this it is not possible for government to ever allocate goods as efficiently as in a free market because there is no useful mechanism for consumers to tell producers what they actually want. How can there be a price signal when there is no price, as in state healthcare? Yes, it did. Sweden only ended its programme to sterilize undesireables in 1976. The sporadic American eugenics programme has been dead since the 1950s. The welfare state, unfortunately, destroys the family. By creating state programmes to replace what families previously did for themselves, the state encourages families not to care for each other. In Japan, government has refrained from doing this and families continue to care for their elderly. In Denmark, government programmes to care for single parents, new mothers, the aged, the unemployed, and subsidised daycare, exorbitant taxation on private transportation, and so forth have reduced marriage rates, raised divorce rates, made motherhood happen later in life, reduced incidence of motherhood, increased single parenthood, increased the number of families where both parents work full-time, massively increased the number of children in daycare as opposed to being raised at home, and more (source: Statistisk Tiaarsoversigt 2003; Statistisk Aarbog 2003; and 50-Aars Oversigten (2001) et al).

That's what I said. Indeed, you seem quite confused about how many people are poor in the USA. You believe that falling below a certain percentage of average income defines one as poor, but you aren't certain where that point is, why, or how it relates to the "poor" of other countries. I believe that poverty is about being able to obtain the necessities of life rather than about any portion of income. Consider that the poorest 20% in America earn (adjusted for inflation) the same as the median of America in 1970. Did this mean that everybody in America was poor thirty-some years ago? Or does it mean that the proportion of poor has not changed drastically, in which case the only "solution" to poverty is complete state control of the economy and the same rate of pay for all jobs? That bird won't fly. Demographically, the elderly are the richest group in the USA. You don't cite a source, so I'll cite one: the US Census of 2002. Of 65-74-year-olds, 8.5% were classified as poor, and of >75-year-olds, 11.5% - barely any more than the 18-64 group, 11.1%. Japan, last time I checked, offers no state benefits for the elderly at all. Japanese aged simply save for their retirement. Japan has one of the longest life expectancies in the entire world and does not have any problems with poverty amongst the aged beyond those suffered by either Sweden or the USA. The "no benefits = aged poverty" argument is not borne out by this evidence. Now you think a person is poor if they don't drive a nice car? Having a car is not enough? You are ridiculous. Very, very few people in the US actually fall into this category. If you want to define it this way, then 1.2% of Americans are poor (for housing - the percentage who are overcrowded or homeless) and as to transportation, I'm not sure - take the percentage who don't own cars and subtract those who choose not to because they prefer to use mass transit. What studies? That does not follow at all. Need I remind you of the ridiculous theories and wrong ideas adopted at one time or another by various international bodies of good standing? Every time Bill Gates gets another billion dollars, a few more people become "poor" by your standard of measurement, despite the fact that neither their income nor their lifestyle has changed at all. This does not make sense, and is in itself a refutation of this simple-minded method. That is not what I am doing. I am stating that, if the poor are those whose incomes don't meet a certain percentage of the average, then Bangladesh must have very few poor indeed compared to Western countries. This is, of course, ridiculous, and it is so because poverty is about having a certain minimal lifestyle rather than earning a certain percentage of what everybody else is earning. Says who? I gave you statistics showing that blacks have a substantially higher child mortality rate than whites, and Sweden has no blacks. You say, "wrong!" Where's your argument? Where's your explanation? Perhaps because you have never questioned what you have learnt by rote. I urge you to do so. I demand an explanation because this is not a priori fact. The argument that the government should confiscate people's money and spend it for them smacks of paternalism and statism, and is the start of the road to tyranny because it has the same idea: some people have a right to boss other people around. Any given public healthcare is always more expensive than private because public healthcare lacks price signals. Because of this, resources are not best allocated according to consumer demand and inefficiencies result that are not present in a free market. Inefficiencies cause higher costs. This is basic economics. Once again, the example of Bangladesh proves how ludicrous this argument is. Bangladesh has far greater income equality, and according to you the income level of Bangladeshis should therefore be much higher than that of the US. Of course, they are a tiny fraction of those in the US. Government work is not meaningful or productive. It does not produce goods and services in accordance with consumer demands and is wasteful and inefficient. In Scandinavian countries an employee can call in sick and claim 80-90% of his income without even producing medical evidence. Scandinavian absentee rates are now the highest in the world. Do you propose that this is an idle coincidence? So are microwaves, colour televisions, dishwashers, clotheswashers, tumbledryers, cars, computers etc. etc. All consumer goods in which Swedish ownership lags far behind American. Last time I checked, Sweden was not populated mostly by the Amish, so I believe that Swedes do not have as many of these appliances not because they don't want them but because they cannot afford them. Of course. But let us not pretend that the Scandinavian countries are more civilized or hold more liberal values than the USA, because this is simply not true. Nordic eugenics were more widely practiced and went on for longer than in America, to start with.

Actually, the USA also practiced sterilization for the purposes of eugenics. The programme chiefly focused on convicts. Unlike Sweden, it doesn't seem that any of it was racially motivated and also unlike Sweden, it doesn't seem that any were done without the consent of the subject (although "consent" was often defined quite loosely). There's also the matter of the Tuskagee Syphilis Study. It is interesting that the peak of these programmes in the USA was during the 1930s, which was also the time that the USA had its most socialist government in history under FDR. There's too much of a link between socialism and gross human rights violations for it to be mere coincidence. Only if this equal income would actually buy them the basic necessities of life. Forced income equality in medieval Europe, for instance, would not have alleviated the misery of the average peasant at all. Conversely, despite much greater income inequality in the US compared to Sweden, the average American is far better off materially than the average Swede. Sweden has more equality, but all it is getting them is equal poverty. I honestly think that the bulk of the redistributist argument stems from petty jealousy and envy. People of this nature see others who are richer than they and they want it for themselves. They see it as unfair that they have less. Karl Marx's writings are good examples, filled as they are with hatred and spite for the upper classes and businessmen. People of this nature are less concerned with their own lot in life than they are with that of others. Self-hatred and misguided feelings of guilt may also play a large part, as with Marx, a self-hating Jew and a self-hating bourgeoisie.

I would want to know the sources for your data. They don't tie in with the 2003 US Census, and you add further confusion by first alleging that 24% of Americans are poor (about 70.5 million), then that 20% "struggle to survive" (about 59 million). The Census Bureau claims there are 35 million poor in America, about 12% of the population. The Heritage Foundation, which you cite as a good source, writes: You can follow the link for more information. If you do admire the Heritage Foundation you'll doubtless be interested to know that they contradict most of your claims. Your figures on telephone ownership are interesting but, as August said, don't account for mobile phones. The US lags behind Europe in mobile phone development for several reasons, none of them macroeconomic. For example, the geography of the US is not kind to mobile networks, being vast and expansive compared to any European country (except possibly Russia). Another reason is that local calls in Europe are chargeable but are free in North America, which makes mobile phones more uneconomical for Americans than for Europeans. 6.8 infants per 1000 born in the US died in 2001 (CDC). The National Center for Health Statistics states that "the three leading causes of infant death were congenital malformations, low birthweight, and sudden infant death syndrome, which together accounted for 44 percent of all infant deaths." These problems would be difficult to attribute to poverty or a low standard of living. Genetic factors may play a larger part, especially when one considers that amongst American blacks, the infant mortality rate is double the average. Sweden has no black population. Sweden does rank above the USA, but Singapore ranks above Sweden. Explain why it is better for governments to confiscate the income of citizens and spend it on healthcare according to their fancy than it is for citizens to keep their income and spend it on healthcare according to their own requirements. Yet again I'm going to ask this question. What is this, the third time now? Or is it the fourth? Why is income equality more important than income level? This figure is meaningless. According to this method of calculation, as I have said countless times now, Bangladesh should be far less poor than either the USA, Sweden, or Denmark. Perhaps we should compare these countries according to who earns 60% or less of median world income. In this case, Denmark and Sweden would come off considerably poorer than the USA. Your figures on people living in jobless households are further meaningless when we consider that in Denmark, for instance, one-third of the active workforce works for government and one-quarter the potential and active workforce lives full-time on government largesse (thus being unlikely to even seek a job). It's interesting to note that the Swedish establishment in the 1930s and 40s was fascinated with Nazi eugenics. The founders of the Swedish social democratic movement listed the purity of Swedish racial stock as being a good reason why their policies could succeed there, where they had failed for the base and degenerate Slavs in the USSR. They believed that ethnic cleansing was a good way to protect Swedish social democracy. Gunnar Myrdal, a socialist economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1974, was an open advocate of the eugenics programme. Up until the late 1950s, the Swedish government forcibly lobotomized 4,500 alcoholics and criminals in an attempt to cure them. 500 lobotomies were performed to cure mental illnesses on Swedes who had never been admitted to a mental hospital. Hundreds of "mentally deficient" Swedes were force-fed candy and then their teeth were allowed to decay in macabre medical experiments. A practice that only ended in 1976 was the forced sterilization of 62,000 Swedes of mixed race, low intelligence or physical defect. Substantiated allegations have been made that the Swedish government also sterilized promiscuous and rebellious individuals. The Swedes started sterilizing the mentally ill in 1934. One woman had her eyeglasses taken away, and when she failed to read a blackboard was sterilized for being "retarded." The Irish Post reports that Norway and Denmark have similar histories of eugenics, forced sterilization and other horrifying policies. Denmark sterilized 11,000 people between 1929 and 1967. 5,500 of those were performed without consent, according to Lene Koch, an historian at Copenhagen University. By 1970, the Sandinavian states had sterilized 170,000 of their own citizens. Sweden was alone, however, in performing racially motivated sterilizations. Norway and Denmark sterilized other "undesireables."

I did not call "everything" spurious. I opined that indices of which-country-is-better-in-some-subjective-way are spurious, at least when one does not know the information on which they are based and the values of the index-generator. For instance, the CCSD says that Sweden is "better" than the US, but as it turns out they value equality more than prosperity, so their opinion on this isn't worth much (as I have said, rural Bangladesh, India and China must be their idea of paradise on earth). Tell me what this Heritage Foundation bases its opinion on and we shall talk, until then, it can think the moon is made of green cheese for all it matters. The problem is that we are both trotting out figures and offering opinions. You think that I am being closed-minded and stubborn for not accepting your opinion when you offer it, but you are doing the exact same thing. I suggest that you dispense with this obfuscatory line. It's extremely hypocritical of you to claim that my debating tactics label me as pig-headed, stubborn or like a "drunken sailor" when they are very similar to your own. The 2003 US Census says they are not. What is your evidence? (The word "UNICEF" alone is not evidence, by the way.) The whole world is not wrong in its measurement of anything because the whole world does not agree on anything. Stop trying to claim that "the whole world" supports your argument because it doesn't, and even if it did, popular opinion has never made fact. Where have I dismissed "human need", exactly? Come on, Socrates, "expose" me.

Yet again you fail to answer my question. Why is distribution of income more important than level of income? What measure? "Poverty" can be defined in many different ways and not all of them have the same meaning. For instance, the 2003 US Census shows that 35 million Americans are poor. 46% of them own their own home, which is, on average, a three-bedroom, 1.5-bath house with a garage. 76% have air conditioning. Only 6% are overcrowded. Almost 75% have a car, and 30% have more than one. 73% own a microwave. Poor people consume, on average, virtually the same amount of protein, vitamins and minerals as middle-class people. These levels are well above recommended intakes. Are these people poor by American standards? Evidently. Would they be considered poor in any other part of the world, even Sweden? No. Your useage of the term "struggle to survive" is laughable when used to discuss a group of which 97% have a colour television and 78% a VCR or DVD player. The average poor American has more square footage of living space than the average non-poor Londoner, Parisian or Viennese. It may well be. However, the crime level in Denmark has increased 500% since 1960 and the violent crime level by 700%. What is your source, by the way? I gave mine, I think it fair that you give yours! No, it doesn't. Not once have I cited the spurious homebrewed rating system of some self-satisfied institution. My arguments are derived from real statistics and facts, thank you very much. Again, completely meaningless until you define what you mean by "child poverty." The average poor child in the US eats twice as much protein per day as is recommended by nutritionists and will grow up to be one inch taller and ten pounds heavier than the average US soldier in WWII.

No, that is what you are doing. I spent a long post refuting your source with logic and cited facts, and your response has not been to argue, but to attack me in ad hominem fashion, calling me "obtuse", "absurd" and so forth without any real argument as to why. If it is your contention that I am obtuse and absurd, then demonstrate it so that others would come to the conclusion on their own rather than offering empty insults that others can clearly see are mere bluster. I offered a potential explanation for the reason why Swedish life expectancy is somewhat greater than American despite the fact that Sweden has a higher crude death rate and a higher suicide rate. Basically, the reasons for death in Sweden and the USA are different. This isn't terribly relevant when the median American household earns a real and parity-adjusted $13,000 more per year than the median Swedish household. The median figure will ignore the top 10% by definition. Your argument is only valid if you contend that equality is more important than prosperity, that it is better for everybody be dirt-poor than for some people to be moderately wealthy and for a few to be extremely wealthy. Is this what you are saying? If so, why is Bangladesh not a model for you? I am not saying that the figures are wrong. They are all perfectly correct, but they are carefully selected so as to give a false impression. I find it curious that you rush to defend the sources of CCSD when I have not even attacked them. Perhaps you did not read my post carefully enough. I said: I'm curious as to why you keep attacking a source I'm not using. Perhaps I should start debunking the People's Daily as an attack on your argument? I have already done that. I have seen no statistics from you, however, just a link to a source we can now consider worthless. Perhaps you should practice what you preach, and if you want to hear factual evidence, perhaps you should provide some yourself. Your continual failure to do so creates the impression that you don't know anything about the subject beyond hearsay and conjecture. This would further confirm that you have not read my previous post in detail. I asked you to tell me what Sweden gets for her taxes (you did not bother, which is quite interesting - I suspect you have no idea) and then I spent four paragraphs on the example of Denmark, and how the heaviest taxes in the world have not helped Denmark's increasing social ills of crime and violence, poor health, poor education, unemployment and so forth. Is there anything more to your debate than, as Tom Cruise said in A Few Good Men, the "Liar, liar, pants on fire" argument?

If you insist on using this source, Eureka, I will have to debunk it a little more. The CCSD states "Our mission is to develop and promote progressive social policies inspired by social justice, equality and the empowerment of individuals and communities... Our sources of funding include research contracts, the sale of publications and memberships, and donations." Basically, they admit they are pushing an agenda, and their livelihood depends upon pushing that agenda. They sell memberships and solicit donations based upon an ideology that they have to support if they want to get paid. Now, I'm not so naive as to believe that any source is completely unbiased, however, I will believe an academic researcher (whose livelihood depends upon a reputation as objective and scientific) over a lobby group most days. You rubbished the Fraser Institute, however, I have not once cited that as a source. My data comes from published research and from academics at respected universities and other faculties. Returning to the one article you cited: I already went over the dereliction of their definition of a low-paid job. I demonstrated how it could give a very distorted picture, and in fact it does. The median American earns much, much more than the median Swede, but they simply state that Swedish income is more equitable, and it is: every Swede is poorer. Their statistics admit this too, that Americans are richer than Swedes (although they are negligent enough not to state if this is a mean or median calculation). Their argument on wage equity is therefore nonsensical, after all, Bangladesh has much more income equity than either the USA, Canada or Sweden, but is it a good economic role model? Their definition of "poverty" is also derelict. They define it as having less than half the average household income. To show how this figure is meaningless, we can see that if the USA underwent an economic miracle and every household gained an extra $20,000 per annum in real income, the statistics would not be changed at all. The same number of Americans would be judged "poor." The best judgement of poverty is the number of people who don't earn enough for a given quality of life in their locale. They don't use this mode, probably because it reflects badly upon Sweden and best upon the USA (once again, the median American being a lot richer than the median Swede). They cite longer Swedish and Canadian lifespans as a victory for the progressive-socialist states but fail to account for the reasons behind it. For example, in Sweden the crude death rate and suicide rates per 1000 are actually considerably higher than in the US. The figures are distorted by precisely the kind of extremes they insist are a problem with US income - people at the extreme ends of the scale skewing the statistics. In the US, some areas and ethnic groups have endemic crime and murder rates which skew the figures, although for the median American they are not true. While the CCSD is quick to point this out in incomes, it remains strangely silent when the same distortion occurs in life expectancy. Why? Because the numbers don't support their argument. They also decry the smaller amount of education that the US government pays for. However, what they fail to mention is the actual outcome of this policy - surely the most important part! 26% of Americans between 25 and 64 have a college degree, compared to 13% in Sweden. At the other end of the scale, only 14% of Americans have a mere 9 years of education, compared to 26% in Sweden. I must conclude that this essay is a terrible exercise in distortion of facts and biased interpretation. It is highly misleading and borders on outright lying on several occasions. They are highly ambiguous (for example, taking about "low literacy skills" - defined how, exactly?) and obfuscatory. This is not a good source to cite, Eureka. What are they getting for their money exactly? Given their lower standard of living, higher death rates, lower ownership of consumer goods, more stressful pace of life, lower education, poorer R&D, less penetrative high-tech industry and so forth it doesn't sound like a good deal! Since you don't like the fact that we're concentrating on Sweden though, let's switch to Denmark, which has an even more confiscatory-redistributive policy than Sweden does (highest tax rates in the world). Per Henrik Hansen of the Copenhagen Business School reports that Danish crime rates since 1960 have soared 500%. Violent crimes have increased 700%, and are still increasing. These programmes have certainly not made the Danes any safer. The percentage of people in the Danish workforce is declining, with 900,000 people of working age now living full-time from government largesse (up from 300,000 in the early 1970s). This is over a quarter of the workforce. Of every three people that actually work, two work in the private sector, and one works in government redistributing what they earn. Just over half as many a proportion of Danes hold bachelor degrees as compared to the US (15% vs. 26%). 34% of Danes have only 9 years education, compared to 9% in the US. Because the government assigns students to courses based upon quotas, students without high grades will be simply barred from entering the disciplines of their choice. In health, Denmark boasted a high life expectancy in the 1970s, but it has hardly increased at all and today is near the lowest in Western Europe. Politicians say this is due to Danish habits of smoking and drinking, but Hansen says that on any given day one can read several newspaper stories of patients dying while on waiting lists for diagnosis or treatment. Healthcare facilities are using outdated equipment and waiting lists are very long. There certainly isn't a great deal for Denmark, here.

There may not be as many "poor", but the average Swede is a lot poorer than the average American, and poor Americans compare very favourably to poor Swedes in their material circumstances. The Swedish Institute of Trade finds that (on purchasing power parity) the median Swedish income is about $27,000, as compared to $40,000 in the US. In fact, the average Swede earns less than the average black American. According to Cox and Alm, Swedish incidence of ownership of such items as computers, dishwashers, clothes washers, tumbledryers, televisions, microwaves, cars and VCRs is considerably lower than that in the USA. For instance, microwave ownership in the US during the 1990s was 86% of households, compared to 37% in Sweden. 82% of American households owned a tumbledryer, compared to 18% in Sweden. Sweden also boasts a larger disparity between male and female incomes. Swedish women not only earn less than American women, they earn proportionately less compared to Swedish men as well. The pace of life is found to be more than double that of the American, the crude death and suicide rates are both higher, and there are less Swedish teachers per student, one-third as many R&D personnel per 1000 workers, two-thirds the percentage of manufacturing labourers employed in high-tech industries, and so forth.

I asked you for proof, not bluster. Where are these figures and what is the method behind them?

It illustrates how the method used to gather the data in question is derelict. It is easily possible for this method to paint a completely false picture of the situation, so it is not trustworthy. Where is your evidence? What figures do you have on Nordic public debt that contradict mine? What poverty rates? The countries you are talking about don't even publish official poverty figures, so where are you getting them from and what methodology are they using to get them?

I took a look at the "Canada Beats USA - But Loses Gold to Sweden" article. There's a lot of ambiguity here. For example, in the "low paid" figures the numbers are not tied to purchasing power parity or to cost of living, but merely being paid 1/3 less than the national average. To see how this can skew the picture, consider that if every Swede earnt $10 a year, but 9/10 of Americans earnt $100 a year and 1/10 of them earnt $800, the Swedish figures would be far better than the American (0% as compared to 90%), despite the fact that every Swede is far poorer than every American! They boast of how much Sweden pays for social programmes, but don't answer my question: how is this paid for when there is little to no economic growth? The size of the public debts in these countries answer that: the costs are borne by massive borrowing. Moreover, how do they answer my allegation that Nordic government spending from taxation is borne primarily by the working poor? For example, Swedish sales taxes are at 25%, and sales tax is a regressive tax in that it takes from the poor far more than it does from the rich. In Denmark, a person pays about 68% income tax. After one adds sales taxes, government takes 76% of the income of an average Dane. A Danish car purchaser must pay 205% tax on his new vehicle! For comparison, a base-model Kia Rio (a very cheap car) in Canada would cost almost $40,000! Right now, that can buy a very nicely-equipped BMW.

If I may weigh in on this discussion: Firstly, let's not compare the US to Scandinavia and argue that we are comparing capitalism to socialism. The US is not capitalist and arguably has not been since the last third of the 19th Century. In comparing the US to a Scandinavian country, we are simply comparing different modes of socialism and state interventionism. The US is in fact distinctly socialist. It has a massive and hugely expensive welfare and social security system, socialised medicine, and socialised education, paid for with taxes that, at the federal level alone, eat 30% of the average American household income. The line between business and government is very blurred and success in the business world is often dependent upon political connections rather than economic acumen. The federal government employs almost as many people as all Fortune 500 companies combined, I believe. The government is also dedicated to economic interventionism, and even runs many businesses itself as monopolies (the postal service, for instance). Secondly, when studying figures it is important to ask who gathers them, and why. Any elected government has a vested interest in exonerating itself and vindicating its policies. For example, many lauded the Soviet record of infant mortality, pointing out how Western economics had failed in this regard when compared to glowingly low Soviet rates. It later came to light, however, that Soviet practice was not to register the death of an infant for several years, thus falsifying the records and making it appear that the infant mortality rate was far lower than it actually was. Norway and Finland today do not release figures on population below the poverty line. Because of their extensive welfare systems they do not consider anybody to be in this position. However, independent studies show that one in four Norwegians does not earn enough to maintain a minimal lifestyle and is dependent upon government largesse for their very existence. This figure is far higher than that of Canada and over double that of the USA. Japan, for another example, also falsifies its unemployment figures by paying companies the salaries of workers it would otherwise have to fire. This massive tax burden is too large to be shouldered by the rich and rests mostly upon the middle class and the working poor, which explains the economic stagnation of these mixed economies. Japan, which runs its economy along very similar lines, has posted negative economic growth for six years in a row. Sweden is in a very similar situation. Finnish economic growth this year was 1.9%, up from 0.7% in 2000 but a far cry from figures several times higher being posted in recent decades. The rich in these countries now have no more to give, the middle classes are heavily taxed and socialist programmes are now borne increasingly by the poor, the very people they are supposed to help. These problems cast the sustainability of these economies in serious doubt. Increased taxes slow the economy, producing smaller revenues from higher rates (as in now-Liberal governed Ontario). The expensive government services therefore can be bought only with government debt, which continues to pile up. Finnish public debt is over 48% of GDP. The slowing of the economy is also noticeable in Finnish unemployment figures, persistently into double-digits, and after a long struggle since the mid-90s now only down to 9% (and we must doubt the legitimacy of that figure). Basically, these good demographic figures are bought with debt and cannot be kept up. In twenty years we will be discussing either the Finnish free-market and privatization revolution, or we will be discussing the Finnish economic crash.

I don't believe the welfare theorems are useful, firstly because they attempt to make subjectives such as utility into objectives, which they are not; and secondly, because they are not applicable in a situation of limited or assymetrical information, and because of this, since assymetry of information applies to economic planners as much as anybody else it is not possible to attain a Pareto-optimal outcome with economic interventionism. I think David Friedman describes himself as Chicago-school. However, in answer to your second question it probably does not matter. For instance, von Mises is a mainstay of Austrian economics, and David Friedman is a self-described Chicagoan, however, when it comes to the question of policing, law and justice, Friedman's opinion is more in line with Austrian modes of thought than von Mises who, in this field, could probably be best described as Marxist! As somebody on another forum once quipped, von Mises was not a Misesian. Murray Rothbard is probably a better Austrian-capitalist than von Mises. Therefore, I think it important not to judge people too much on what school they place themselves into but on the schools themselves, and moreover, on the principles of their thought. I agree with the majority of the fundamental principles of Austrian capitalism, as would other self-confessed Austrian capitalists. The same is not true of the principles of Chicago capitalism. The other important distinction to make is between anarchists and statists. Friedman or even Chomsky have very different ideas on economics, however, they all agree that force and coercion should not play a part and because of that, any economic theories are predictive rather than prescriptive. On the other hand, an Austrian statist like Alan Greenspan may have more accurate economic ideas (on the whole) than either Friedman or Chomsky, but has not renounced the use of force and might well be prepared to use coercion in order to ensure his preferred economic outcome. The joke of it is that Huben commits virtually all of the fallacies he derides libertarians for. He also uses some very silly arguments against libertarianism. For example, he unbelieveably trots out the Proudhonism: "Property is theft." But what is theft? Expropriation of property! So property is expropriation of itself? If you promise to behave yourself, go ahead.

Alright, that makes sense. But I don't agree with the premise that a rapidly shifting equilibrium has negative consequences. If demand increases rapidly and supply also increases rapidly (as in the period 1700-1913), this should not cause a problem. Predictability might be a factor in that it might cause malinvestment in a rapidly-growing sector, as might have been a cause of the dot-com bubble, but as in that example, sooner or later those malinvestments will correct themselves without necessitating the intervention of a central bank. More to the point, artificially altering the money supply creates further malinvestment and causes disruption of the consumption/investment relationship, which causes far greater problems. No, there is a third: inflationary spending. Government can tax (take money), borrow (ask for money) or inflate (make money). In the past, it was central banks. Now the government has also given permission for private banks to do this in the form of fractional reserve banking. Usually, however, private banks do this in making loans to government. This has the same effect as if the government were to print more money. Workers will prefer an increase in value, and this is a constant regardless of inflation. In the conventional free market the natural tendency of prices to fall will provide this increase in value, even if wages remain constant or even fall (as long as they fall slower than prices do). Inflation, however, causes prices to rise, and therefore the worker preference for increased value will be redirected towards a rising wage. So he will demand more money, even though he would not necessarily do so in a non-inflationary environment. I think we are in agreement, yes. Perhaps I should have said that workers will demand more currency, but the same or greater amount of money. Ah, OK. This is the usually accepted definition of inflation these days, so one could certainly not claim that you are uninformed, but I contend that this is an effect of inflation and not inflation itself. Inflation is the artificial creation of money, and rising prices (or, as you have put it, "a decrease in the unit purchasing power of currency" which amounts to the same thing) are unavoidable consequences of this inflation.