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21st Century Socialism
Michael Lebowitz -- worked as an adviser in Venezuela and is the author of Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, and Beyond Capital. Recorded in Toronto, 17 June 2007.
By: LeftStreamed
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21st Century Socialism - Video
For years Americans have assumed that our hard-charging capitalism is better than the soft-hearted version found in Canada and Europe. American capitalism might be a bit crueler but it generates faster growth and higher living standards overall. Canadas and Europes welfare-state socialism is doomed.
It was a questionable assumption to begin with, relying to some extent on our collective amnesia about the first three decades after World War II, when tax rates on top incomes in the U.S. never fell below 70 percent, a larger portion of our economy was invested in education than before or since, over a third of our private-sector workers were unionized, we came up with Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, and built the biggest infrastructure project in history, known as the interstate highway system.
But then came Americas big U-turn, when we deregulated, de-unionized, lowered taxes on the top, ended welfare, and stopped investing as much of the economy in education and infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Canada and Europe continued on as before. Soviet communism went bust, and many of us assumed European and Canadian socialism would as well.
Thats why recent data from theLuxembourg Income Study Databaseis so shocking.
The fact is, were falling behind. While median per capita income in the United States has stagnated since 2000, its up significantly in Canada and Northern Europe. Their typical workers income is now higher than ours, and their disposable income after taxes higher still.
Its difficult to make exact comparisons of income across national borders because real purchasing power is hard to measure. But even if we assume Canadians and the citizens of several European nations have simply drawn even with the American middle class, theyre doing better in many other ways.
Most of them get freehealth careand subsidizedchild care. And if they lose their jobs, they get far more generousunemployment benefitsthan we do. (In fact, right now75 percentof jobless Americans lack any unemployment benefits.)
If you think we make up for it by working less and getting paid more on an hourly basis, think again. There, at leastthree weekspaid vacation as the norm, along withpaid sick leave, andpaid parental leave.
Were working an average of 4.6 percent more hours more than the typical Canadian worker, 21 percent more than the typical French worker, and a whopping 28 percent more than your typical German worker, according todatacompiled by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
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