In Robin Dao's blog "Treatment, care, and a better life for EVERYBODY! Poor or Rich", he argues on how we could be a better society if we all could just get along and pay more taxes.
The article was well written and has something interesting points to consider. But I found most of Robin Dao's arguments to be unrealistic for this country. The argument lacked more substantial facts or comparisons to convince me of the plan for a higher standard of living would work in the US. The facts of the argument were a little too vague as well as how to go about creating this better system. I would have preferred a more specific examples to prove Robin's point.
Robin Dao's main example of a new system based on "the Greater Good" is Norway. Taken from his blog;
"Imagine a country “aimed at flattening the income distribution, eliminating poverty, ensuring social services such as retirement, medical care, and disability benefits to all, and putting more of the capital into the public trust.” That’s right! Ladies and gentleman, I present to you this lovely country called Norway."
According to several indexes Norway does have one of the highest standards of living in the world. But is it one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Norway has one highest cost of manufacture in the world with $ 25.20 per hour. The United States comes in at $18.40. According to the Big Mac Index, the cost of a McDonald's Big Mac in Norway is $7.25 compared to $3.75 in the US. To look at in a different way, it only takes 11 minutes to earn enough to buy in the United States.
Before trying European "cradle to grave" socialism, we have to examine the broad effect of the socialist welfare state’s effect on a country’s economy, and how that impacts on individual citizen's personal standard of living and public happiness. While this system works in Norway with a more or less homogeneous population of 4.9 million people, it could never work for a country a diverse population 310 million people.
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