“Of course! It didn’t work! It would never work!”
~ rich right wing government puppets who slashed all the socialist policies and crippled the beneficial system
But but socialism is communism
But is Finland still the model? Not long ago, the goal of the former Social Democrat prime minister Sanna Marin’s government to end homelessness by 2027 was seen as within reach, but in the last three years sweeping cuts to social services, healthcare and benefits by Finland’s rightwing government have seen the country’s success story go into reverse.
It is the right model, but of course right-wingers have billionaire overlords whose cocks need sucking and there are so many people to hate.
Homelessness is a feature, an example for all to see of those who won’t conform, not a problem for right wingers.
It’s economic terrorism. The owners need homeless on the street to control the working class. They need people to suffer so that the working class continues to live in fear and not question the billionaires existence
We need to tax the wealth of the Epstein class. It’s a big source of their power.
Guillotines, then 100% tax.
“but in the last three years sweeping cuts to social services, healthcare and benefits by Finland’s rightwing government have seen the country’s success story go into reverse”
Classic
a staple amongst right wing governments always give a less fortunate group to look down upon to distract.
Easy concept: Put money in to save and gain money long term -> investment. Conservatives come in and cut so much, that there is no more long term gain -> see all those social investments do not work!!!oneoneeleven!! They only cost money!
Yup. We can learn that left wing politics are humane and right wing politics can only destroy. So nothing new.
The unfortunate fact is that these left wing policies cost money and despite fairly high tax rates, they had to borrow a ton of it. Now that’s being overcorrected for by the right wing and I bet they’ll also lower taxes, causing even more debt.
Much of EU is seeing an increase of both its debt to GDP ratio as well as the average age of its citizens, so a few decades from now, many countries will be proper fucked by debt.
Do you not understand what positive ROI is? Borrowing to invest in social services pays off and increases total revenue in the end. Even if you’re greedy you should love it!
Only reason to oppose it is if you’re a hateful piece of shit
There’s one left wing party and the major right wing one is the one taking record high loans. They’ve had financial control for decades
So, what you are saying is that it is not possible, under capitalism, to provide a solution for the problem that planned economy solves, and that, under capitalism, people will necessarily be tortured by being denied basic necessities like that. If so, I would argue that you are, indeed, correct.
Yes. It is not possible, under capitalism, to provide a solution for the problem that planned economy solves: Running out of working age people.
I’m not exactly sure how a planned economy solves it, but I guess you can explain that to me.
Let me remind you that the problem in question was homelessness. Planned economy solve that problem by making it so that all economic agents (in this case we only care about one - the state) are interested in providing guaranteed housing.
As for running out of working-age people, planned economies have been able to provide favorable conditions to people having children and universal healthcare and guaranteed housing so that people don’t die simply because that would make some rich guy even richer.
There are plenty of capitalist nations providing favorable conditions to people having children, most of them in Europe. It doesn’t work because people don’t have a dozen children if they don’t need them as a retirement plan.
The problem behind homelessness in Finland, a nation that actually wants to do something about it, is the same as the problem behind retirement ages rising across Europe, etc. You’re talking about a nation that taxes the wealthy quite dearly. But if there aren’t enough workers, you have to pay the ones that do exist too much. A planned economy shuffles things around, but it doesn’t make these workers appear out of thin air.
No economic system fixes the fact that with every passing year, there are more people whose upkeep needs to be provided by yet fewer people. Not until most necessary jobs can truly be automated away, but the way things are going, nobody wants that anyway.
If you invest upfront, that investment, like not having to handle healthcare for all those homeless, returns dividents.
There are plenty of capitalist nations providing favorable conditions to people having children, most of them in Europe. It doesn’t work because people don’t have a dozen children if they don’t need them as a retirement plan.
Evidently not, especially if we don’t disregard the fact that those states never provided good living standards for the people they colonised.
Children are becoming much more of an economic burden, and people are being provided fewer and fewer resources to raise them.
The problem behind homelessness in Finland, a nation that actually wants to do something about it, is the same as the problem behind retirement ages rising across Europe, etc.
If retirement age was the sole barrier to providing guaranteed housing under capitalism, we would have witnessed capitalist guaranteed housing before. We didn’t.
You’re talking about a nation that taxes the wealthy quite dearly.
And yet, it still maintains a class of people whose existence is based on making the rest of society poorer.
A planned economy shuffles things around, but it doesn’t make these workers appear out of thin air.
And yet, planned economies have always featured long-term guaranteed housing, while no capitalist economies seem to have.
No economic system fixes the fact that with every passing year, there are more people whose upkeep needs to be provided by yet fewer people.
Are you saying that, for example, 200 years ago, there were more working-class people that were able to work than there are now? Or are low birth-rates something that can be avoided?
The borrowing is because right wing oligarchs evade taxes. If we made sure that the reactionary elite actually gets dealt with, it’d solve a lot.
They do pay tax in Finland, it’s much harder to evade than somewhere like the US or UK. And the tax rates are pretty high.
It’s easy to think that the government having more money can solve everything, but there’s still a limited and shrinking pool of labour available. Money doesn’t make young people materialize out of thin air.
If you look at the average age graph for Finland, you’ll notice that 70 years ago it was very young (tons of children who don’t work) and now it’s pretty old (tons of retirees who don’t work). In the middle there, it was a very strong economy with a strong workforce.
The only way around this is to start importing young people from 3rd world countries while they can still afford to allow their people to emigrate - as their own populations start aging, they may have to start restricting it. That’s unpopular because it drives people’s wages down, but if your labour pool is shrinking faster than the amount of people who need to be supported by the labour pool, you need to expand the labour pool somehow. Unless you want to start killing off old people or raise the retirement age to 75 eventually.
but there’s still a limited and shrinking pool of labour available.
That’s true, but productivity is also part of the equation. A shrinking quota of young people does not mean that the economy can’t be sustainable, when the outpot of a worker grows.
That is why “just money” can actually go a very long way in solving “all the problems”.
I don’t think I can even imagine what a society that has an average age of 25 even looks like.
Roughly like Lemmy and Discord.
If money is stopping us from helping people, then we need to stop using money, rather than stop helping people.
It… doesn’t matter if you use money or not? An aging society has fewer people working, i.e fewer people helping other people? You’ll have the same problem regardless of capitalism vs communism. Or rather, under capitalism it might even be easier to abuse young, able-bodied folk into supporting a bunch of people who don’t work, we just call those people capitalists rather than retirees or disabled people.
Are you suggesting… stealing?
Well then, tax the rich.
Already explained this elsewhere in the thread, but that doesn’t magically make young people appear out of thin air. Money can be used to motivate people to work, it doesn’t make them appear out of thin air.
You’ll have to start importing people from the third world to make up for your aging society while that’s still an option (i.e while they still have enough young people to allow emigration).
I swear it seems that most people here seem to think money alone can solve every issue without humans being involved when it comes to these issues. If that were the case, why do we need people in the first place? Just have the money farm for food, build housing, etc.
Finland right now has the highest unemployment rate in the EU, so lack of young people can’t explain this particular problem.
That’s the last few years, I’m talking long term. No western society can survive the next century without severe welfare cuts unless everything gets automated or we start allowing a lot more immigrants (yes, eventually possibly outnumbering the native folks). It’s a process that has been going on for a while now.
The current high unemployment is mostly because of a weak economy, but the economy itself is weak for a number of reasons, one being that all the taxation wasn’t really being invested in things that benefit the economy. A super cynical outlook would be that housing the homeless is part of the problem because that money could’ve been used to support business growth instead. I’m not going to claim that, but I will say that Finland should’ve found places to refocus spending a decade ago, not now.
A planned economy could theoretically do this better, but 1) at the expense of people’s agency in terms of selecting work, 2) at the expense of nice-to-have nonessential goods and services that we’ve all known accustomed to, 3) still not forever because eventually retirees will outnumber working-age folk by a huge margin. Even China went for capitalism because that’s easier than fully controlling an economy.
This is why I don’t trust the “SocDem” way (Scandinavian socialism.) If you let the capitalists control capital, especially media, it’s just a matter of time before they ruin everything.
The right does not want a safe society. They thrive on fear, so they require unsafety
They want hierarchy. A king, nobles, and an underclass. They don’t care if they’re on top, just so long as someone is below them.
That is conservatism! It was born to support the royals! The core of their believes is that there has to be a hierarchy you are destined to be in and you need to find your place and stay there. Also sorry, you are not over them, cause you are obviously lazy and not in their inner circle, or something.
100%. This is why they oppress women, automatic half the population below the lowest man in their hierarchy. Then vast swaths of those in any minority. Then the poor, etc. And they attract rubes and bullies at each stage.
20% of people are born predisposed to this and will always want it. There are more of us.
They are sociopaths, so they thrive on making others insecure
The elephant in the room are the military expenses to protect against Russia.
The open question is if 5% are necessary or if 2% would have been enough.
Plus I think something like 8% GDP loss from sanctions. Finland did major trade with Russia
Nobody can trust Russia. Assholes downed a civil aeroplane and refuse to take responsibility. Also they occupied a lot of Europe and Russified it as much as they tried.
I think that the expenses must be paid from billionnaires’ wallets, and those billionnaires must not be able to trickle the expenses down, also not being able to flee.
Nobody can trust Russia.
You are implying that somebody can trust the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also, most of the world very much does seem to be able to trust Russia just fine.
Well except for the people that share a continent with them…
Incorrect. Most of Eurasia is fine with Russia, including most of its neighbours.
You must be thinking of the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan as not trusting Russia.
Also, it is telling that you recognise that the vast majority of the countries that share planet with said invaders do not trust them. Must have something to do with the constant invasions and other atrocities.
Incorrect. Most of Eurasia is fine with Russia, including most of its neighbours.
My favourite Lemmy meme is American tankies pretending they understand European geopolitics. The average Pole or Estonian or Latvian or Lithuanian or would rather die than submit to the gruelling suffering of living under Russian occupation again. This user doesn’t care about the truth, but for anyone who is interested, these are Russia’s European neighbours:
🇳🇴 Norway - Opposes Russia
🇫🇮 Finland - Opposes Russia
🇪🇪 Estonia - Opposes Russia
🇱🇻 Latvia - Opposes Russia
🇱🇹 Lithuania - Opposes Russia
🇵🇱 Poland - Opposes Russia
🇺🇦 Ukraine - Opposes Russia
🇧🇾 Belarus - Supports / allied with Russia
My friend grew up under Russian occupation. She was cold and hungry her entire childhood. Friends and family would be randomly detained in the night. Sometimes they would never be seen again. They had to ask permission to travel anywhere, and never out of the country. No one could afford things like cars. Jobs were assigned, as were apartments.
Communism is evil. Russia is an imperialist dictatorship determined to exterminate all opposition.
Lol Russia invaded Afghanistan you donkey.
When?
If you mean that the USSR militarily intervened in your invasion of Afghanistan at the request of the government of Afghanistan (reluctantly - after several such requests), then you are just being silly.
The US is untrustworthy. Russia is also untrustworthy.
Actually, I’ll keep going (nonexhaustively and in no particular order):
Germany, the UK, Iran, China, France, Qatar, Canada, both Koreas, obviously Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Brazil, UAE, Sweden, Denmark, Morocco, and Japan are all untrustworthy.
(Please note that I’m not suggesting people from these countries cannot be trusted, but the countries themselves, meaning people acting on behalf of these countries and the governments themselves)
What are your arguments for Iran, the PRC, the DPRK, and Belarus being untrustworthy?
What agreements did they betray and what invasions did they participate in this century?Oh, I don’t trust any governments, but I thought a list of ~200 would be overkill.
For those specifically? Iran’s shitty to women and Kurds (but man do I love what they’re doing with the US); China’s shitty to its neighbors, the Congo, and Uyghurs; and the DPRK and Belarus are providing military support to Russia for its neighbor invasion.
they occupied a lot of Europe and Russified it as much as they tried.
That was the USSR, led by a Georgian. The Russians can be blamed for much but I think they were resettled in the USSR much like any other ethnic group.
If you want to claim that the USSR liberating Europe from the original nazis and stopping the Lebensraum and the Holocaust was “occupation”, you have to also concede that those parts of Europe are currently occupied by NATO.
occupied by NATO
ahhahahahahahahaaaaa
was that the NATO invasion of 1989 when the cluster fuck of the USSR finally imploded and the NATO troops invaded and installed puppet governments
i mean there really is no point talking to ml’s
Really not sure what you could disagree with in my comment in good faith.
Considering that those governments are now puppet governments of the US, it does seem fair to talk about occupation, given that you consider the USSR’s liberation of that part of Europe from the original nazis to be ‘occupation’.
Also, if you want to talk about how people ‘democratically’ chose to join the most prolific invader in the world (, you do have to admit that they should bear responsibility for invasions of Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other places.
It’s a real mystery how the CIA managed to brainwash all the east european warsaw pact countries into hating the USSR while all of their media was still under the control of the proletariat.
That’s a rather silly claim, considering that plenty of people’s lives did get worse after the undemocratic dismantlement of the USSR (which most of these supposed USSR-haters voted against), and the rest are now beneficiaries of things like invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s not really surprising that people who join gangs of robbers, murderers and torturers hate not being beneficiaries of such and will claim that they were oppressed even when their living standards were demonstrably some of the best in the world.
Also, you do understand that the USSR was one of the most significant forces behind the decolonization of Africa and Asia, and that it helped liberation movements there, right? And you do understand what that means with regards to what sort of people would hate it, don’t you?
I don’t.
Then you are contradicting yourself.
How?
You are either claiming that the USSR’s liberation of Europe both was and wasn’t occupation, or you are claiming that the USSR preventing fascists from coming into power on those countries was ‘occupation’, while the US putting fascists into power there and also doing things like what has been done to Greece and Ukraine is somehow not such.
The elephant in the room are the military expenses to protect against Russia.
Probably shouldn’t have been invading Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, and shouldn’t have been pushing for war with Russia all these decades, then.
Also, as there’s no standardized way to count these, Finland with mandatory conscription has a crapload of expenses which aren’t included in miltary expenses. In current global situation I don’t think increasing expenses was a wrong call and it’s not purely black and white, there’s also at least some jobs to finns trough the investments, but I’d say that our money would’ve been better spent to something else than US and Israel tech as (specially USA) has not been really reliable partner.
But also the reality is that even without those expenses our budget has been negative for quite a while, so something had to be done. I’m not saying that current government had the best actions, and they have objectively made things worse on some places, but just waiting for a miracle wouldn’t have worked either. But that’s a whole another discussion.
Rant incoming! Their biggest failure is making people fear for themselves and their families, by those massive cuts in welfare and healthcare, and then even literally laughing about it.
That tanked the home economy, as basically now everyone who can is saving, since if the safety nets are not working, you have to build them for yourself. The ones that have plenty, are investing them, which means that money is mostly flowing out of the country. And the cuts in welfare took the money directly out of the system, as people who need it would use all of it in everyday stuff, like food - and now they have less to use. Cuts to healthcare and social services cause people’s problems getting worse, which then costs a lot more, as people drop out of workforce, have to have more expensive surgeries, children protective services and police are needed more etc.
And raising the prices people have to pay for healthcare means, a lot of people cannot afford to see the doctor until their problems get way worse, and that raises the expenses even more as well.
And forcing people to rely on toimeentulotuki (the absolute last line of welfare) costs a lot more than what it would cost without, already just because the system has to process all the applications every month, not to mention how it forces people to be passive and makes it really hard to improve their situation.
And the complete removal of the small amount you can earn before the unemployment money gets cut, means people will not take the small gigs, which again means less money flowing in the system, and people getting more and more passive, and having to rely on toimeentulotuki instead.
And… the list just gets longer, the more these idiots manage to wreck havoc, with their ideological bullshit, and ignoring scientific results.Unless we get a government, that does not have any of the money worshipping morons in there, the situation will not improve. They have to fix what was broken: somehow manage to convince people, they do not need to fear, or the doom spiral will just get worse and worse. People have to trust they will not lose everything the moment they get sick or lose their jobs, for things to actually work.
I’m curious to understand how disruptive and destructive people are handled. In my community I have heard of multiple tenants - who by all appearances aren’t mentally ill, as they have jobs and families - causing damage that requires stripping the floors and walls, replacing plumbing etc. Simply bringing someone in from the cold doesn’t automatically remove the reasons they’re originally unhoused, and there’s often a reasonable opposition to supervisor visit/inspections as part of previous trauma.
If you break stuff in a rented apartment, you pay the bill. If you dont pay the bill; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distraint (the Sweden section seems to be quite similar to what happens here). If you start earning and paying taxes, you’ll have money taken straight from your paycheck and sent to the people you owe money to. There is some time limit to this, but its like 15 years or something.
Things might have changed since I last checked this stuff, over 10 years ago.
How does that work when they’re a recently homeless mentally ill drug addict who causes damage in the tens of thousands of dollars? They don’t have a job etc.
Usually the renters have insurance for damage caused by a person unwilling to pay. Insurance companies pay up and then try to recuperate some of the costs from the person responsible for the damage.
Drug addicts and mentally ill people are offered help and if they cant get or live in a normal rental apartments, there are sort of dormitory style places with nurses, guards and other staff 24h or 12h per day to keep things in check. They require the persons living there to check in at least once a day, they have a nurse signed up for them, usually have a session with the nurse once a week or so, a doctor checks up on them regularly as well. That’s the sort of last resort thing, if one doesn’t want to live in those places, then the government sees it as them choosing to be homeless. Nobody will be forced to get a apartment, nobody is forced to rent an apartment.
And of course properly mentally ill people are usually kept in mental hospitals.
And of course properly mentally ill people are usually kept in mental hospitals.
De-institutionalisation was a huge mistake in the US. While the abuses needed to be stopped, throwing mentally unwell people into the streets was a massive overreaction.
Yeah to me that decision was completely insane. Whoever did that and whoever could have stopped it but didn’t, should be locked up in the institutions.
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