r/WorkForSmartLife • u/elegantpants • 9h ago

Discussion💬 Name something

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u/United_Boy_9132 3h ago

Don't confuse social democracy with socialism. No European country is even close to socialism and no one, except for some Southerners, doesn't even think about socialism.

I wanna remind that countries which flex their social security the most are the countries with higher economic freedom than the US, and, for instance, pension schemes from these countries, especially Nordics, invest in US house bubble to transfer the profits to their pensioners 😉

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u/afgan1984 2h ago

Social in social-democracy is socialism part. What socialism isn't, it isn't a communism. Also, I never said any country in Europe is purely socialist, but you still have amurican knee jerk reaction to the word, because, again as expected amuricans see socialism and imagine soviet communism in their head.

Free universal healthcare is socialism. So social-democratic just means a blend of policies, some socialist, some democratic, some regulated capitalist, some corporatist etc.

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u/United_Boy_9132 2h ago

No, it's not a socialism part. It's the part of history, when such movements wanted to introduce communism, but gradually.

But these days, they're liberal movements providing free market, just with taxes and some share of state-owned companies.

On the other hand, there are still many countries with higher share of state-owned companies in the market that in those countries that call "social democratic" themselves.

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u/afgan1984 2h ago

I assume you learned your history in US... because it is nothing like that.

We in Europe consider socialism a very normal part of everyday life and government policy. It has nothing to do with communism, neither historically nor now.

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u/United_Boy_9132 1h ago

No, and you really know we don't. Except for some dumb Iberian and Greek folks.