Huge oil and gas reserves also help out.
Most of the Nordic countries do not have those. Norway has a lot, Denmark has a little, the others have nothing significant
checks out a bit. when they lost cheap russian energy, they took a hit to their industry.
It’s taxation.
Almost, it’s imperialism. The Nordic model depends on the global system of imperialism to both have safety nets and huge profits for capitalists.
my country taxes the shit out of us and we are still poor.
Taxation + efficiency + [less open]corruption
i don’t think so, can you source that claim? those are just meaningless words diverting from the fact europeans bullied us into operating our services for their profit instead. also cheap extractivism from your colonies.
While many European countries were heavily into colonizing, I don’t think the Nordic countries were that excessive into the practice. At least, not to have an empire to extract resources like Britain, France, Spain, etc did.It would appear I was wrong on this take.
Nordic countries are subimperialist. They receive the benefits of unequal exchange, unfair trade agreements, technological advantage, and so on but rely on the explicit mechanisms of enforcement to come from prime imperialists pike the US.
Fair enough, I was unaware of the situation. I always heard of the big colonizing countries being responsible for a lot of issues, but I can see how that could still impact other countries.
It’s less obvious but can see how the Nordic countries fall in line with imperialist structures. I’ll expound a bit but it is not in any way in disagreement.
The nordic countries lend weight to unequal IP restrictions and dollarization and the IMF, they never do anything material against imperialist wars (they actually want a piece of the pie by providing arms), and now that they are accepting their role as NATO pawns they are increasing their military budgets, cutting the welfare state, and allowing their fascistic political foemations to thrive while suppressing the left. They all openly tolerate “Israeli” genocidal fascism and even carry water for their project against domestic dissidents. Nordic countries are deeply embedded in global capital monopoly, the engine of imperialism, whether it is Norway as a petrostate or shipping logistics like in Sweden and Denmark. And they do not do this reluctantly and with policy against imperialist aims. Internally, they are fanning the flames against POC immigrants as the big scapegoat for why their lives are materially deteriorating - not their own state’s willing deindustrialization or cuts to services.
To put it simply, they are liberals. They briefly were the selective snapshot of “successful” liberalism if you didn’t peek behind the curtain of global exploitation (who grew that “luxurious” pineapple and what were they paid!?). The global financial system propped up states in their region as a means by which to oppose communists, as if communists were there to steal your children or do the genocides that imperialists constantly engaged in. That system is no longer intentionally doing this, it is neoliberal and there is no communist current in Europe. We now watch it decay into the hallmarks of fascism. The empire is pulling back its subsidies, reversing them, and all of “Europe” is collaborating for how to react to this in the worst possible way.
what?? european countries literally control energy distribution in many cities in my country, transportation, and heavy extractivism. that’s very much including nordic countries. they are still heavily into colonizing.
Prove that us taxes are more corrupt than any nordic country? Okay here it goes: i have a brain. Thanks.
Who said anything about the US, you smarmy dumbass?
who is talking about the US here? what does neocolonialism has to do with internal taxes at all?
- superior white skin and blue eyes and blonde hair too?
definitely at least some eurocentrism
Capitalism is great, there’s a reason why Russia and China embrace it.
“They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?” - Fidel Castro
china is transitioning socialist. i have no idea why russia is even specifically relevant, they are one of the capitalist countries yes?
Wikipedia has a list of Chinese billionaires. Software Developer salaries in China are similar to salaries in the west. Laborers appear to make far less than owners. I do not know why an individual needs billions. Seems to violate, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
Maybe the billionaires do not own the capital their laborers use. Maybe the relationship between Chinese billionaire and worker is not exploitative as per the meme. Do the workers control their labor?
Yes, China has billionares. In fact, Roderic Day wrote an essay called China Has Billionaires, you should read it. Ultimately, what determines if a country is socialist or not is not if there are billionaires or not, and isn’t about not having any private property at all or not. In the PRC, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and the small and medium firms are a mix of private, cooperative, and joint-stock ownership. The state has control over the capitalists, and the workers have control of the state. It’s in the primary stage of socialism:
as i mentioned, china is a transitioning socialist economy. this is important to understanding it. here:
currently, a minority of chinese companies are private, and have been declining. they represent a very small minority of total revenue. a capitalist country will never be capable of distributing such enterprises to local jurisdictions like china is, or even almost eradicating poverty over these last few decades.
they are still using free markets for a minority of their economy, which does concentrate wealth. they are not numerous in relation to the size of their economy (or per capita), and some of the examples made of them when they step out of line really puts things into perspective.
Developer salaries in China are similar to salaries in the west
so… kinda high? i wish i was getting paid as much as a western dev, with the comparatively lower cost of living of a country like china. or mine.
China is transitioning socialist, in the direction of capitalism xD
The large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and the economy is developing further and further along a coherent central plan. It’s still in the primary stage of socialism, but it’s only getting further developed, not regressing into capitalism:
What a braindead liberal take
I used to be a liberal before I realized they are apologists for Empire and their talk of morality and interconnectedness is just rhetorical shielding for resource extraction and, lately, genocide.
I wouldn’t call it “liberal” that sounds topical it sure is a brain dead take tho
lmfao China does not embrace capitalism even in the slightest, meanwhile Russia’s public sector is almost as big as China’s
Julan Du and Chenggang Xu analyzed the Chinese model in a 2005 paper to assess whether it represents a type of market socialism or capitalism. They concluded that China’s contemporary economic system represents a form of capitalism rather than market socialism because: (1) financial markets exist which permit private share ownership—a feature absent in the economic literature on market socialism; and (2) state profits are retained by enterprises rather than being distributed among the population in a social dividend or similar scheme, which are central features in most models of market socialism. Du and Xu concluded that China is not a market socialist economy, but an unstable form of capitalism.
“Two Chinese said it. What, that isn’t enough for you tankies!?”
- A definitely-not-racist liberal.
You’re accusing me of being racist because the source I quoted is written by someone in London and Hong Kong?
I’m calling your tokenizing logic racist. The lack is thought you put into the entire endeavor. I cannot imagine being this lazy, incurious, and racist. Sort yourself out.
I’m well sorted and well adjusted thank you very much for your concern though.
No, you are arrogant and this leads you to false confidence that you can correct people who know more than you by hastily googling, “studies that say China is capitalist” and quoting the first result, patting yourself on the back, and thinking, “you did well, kid”.
Get your racist shit out of here.
Blah blah blah [points to China] “is this Ronald Reagan? “
Cite whatever paper you like this is dumbest take possible…
That’s a very liberal understanding of socialism, and explicitly rejects the fact that China is in the beginning stages of socialism, not claiming it’s a higher stage. The large firms and key industries are publicly owned, while the medium and small firms are cooperatively owned, privately owned, or joint-stock. Cheng Enfu made a model to make it easier to understand:
The CCP got into power seventy-six years ago how long does it take to get into the next stage?
China was a largely feudal county working its way out of brutal colonial exploitation - for which the exploiters have never paid reparations and still held on to Hong Kong for decades.
How long does it take to build productive forces and modernize while still subject to unequal exchange and general imperialism? That is a social and political question, so you tell me about where China was and what its path has been. How many other imoerialized countries jave eliminated absolute poverty, by the way? Not just taking decades to do it, but accomplish it at all.
It’s gradually increasing, it doesn’t work in spurts or hard lines. There isn’t a “go to next stage” button on Xi’s desk.
Makes sense but seventy-six years is a really long time.
They went from a colonized agrarian country emerging from a civil war to arguably the most developed country on the planet in only 76 years. That’s incredibly rapid progress. Britain has been capitalist for centuries and has been the world hegemonic empire for a good portion of that time, and yet is less developed. If your point is that going from an agrarian economy to where China is today in less than a century is slow growth, then I’d love to hear what passes your impossibly high standards.
Great, plenty of other economists have concluded the opposite. Here are a few books you can read to educate yourself.
Something about paying $147 to a capitalist to read books about socialism seems strange.
Why?
Wow you have some bad excuses…
Imagine living in year 2025 and not being able to figure out how to find a PDF online. Explains why you’re such an ignoramus I guess.
Why not share the pdf’s and remove a barrier?
Because people doing work need to pay bills and make a living? You also seem to be confused about what capitalism is. A worker selling their own labour is not capitalism. Capitalism is when you use capital to buy up the means of production and then hire workers to work for you and appropriate the value they produce.
why not read the book for you as well as a bedtime story?
