Is Social Democracy good?

joecavalry

I believe its flawed due to no moderation of use and excessive use of certain policies and methods.

northsouthkorea

Social Democracy is not flaws and executes more naturals rights of people in their governments.

CYDdharta

To borrow an old adage, it works great ... until you run out of other people's money

AlwaysCorrect

@joecavalry Social democracies are prevalent in democratic countries. The democracy is the moderation as people vote for what they want. Guess what, once they experience it people tend to vote for things like free healthcare and not dying in the gutter!

@CYDdharta

All countries experience nadirs and peaks of economic policy, but the social democracies correlate very very highly with high standards of living. 

melef

Social democracy is possibly not good due to certain effects.

CYDdharta

AlwaysCorrect said:

All countries experience nadirs and peaks of economic policy, but the social democracies correlate very very highly with high standards of living. 

They haven't run out of other peoples money ... yet

AlwaysCorrect

CYDdharta said:

AlwaysCorrect said:

All countries experience nadirs and peaks of economic policy, but the social democracies correlate very very highly with high standards of living. 

They haven't run out of other peoples money ... yet

Money isn't a finite resource that disappears when you spend it on things.

CYDdharta

@AlwaysCorrect Technically true, although the value of that money to buy anything is finite.

AlwaysCorrect

@CYDdharta

No, because money doesn't disappear.

You pay Paul the plumber $10 to fix your pipes. He uses that $10 to buy food from Greg the Grocer. He uses that to pay the government his taxes. The government uses that $10 to pay Norma the Nurse for her job working in a nationally funded hospital. Norma pays you $10 to stop making bad quality posts on the internet because she's really bored of it.

Money can be spent again and again and again and the velocity of money is an important concept in economics.

Fredsnephew

AlwaysCorrect said:

@CYDdharta

No, because money doesn't disappear.

You pay Paul the plumber $10 to fix your pipes. He uses that $10 to buy food from Greg the Grocer. He uses that to pay the government his taxes. The government uses that $10 to pay Norma the Nurse for her job working in a nationally funded hospital. Norma pays you $10 to stop making bad quality posts on the internet because she's really bored of it.

Money can be spent again and again and again and the velocity of money is an important concept in economics.

What is money?
Money is no longer a token representation of a debt.
Money is now the one uniting god, the one god that is able to sustain some sort of social order. 

Your exemplar only works if the system represents a continuous cycle of events.
That is to say, if CYDdharta uses his hush money to pay Paul for his plumbing services.

But demand is always increasing and the $10 in the system will never be able to sustain demand.
We cope with demand by establishing social institutions (Stock Markets etc.) that are allowed to give false value to commodities and services and consequently add new money to the system.

Most money in the system these day, has no actual representative value.

CYDdharta

AlwaysCorrect said:

@CYDdharta

No, because money doesn't disappear.

You pay Paul the plumber $10 to fix your pipes. He uses that $10 to buy food from Greg the Grocer. He uses that to pay the government his taxes. The government uses that $10 to pay Norma the Nurse for her job working in a nationally funded hospital. Norma pays you $10 to stop making bad quality posts on the internet because she's really bored of it.

Money can be spent again and again and again and the velocity of money is an important concept in economics.

... so according to you, we have no need for mints and no need for monetary policy.  What a patently absurd position to take.

Vincent_Costanzo

I'm against social democracy because of the policies it promotes. I'm against raising the minimum wage because of the negative economic impacts it would cause, and I'm against affirmative action because it's the embodiment of racial discrimination. Supporters of affirmative action either believe that Blacks and Hispanics have no chance of competing with Whites and Asians on equal ground, or they believe that whites and Asians are less deserving of an education or job on the basis of their race.

MayCaesar

Social democracy is an oxymoron. Or a tautology, depending on your perspective. Democracy by its nature is social; it is a system in which the law is defined by the social consensus, in the form of people's representatives voting for the legal suggestions.

That said, by "social democracy" people often mean a democratic system in which the focus the government places in its policies is on assuring that everyone has an easy affordable access to the essential components constituting quality of life, such as housing, healthcare, education, clean environment, quality roads and so on. I do not see anything wrong with it, but I do see the problem in letting the government heavily control these areas, as private market tends to be economically much more effective in its performance than private market, and also as the government controlling the economical fields vital for the society controls the society as well - with obvious potential consequences.

Back in 80-s, Feynman did an analysis to compare how much faster scientific projects progress when they are organized by private versus public institutions. I do not remember the exact results, but his conclusion was that public-controlled research was, at least, several times slower and less effective in terms of the resources spent, than private-controlled research. He also participated in the investigation of the Challenger disaster and was shocked by just how that heavily overseen by the federal authorities project was full of obvious design flaws, and how much ignorance there was in the officials involved in its management.
The government simply is not suited for economical organization - one of the reasons being it operating on completely different incentives, compared to the regular business owners (looking good in front of the voters vs maximizing return of the investment).

Sanders and the like do not understand it. They think that it is possible to redistribute the resources from the rich individuals and companies to the poor ones, to raise taxes for everyone and to use them to take full control over the vital sectors of the social economy - and to improve people's quality of life. They lack proper economical education, however, suggesting that it cannot be done.
The US currently is the top country in the world as measured by the average income with PPP correction. In terms of GDP per capita with PPP correction, among those European countries Sanders praises so much, only Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg and Ireland surpass the US. Switzerland is about as far from social democracy as the US is, Norway has an extremely profitable oil business and a small population (combination that makes even such totalitarian dictatorships as Qatar and UAE extremely wealthy), Luxembourg is a tiny investment heaven similar to Singapore, and Ireland has an interesting system in which all international assets temporarily stored in Ireland are actually considered Irish (skewing the estimate significantly - unlike Luxembourg, which in a similar situation gives a more accurate figure).  

In other words, the average American gains more economical assets yearly than any average European in a country that finds itself in a similar geopolitical situation, barring Switzerland in which the economy can be characterized as "American economy on steroids". Sanders' narrative has no basis on reality, it is the old good semi-socialist scare predicting the impending doom unless socialist policies are soon implemented - despite all the evidence pointing at the contrary on both points (the evidence states that the country is doing great, and implementing socialist policies will result in the opposite). Sanders used to sing praises to Soviet Union, claiming that it is misunderstood by the West and unjustly vilified - until it collapsed, and he conveniently forgot about his narrative and moved on to Cuba and, later, Venezuela, despite them being at the bottom of all realistic economical rankings.

Trump and Sanders are both wrong in their doomsaying. Trump says that Europe is collapsing, while it is doing as well as ever - and Sanders says that the US is collapsing, while it is doing as well as ever. Rather than buying their fear-mongering and voting for impractical extreme ideologies, I suggest sticking to the facts and voting for people who are willing to build on top of what this country has achieved, not scrap it and start with something new that contradicts every fact and common sense.