It was to show that you made an unsupportable statement.
I didn't you are simply choosing to make a strawman argument to come up with some form of response.
Dirius, I wonder what kind of fairy tale world you inhabit. Surely your economics class included concepts of monopoly and oligopoly where consumer choice is limited. In the United States, people talk about "food deserts," where there are no real supermarkets and the only food choices are from the corner convenience store. Advertising can convince consumers that products are safe when they are not.(The tobacco industry being a major culprit here until their ads were banned.)
You seem to believe that workers have unlimited choices of jobs. This is not correct. Look at their qualifications and circumstances. That single mother may have to take any part-time job she can find that allows her to get her children to and from school. A 55-year old coal miner who once made good money cannot simply move into high tech when the mine closes.
The example of "food" desserts is due to lack of economic development, not the other way around so again, another strawman.
People have a choice to believe in advertising, just like they choose to believe in the news, or politicians.
A single mother limits her options because of her own choices: of having a kid. Thats not anyone elses fault, nor the fact that she has to spend time caring for him.
If you don't condone it, then don't be a cheerleader for a raw capitalist system that downloads it into poor countries. We're not talking about kids growing up on the family farm. We're talking about little girls in India kneeling on wet concrete floors, peeling shrimp that get shipped off as hors d'oevres for western consumers. We're talking about kids working in unhealthy garment factories in Bangla Desh, hunched over sewing machines for 10, 11 hours per day.
Well, define "better off"-- for whom? The poorer countries tend to have major income disparities between rich and poor, where income and capital accumulate in the hands of the few. Little girls glueing running shoes together and inhaling toxic fumes arguably are not better off.
And they used to do that before capitalism arrived, when they were covered in cow dung plowing the fields and tending for the animals, transporting water from rivers to the household, etc., as they did for 2000 years.
Diference is they now earn more money than they used to and can actually afford better things, better technology, and sometimes the parents can now provide them with an education.
Slowly the economic growth allows better conditions, better salaries, better education.
Scandinavian countries also have high tax rates, but without your level of income disparity. If people are employed by the government, living above the poverty level, then they presumably are not contributing to the high rate of income disparity.
The other points you mention, like cronyism or failure to control inflation, are not the fault of a socialist government per se.
Scandinavian countries are among the top countries in economic freedoms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom
They have some social policies, but they are by far, free market economies.
In my country most government jobs pay equal or more than wages in the economic sector. We have a term for this called "
ñoqui" (f
rom italian food gnocchi) which refers to people employed by the government who do nothing but earn a salary because of party affiliation.
We don't have much cronysm here, not many companies can survive in the long run here. It is 100% the government interference in the economy.
High inflation is the result of dealing with a fiscal deficit, which is used to pay for social programs or goverment jobs. Massive debt is the other symptom.
Using Argentina as an example was a bad choice on your part waybread, for two reasons:
a) It is a socialist country any way you look at it.
b) You clearly know nothing of the region.
