Cú Chulainn wroteYou realise that leftist economic policies are what have made places like Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany and the UK high-quality, safe, secure countries, right? Keynesian economics actually works, I don't know why America has such a hard time grasping this.
I think it depends a lot on the culture. I don't think Keynesian economics have worked in Britain - the perpetual lingering higher poverty rates and occassional social strife that comes out of this is a good indicator.
I know it's net based etc but this is an interesting article on poverty in Britain - as you can see povery is increasing in Britain.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/poverty-and-wealth-across-britain-1968-2005">http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/pove ... -1968-2005</a>
From an Australian perspective, the social welfare state has:
Depleted the worker pool by lowering participation and making Australia highly reliant on a constant flow of migrants.
Has created a very poorly educated society (apparently between 33% and 50% of all Australians are functionally illiterate). I've seen this myself - most of my friends finished 13 years of school and could not read.
Helped exacerbate issues with substance abuse.
Failed to create an effective industrial base.
Australia is rich because it has a lot of mineral wealth that people such as the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are willing to pay a lot of money for.
An ex-Australian Prime Minister once said "Australia has a first world standard of living and a third world economy."
