hmm, in iceland, before they went free market style, they were pretty much standard socialist, banks, power, water, phone, all government owned and so on.
unemployment rates were 1-2% at most, despite the country having a pretty solid welfaresystem and free education and hospitals (all paid through taxes)
well, some people talked them into that a superfree market would be even better and so they sold all government property (to cronies was later found out)
lowered the taxes on the rich and companies (the extra wealth will..trickle down, was said
)
and loosened restrictions.
well, things got better for awhile, vastly better for 1-2% of the population and some apparent improvement to about 30% of the population , mostly in the forms of freely accessible loans..
loans that turned out to be carefully arranged scams (not proven yet though lol)
ending up with people needing to pay 2-3x the original paid amount
nowadays, people cant buy houses any more, ya borrow say 20 million and ya end up paying 120 million to the bank (not dollars)
cause it all went floops, many people bankrupt and the banks themselves needed to be saved, and unemployment figures are up to 10%+
government in debt quite beyond 100% of national capacity.
sure, the free market was able to raise the country up a notch.
at first, so there is something to that idea. the market should be free, for the most part, but certain key elements to society need to be in the possession of the people and banks are one of them, all which the people NEED (not just want and desire (tv´s, toiletwarmers and so on)
should be in the possession of the people.
the cronies bankrupted the shit anyway, built a lot of gilt and fancy palaces, private airplanes and lot of crap and just ruined old good businesses.
greed before need.
socialism obviously works better than pure capitalism, though obviously socialism needs to loosen up bit.
but its kinda funny seeing americans talk of socialism being bad. (see people going into uproar about that statement lol, a few)
cause, america is so in debt, that even if you stopped all spending (and everyone) except on food and housing and you´d still be a while to pay your debts
same as every country that went the "free market" way.
same story across the board