Tag Archives: Finland

News

Are Nordic countries succeeding with socialism like Bernie Sanders says?

6 Comments
Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries
Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries

Last week, I saw back to back studies on Nordic countries reported by the far-left UK Independent and Barron’s magazine. We’re probably going to hear more about how great socialism is from socialists, and since they seem to point to Nordic countries as proof, we should probably look at the studies and see what the truth is.

Let’s start with the report from Barron’s. You’ll have heard of Barron’s if you’re an investor.

It says:

Although there are areas—especially in taxes and labor market regulation—where socialist elements still exist in the Nordics, the region is by no means socialist today. In fact, according to the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark rank among the 30 most capitalist countries in the world.

These countries used to be socialist in the 1970s and 1980s. Socialism means a huge government work force, high taxes, massive regulation of private sector businesses, and massive spending on welfare programs. You didn’t have to marry before having children, the government would give you welfare. You didn’t have to take care of yourself, the government would give you free health care. You didn’t have to save for retirement, the government would give you a pension.

The article mentions one country in particular – Sweden. And here is what socialism looked like in Sweden:

In 1960, for every 100 “market-financed” Swedes (i.e. those who derived their income predominantly from private enterprise), there were 38 who were “tax-financed” (i.e. dependent on the public sector for their income, whether as civil servants or as recipients of payments from the state). Thirty years later, that number had risen to 151—in other words, there were significantly more people living off of the state than paying into the system. This reflects Sweden’s move away from a capitalist free-market economy to a socialist model.

When people talk about socialism, they mean more people living off the state than paying into the system.

But socialism can’t last forever. Eventually, the people in the private sector realize that they are keeping less and less of what they earn, and they stop working, or just leave. The article notes that IKEA, which started out in Sweden, moved out to avoid paying the 57% corporate tax rate.

Eventually, and this is the part that Bernie Sanders is ignorant about, Sweden slashed or eliminated taxes across the board, then cut their government spending on welfare, subsidies and gv:

A major tax reform in 1990/91 slashed corporate taxes from 57% to 30%. Income from shares was exempted from taxation, while capital gains from shares were taxed at only 12.5%.

The top marginal income-tax rate was set at around 50%, a reduction by 24 to 27 percentage points for the majority of the workforce. The proportion of earners taxed at a marginal rate of over 50% dropped from over half to only 17% paying income tax to the central government.

The reforms continued over the following years: in 2004, the estate tax of up to 30% was scrapped. Today, there is no estate tax in Sweden. The abolition of the wealth tax, which had already been cut, came into effect retroactively as of 1 January 2007. The corporate tax rate continued to decline, getting cut from 30% to 26.3% in 2009 and to 22% in 2013. Property tax rates were also cut substantially.

Between 1993 and 2000, social spending dropped from 22.2% to 16.9% of GDP, economic subsidies from 8.7% to 1.8% and public-sector payroll costs from 18.2% to 15.6%.

Sweden might be a little further ahead of some of the other Nordic countries. Over in Finland, they are still climbing out of it, and the massive government spending is so hard for socialists to cut.

Here’s a story from Finland about their government-run health care system – the same kind that Bernie is always bragging about, and telling us how well it works in Finland.

Far-left Reuters reports:

Finland’s coalition government resigned on Friday a month ahead of a general election, saying it could not deliver on a healthcare reform package that is widely seen as crucial to securing long-term government finances.

Healthcare systems across much of the developed world have come under increasing stress in recent years as treatment costs soar and people live longer, meaning fewer workers are supporting more pensioners.

Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected. But reform has been controversial and, in Finland, plans to cut costs and boost efficiency have stalled for years.

The very health care systems that Bernie lectures American voters about are all in decline and failing:

Other Nordic countries have also grappled with the need to cut costs. Sweden is to gradually raise its retirement age and has opened up parts of the healthcare system to the private sector in a bid to boost efficiency.

Denmark will gradually increase the retirement age to 73 – the highest in the world – while cutting taxes and unemployment benefits to encourage people to work more.

If you learned anything from this article, I’d like you to do me a favor. Please share and/or tweet this post, or share and/or tweet the posts from Barron’s and Reuters. We have an election coming up in 2020, and right now, the people are being lied to by foolish socialist politicians who talk and talk about things they have no knowledge about. We need to correct the views of the American people with facts. We can’t make the mistake of electing Democrats who are terrible at health care, and only good at making promises to spending taxpayer money. They have no idea how economics actually works in the real world, and we need to do everything we can to keep them out of power.

 

News

Is there anything in the atheistic worldview that rationally grounds human rights?

5 Comments
Support for free speech in different countries
Support for free speech in different countries (Source: Pew Research)

I think it’s useful for Christians in America to look at what is happening to Christians in other countries, so that we can understand what the future holds for us. Most other countries are further along the road to secularism than America is, so you can how a secular government reacts when a Christian exercises his or her free speech rights in public.

Here’s an example from Finland:

A Christian politician who is under police investigation for sharing a Bible verse on Facebook has spoken out about her shocking ordeal.

In June, Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen called out the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for its participation in the Helsinki Pride events, sharing a passage from Romans 1 to prove her point.

As a result, authorities opened an investigation into Räsänen, who is a member of The Christian Democrats party and also the former Minister of the Interior.

Speaking to Faithwire, Räsänen said that she was motivated to share the scripture after hearing her church denomination had decided to endorse events that are in contradiction with God’s word.

She perceives that the government’s criminal investigation of her “offensive speech” will cause other Christians to be frightened about speaking out against sin in public:

One of the most shocking elements of this case is that the authorities have decided to charge the politician with “agitation against an ethnic group” — an accusation that she believes is not only false, but also something that will also have grave ramifications for the Finnish Christian community and freedom of religion as a whole.

“Already the fact that a police investigation has been started and there is a suspect of a crime has a significant effect to freedom of speech and religion in practice,” she told Faithwire.

“I am worried that the police investigation has had a chilling effect among Christians. It seems that many Christians in my country are now hiding and going to the closet now that the LGBT-community has come out to the public.”

The politician said she was concerned that Christians will become increasingly less inclined to share scripture on public platforms out of a fear that they are will be arrested for offending a certain group of people.

Wow, she’s right about that. Unfortunately, in America, I have yet to see pastors in any church I’ve attended warning people about the loss of liberties that Christians experience when they are ruled by atheists. And I attend conservative PCA and SBC churches, although I would not attend an SBC church any more.

Here’s another story from South Africa, where a Christian doctor has lost his medical license for merely expressing pro-life views:

A hearing by the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) against an anti-abortion doctor got off to a rocky start and had to be temporarily adjourned on Tuesday in Cape Town.

Jacques de Vos, 32, is facing charges of unprofessional conduct and was prohibited from practising medicine due to his views on abortion.

The former intern at 2 Military Hospital in Wynberg allegedly told a patient more than two years ago that a foetus was a human being. He allegedly likened abortion to killing an unborn human, while working for the gynaecology division during his intern year.

At the hearing it emerged that De Vos was only a week short of finishing his medical degree before he did his community service.

South Africa is a communist country, which means that the rulers of the country are atheists. Communism is an atheistic ideology that does not recognize human rights. This is because in order to have human rights, you need a God to design the universe with those rights, such that other humans have to respect those rights. Atheism starts with an accidental universe, and finishes with humans that evolved accidentally, through a process of evolution that was random and unplanned. So, it’s not surprising to see governments in atheistic countries mistreating Christians, and using the power of government to compel them to act like atheists.

It would be nice to see leaders in churches setting aside some time to warn Christians about the dangers of being ruled by atheists. But what I see happening with young people is that atheism is being sold to them as glamorous through false ideologies. Socialism, which has only ever made people poor, is presented to them as a solution to poverty. The Southern Baptist church that I recently attended was mostly concerned with opening up our borders to refugees and illegal aliens, and equalizing incomes by giving power to a secular government. If it were up to me, they’d be focused on evidential apologetics, rolling back radical feminism, and explaining how the free market system produces prosperity. But they have other priorities. By the time Bible-believing Christian leaders realize that anything is going on, it will be too late to stop it.

Polemics

Are Nordic countries succeeding with socialism like Bernie Sanders says?

5 Comments
Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries
Individials pay extremely high income taxes in Nordic countries

Last week, I saw back to back studies on Nordic countries reported by the far-left UK Independent and Barron’s magazine. We’re probably going to hear more about how great socialism is from socialists, and since they seem to point to Nordic countries as proof, we should probably look at the studies and see what the truth is.

Let’s start with the report from Barron’s. You’ll have heard of Barron’s if you’re an investor.

It says:

Although there are areas—especially in taxes and labor market regulation—where socialist elements still exist in the Nordics, the region is by no means socialist today. In fact, according to the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark rank among the 30 most capitalist countries in the world.

These countries used to be socialist in the 1970s and 1980s. Socialism means a huge government work force, high taxes, massive regulation of private sector businesses, and massive spending on welfare programs. You didn’t have to marry before having children, the government would give you welfare. You didn’t have to take care of yourself, the government would give you free health care. You didn’t have to save for retirement, the government would give you a pension.

The article mentions one country in particular – Sweden. And here is what socialism looked like in Sweden:

In 1960, for every 100 “market-financed” Swedes (i.e. those who derived their income predominantly from private enterprise), there were 38 who were “tax-financed” (i.e. dependent on the public sector for their income, whether as civil servants or as recipients of payments from the state). Thirty years later, that number had risen to 151—in other words, there were significantly more people living off of the state than paying into the system. This reflects Sweden’s move away from a capitalist free-market economy to a socialist model.

When people talk about socialism, they mean more people living off the state than paying into the system.

But socialism can’t last forever. Eventually, the people in the private sector realize that they are keeping less and less of what they earn, and they stop working, or just leave. The article notes that IKEA, which started out in Sweden, moved out to avoid paying the 57% corporate tax rate.

Eventually, and this is the part that Bernie Sanders is ignorant about, Sweden slashed or eliminated taxes across the board, then cut their government spending on welfare, subsidies and gv:

A major tax reform in 1990/91 slashed corporate taxes from 57% to 30%. Income from shares was exempted from taxation, while capital gains from shares were taxed at only 12.5%.

The top marginal income-tax rate was set at around 50%, a reduction by 24 to 27 percentage points for the majority of the workforce. The proportion of earners taxed at a marginal rate of over 50% dropped from over half to only 17% paying income tax to the central government.

The reforms continued over the following years: in 2004, the estate tax of up to 30% was scrapped. Today, there is no estate tax in Sweden. The abolition of the wealth tax, which had already been cut, came into effect retroactively as of 1 January 2007. The corporate tax rate continued to decline, getting cut from 30% to 26.3% in 2009 and to 22% in 2013. Property tax rates were also cut substantially.

Between 1993 and 2000, social spending dropped from 22.2% to 16.9% of GDP, economic subsidies from 8.7% to 1.8% and public-sector payroll costs from 18.2% to 15.6%.

Sweden might be a little further ahead of some of the other Nordic countries. Over in Finland, they are still climbing out of it, and the massive government spending is so hard for socialists to cut.

Here’s a story from Finland about their government-run health care system – the same kind that Bernie is always bragging about, and telling us how well it works in Finland.

Far-left Reuters reports:

Finland’s coalition government resigned on Friday a month ahead of a general election, saying it could not deliver on a healthcare reform package that is widely seen as crucial to securing long-term government finances.

Healthcare systems across much of the developed world have come under increasing stress in recent years as treatment costs soar and people live longer, meaning fewer workers are supporting more pensioners.

Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected. But reform has been controversial and, in Finland, plans to cut costs and boost efficiency have stalled for years.

The very health care systems that Bernie lectures American voters about are all in decline and failing:

Other Nordic countries have also grappled with the need to cut costs. Sweden is to gradually raise its retirement age and has opened up parts of the healthcare system to the private sector in a bid to boost efficiency.

Denmark will gradually increase the retirement age to 73 – the highest in the world – while cutting taxes and unemployment benefits to encourage people to work more.

If you learned anything from this article, I’d like you to do me a favor. Please share and/or tweet this post, or share and/or tweet the posts from Barron’s and Reuters. We have an election coming up in 2020, and right now, the people are being lied to by foolish socialist politicians who talk and talk about things they have no knowledge about. We need to correct the views of the American people with facts. We can’t make the mistake of electing Democrats who are terrible at health care, and only good at making promises to spending taxpayer money. They have no idea how economics actually works in the real world, and we need to do everything we can to keep them out of power.