Social Democracy - Three Questions

[CivisRomanusSum]

Hi guys! I have three questions about the political ideology, Social Democracy.

1. What is it?
2. What do you think of it?
3. What does the Church think of it?

I’m looking forward to an insightful discussion

 

[Warrenton]

Your name alone demands a response.

Social democrats are better than marxists or socialists, insofar as they seem more realistic.

In practice, the capitalists strike a bargain with the social democrat government whereby they pay enough to support minimum welfare state programs, and in return, the government creates a regulatory and tax scheme that stifles competition.

This is unfair.

 

[Kaninchen]

Hi guys! I have three questions about the political ideology, Social Democracy.

1. What is it?
2. What do you think of it?
3. What does the Church think of it?

I’m looking forward to an insightful discussion

In Northern and Western Europe, Social Democracy in its modern form is a term one gives to the political centre-left, the centre-right is generally known by terms like Christian Democrat or Conservative.

To understand the politics of these countries, one really has to understand the devastating impact of the Second World War in Europe, not just physically and economically but intellectually and politically. Extremism and idealism had brought about catastrophe.

On many things, there was a consensus that grew about how things should be done - particularly in terms of things like health and social security (mass unemployment had been a major generator of extremist politics on the left and by reaction on the right). So politics became a matter of emphasis - the centre-left being more in favour of planning and extending benefits and the centre-right being more in favour of ‘the market’.

Of course, there are times when the left go a bit ‘lefter’ and the right to a bit ‘righter’ but, generally-speaking, it’s not terribly exciting because both sides like to win elections and you don’t do that by frightening the electorate.

I’ve not noticed the Catholic Church getting terribly excited about it either.

 

[Warrenton]

On many things, there was a consensus that grew about how things should be done - particularly in terms of things like health and social security (mass unemployment had been a major generator of extremist politics on the left and by reaction on the right). So politics became a matter of emphasis - the centre-left being more in favour of planning and extending benefits and the centre-right being more in favour of ‘the market’.

It seems to work better in smaller countries than in larger ones.

This seems less a function of different desires than the realities of time and distance. There are differences in outlook between Europeans and Americans, but they get overstated (imho) on these boards. The critical difference is that the sheer size of the US works against centralization. For example, the tremendous diffusion of people makes national heath impractical - one would require fully staffed clinics that might only serve a few hundred people. Multiplied over thousands of square miles, this quickly becomes unsustainable.

We learned this the hard way when we nationalized our passenger railways in the early 70s. Up to that time, the commercial railways (like New York Central, Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe - the ones mentioned in big band songs) ran the passenger services as a loss leader for the freight operations, and more or less a pay back for the stupendous amount of free land they received. Within ten years of nationalization (mind you, they won’t admit Amtrak is nationalized - but it basically is) most of inland routes were abandoned. If you’re old enough to remember Arlo Guthrie’s “The Train they call the City of New Orleans” that is what he was singing about. Our passenger trains only provide “European grade” service on the Mid-Atlantic and central California coasts, and around Chicago.

By way of example, my county is somewhat analogous to Buckinghamshire in the 1980s (without High Wycombe or Milton Keynes) - still rural, but more a home county than a province in terms of distance and demographic and dependence on the metropolis. One would expect to be able to catch a train to the capital, but there hasn’t been one since Anthony Eden lived at Downing Street.

From what I have read, Russia has suffered the same problems in her hinterlands.

I don’t know if you get the news about our social security system - that’s the government provided pension. The train analogy can be thrashed a little more: we’re like people sitting on the tracks, mouths agape as the locomotive hurtles toward us. The system gets raided for other government projects, and we’re all looking at the prospect of not having much benefits paid out when we retire. This is severe, since we Yanks pay (on average) about a fifth of every dollar we make into the system. The number of civil servants required to run the system for 300 million people numbers in the tens of thousands, all of whom in turn get government benefits and a pension, too. It drives us back to the brink of insolvency.

Cheers.

 

[Kaninchen]

I don’t pay much (any) attention to news about the US, I’m afraid but, from experience of living in the US, I think that there are significant social and historical differences that have to be taken into account - the EU itself had its origins and dynamic in stopping Europeans from killing masses of each other off every few decades.

It should be remembered that there isn’t one standard system of provision of health and social security in Europe - they’re all different though, when the Kaninchens, for example, are on our regular holidays in Italy, medical costs are covered by our membership of the UK’s National Insurance system and that goes throughout the Union.

There are remote and difficult to get to areas of Europe as well, by the way.

 

[Warrenton]

There are remote and difficult to get to areas of Europe as well, by the way.

The social policies espoused by the SDs arose more from class conflict, which we had here as well, than from the world wars. The world wars acted as a catalyst for the SDs to get political agendas passed. The US would probably have followed Europe’s path more closely but for the fact that we were flush with Western European money after two world wars, and the unions could get a hefty pay raise. That kept the pot from boiling over for 20 years. Then, by the early 70s when it looked like we were about to implement the full SD monty, we hit the oil crisis. Our budget has never really worked since.

While Western Europe has its rural areas, the diffusion of people is much more uneven in the US. Texas alone is about the area of Austria, Hungary, and half the Balkans. North Carolina is about the size of England. A much higher propoportion of Texans and Carolinians live more than hour from a city than Austrians or English do.

According to the last census, about 1/4 of the American people live in the boondocks. That’s around 75 million people. We are bleeding money trying to support those communities. If we attempted to run a national health service along European lines, it would be a disaster. Canada’s health care system is straining for the same reasons. Same in post Soviet Russia.

Big countries are great at some things - Germany could handle Britain and France, but was done for once the USSR and the USA fully marshalled their forces. Who doesn’t want a giant on his side?

There are serious inefficiencies, also, which result from the requirement to duplicate effort in so many localities. The state - run school systems in the US are another good example, along with the rail roads. The quality gets very uneven the farther one travels from civilization.

Theoretically, we could fix some of these things but we would need to amend our constitution to do it. At this stage of the game in the US, that is just politically impossible. We can’t agree on a budget we can’t even begin to balance.

 

[Warrenton]

IThere are remote and difficult to get to areas of Europe as well, by the way.

“My heart is in the highlands, my heart is not here. My heart is in the highlands, a-hunting the deer.”

Burns.