Thanks Sasha,
I will do a bit more study of Main. Sounds like an interesting state to explore. I do have experience with smaller more homogenous states in the US however as I have lived in North Dakota.
Maine has more than twice the obesity rate of e.g. Sweden. And I remember from living in North Dakota that there was way more obese people there than in Norway.
Both Maine and North Dakota do actually have considerably higher homocide rate than e.g. Norway. Actually Main is quite a lot higher than Sweden which is sort of our Nordic "basket" case.
Sweden has crime problems in part from having taken in a large number of refugees. Main is actually far more homogenous than most Nordics. About 16% of Norways population is foreign born. 20% in Sweden. Where I live in Oslo e.g. native Norwegians are in minority. The closest school as 90% kids of minority background, 70% whom need extra language training assistance. The next school over has 60% of students with minority background. How many schools like that do you find in Maine?
But to answer some of your questions/issues raised.
Do I support lower corporate tax rate? That makes it sound like I live in the US. Just to be clear, I am a Norwegian living in Norway. Hence whatever corporate tax rate exists is the normal one for me. So a more natural question would perhaps be if I think it should be raised to US level?
That is a complex question. I am not sure why I should be in favor of a high corporate tax rate, as opposed to getting tax money in other ways. Norway has quite high value added tax at 25%. The benefit of that is that it does not hit exporting companies. However a high corporate tax rate would hit exporting companies, and Norway relies far more on exports than the US. The US can afford higher coporate tax rate because export plays a much smaller role.
I think I got to clarify a bit the purpose of the article. It was not really meant to be "This is why Nordics are better," but rather on how Nordic countries are different.
I think it is very much worth comparing the way of life in Nordics to the US. Why? Because a lot of Americans seem to think Nordic countries are simply the US with higher taxes and more welfare services. This was an attempt to show that Nordic countries operate entirely differently from the US at every level. A lot of people have this idea that "socialism" is just about taxing higher and giving free healthcare and college.
I was trying to show that the Socialist influence on Nordic countries has a much deeper influence down to how your neighbourhoods are organized, and how companies operate.
So yes different countries are cut different in ways other countries don't understand. That is the whole point here. Getting American readers to understand that Nordic countries are very different places. You cannot emulate Nordics by simply raising taxes on the rich and make Medicare for all. Sure that may work for America, but don't think that is somehow an emulation of Nordic society. It isn't.
I don't think the West has made any attempt at bringing their culture and democracy to the Middle East. The US has invaded Iraq for their own geopolitical ends. This must be made very clear: Most of the rest of us in Europe, strongly opposed the Iraq invasion, and we got a lot of shit for it in the US. I know, because I was in the US at the time and remember all the accusations I got for the fact that we in Europe did not support the Iraq invasion. George W. Bush went on TV and basically said we were the enemies of the US for not supporting the invasion. That was rather offensive and hurtful.
Thus you must understand that when you said that "the West tried to being democracy to the Middle East," it is actually quite a provocative statement. It imples we supported the invasion. No, we didn't and we we do not want to take any blame for American failure there.
That democray failed in Iraqi has little to do with Iraq in my opinion and everything to do with America doing an exceptionally poor job. Before the invasion we all challenged the US on what plans it had for after the war. There was no plan. No fricken plan. They were just going to wing it. They didn't know anything about Iraq society, culture and tradition.
It is just a repeat of how Wall-Mart utterly failed to establish itself in Germany. American management paid no attention to German culture and values. They pushed American style sales culture. Askin employees to smile and be cheerful. The restult was that Germans found it deeply unsettling to visit Wall-Mart. German men felt they were getting hit on by the cashiers. Same thing happened in Russia too. Except there they often though employees were laughing at them.
I see the same thing working for American companies in Norway. Sometimes you got to just shake your head and wonder if they spent even a minute trying to understand the culture they operate in.
As for capitalism and Vietnam. Is that how they teach it in the US? Vietnam was a brutally oppressed and colonized country. They were not fighting capitalism per say. They were fighting invaders and oppressors. Communism had appeal for Vietnamese because it was an ideology speaking out against Imperialist nations and their colonialism. At the time all Western capitalist countries oppressed third would countries including the US. Capitalism equalled oppression to them, not freedom. Naturally they wanted both the French, Americans and capitalism out of their country.
As for social democratic policies in the US. I disagree. They were immense succeses. When the US was closest to social democracy in the post war years it had the lowest levels of inequality, good economic growth, and had much more economic stability than it has had since the Reagan revolution ruined it all.
The irony is more that social democratic inspired policies have succeeded again and again in the US, yet seem to get rejected every time. And how can people say Medicare or Medicaid are failtures? Imagine all the people without health care, without those programs. I would rather say these programs are hamstrung by catering to the rich and powerful. E.g. Medicare is banned by law from using their bargaining power to negotiate down drug prices. That is like self-imposed failure, not a failure of the concept per say.
About Craft Cola, hehehe just another example of differen cultural references. I don't even know what Craft Cola is. I cannot remember ever seeing it when I lived in the US.
