Capitalism is criticized a lot on here (especially by American users, it seems to me). Most of that seems well-founded, but I also have the feeling that most of these complaints are simply venting and not the first step to improvement.

So I would like to know what specific changes you (especially Americans) want to see from lawmakers.

  • ImplyingImplications
    39·
    7 months ago

    The youtube channel, Economics Explained, has a lot of great videos on macroeconomic concepts. They recently featured a video on Norway pointing out how it handles its economy near perfectly.

    The video explains Norway got pretty lucky, and it’s not like every country could straight up copy them and succeed, but the major points are:

    1. Their massive natural resource reserves are majority owned by the government. The government puts the profits from this into stable long term investments to benfit the citizens of the country. In many other countries, natural resources have been sold to private companies for a one time payment and private shareholders now benefit from the long term investment.
    2. Their government has one of the highest tax rates in the world, even though they earn so much profit from natural resources they could literally have a 0% tax rate. Despite this massive tax rate, Norway has some of the lowest emigration of people and companies. Nobody has fled the country due to high taxes like many fear would happen elsewhere.
    3. Their government spends heavily on social welfare and ensuring a high quality of life for all of its citizens, and their companies provide short work weeks and long vacations, which are huge reasons why nobody has left.

    I think when people say they hate capitalism, what they mean is they hate working 50 hour weeks at a job they hate for a boss who treats them like dirt for a salary that doesn’t even pay their rent while the CEO has more wealth than small nations and spends it on eating endangered animals on their mega yatch with politicians and judges who then pass laws making it legal to hire children and dump garbage into the ocean. They don’t really care about private companies and investments, they care about how sociopathic greed has become so normal that it’s actively defended.

    • Keith@lemm.ee
      7·
      7 months ago

      In the way you explain norway, it seems this will not be possible without lots of natural resources that are worth a significant amount.

      • averyminya@beehaw.org
        6·
        7 months ago

        Not quite. Everywhere has a resource of something - it may not be a natural resource like minerals or valuable liquids, it everywhere has something.

        The difference is how these have been used to invest. Norway invests in itself by keeping those resources internal. As the user said, the people and its government could choose not to pay taxes, but they still do. That has a huge gain on the longevity of resources because now the investment from them is actually being compounded upon from its people and its resources.

        Other countries simply do not put investments in themselves. As the user said, they sell off these assets or let the claim go to a corporation which then maximizes its profit potential instead of sustaining it. (in some cases, the country had little to no choice so it’s not entirely a fault of that government but a poor handling of circumstances). We sell our resources, our people pay taxes, there is no compounding happening. The resources are now gone, the money has dried up, and the people are being pumped for the rest.