Talk:Social democracy

Criticism based solely on an IEA report is a bit, eh, tenuous...
Since the entire section of “actual criticism” relies solely on a report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, I have added some caveats. The report reads very much like the usual beltway libertarian think tank (sic!) publications that cherry pick whatever they can find to support their a priori conclusions, such as the (in)famous 2011 report from the Heritage Foundation that insisted that US poverty was not really a thing because 99.6% of the US poor had refrigerators (rinse and repeat for other appliances), an argument rehashed a year later by the Cato Institute.

The IEA seems to be using the same kind of dubious statistical shenanigans to marshal the argument that some vague “black box” of socio-cultural “values” are behind the apparent success of the Scandinavian countries and that this is actually hindered by the Nordic model. ScepticWombat (talk) 12:16, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * The utterances of the IEA, and its Tufton Street neighbours, nearly always turn out to be Utter Bollocks, often almost immediately. Witness their installation of cheese-obsessed Tufton Street droid Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister as a prime example. Mr Larrington (talk) 19:34, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

anglo-conservative
What is it? It's mention once out of no where with no link or anything to explain what's different or especially bad about them. It just looks weird to single them out when there's plenty of non anglo countries in the table that are just as bad regarding union membership. Féinléiriú (talk) 13:04, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for your input and I think your point is valid and I should expand it (to be fair to me, I wasn't completely done editing the article). What I mean by anglo-conservative countries is 1) (except Ireland, but Ireland isn't really "anglo" either) member countries and 2) countries that follow the U-shape curve in top 1% income distribution (see https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality). If you check the logs, I initially wanted to include that graph in the article but decided not to, at the end. 3) Finally, these countries share more or less something called the . Let me know what you think. Feel free to edit the article too, if you want to correct some things (for starters: I am not a native English speaker so I might've done some grammar mistakes here and there).  13:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Nords
comparing the social standing of certain white people in different countries to criticize social democracy in favour of the USAs arguably white supremacist neoliberal system where those white people are marginally better off is completely invalid. 23:13, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, using race realism to criticize social democracy is garbage quite frankly. 01:21, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey, I wasn't presenting it as if I was making the argument, I was just presenting the criticism discussed in the book. Regardless, that argument does exist, so I think it should be discussed somewhere in this article. Maybe it deserves a paragraph in the faux criticism section? — Goose4445 (talk) 12:58, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * A bit of a late addition, but just so we're clear,, while you may interpret the section as being race realist, that absolutely was not something I was trying to put forth with it. I was only interested in highlighting criticism that others had laid out. — Goose4445 (talk) 16:20, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Correlation
Oh, and, to be clear, I added the "+" signs to the correlation because they are explicitly signifying a positive correlation rather than a net correlation (which is the modular/absolute value i.e. |±correlation|. 12:31, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for clarifying. — Goose4445 (talk) 12:58, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

The SNP
The SNP are not a Social Democratic Party. They are neither a member of the Progressive Alliance or European Social Democratic Group. They align with the Greens and Regionalist when the UK was a part of the EU in the EU Parliament. To put them with other parties that are both a part of the Progressive Alliance and Social Democratic Group is wrong. They are a catch all party that have policies from the Left, Centre-Left & Centre. It's intellectually dishonest to put them alongside other Social Democratic Parties. --144.82.8.115 (talk) 12:53, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You're not wrong, BON. Scream!! (talk) 14:43, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Raven is an idiot and illiterate in statistics
Among all the things I've seen in RW (actually, in 15 years editing and browsing wikis), so far his correlation with union membership and and social indicators is by a wide margin the most idiotic. First, you don't use a single variable in your regression. Doing such thing means a round zero in your report card. Second, even if you do, you don't add outliers, especially if you have a small sample splace. It's absurd to add Iceland to this regression (and also because Iceland welfare state is smaller than the one in US). But let's ignore these basic facts I've stated. I've run the regression here in my house and his correlation is still weak. But hey, Raven does have a correlation, maybe he's right! No. He isn't. The p-value shows that the correlation is insignificant at 0.01, (It is the bare minimum to publish an article in a second rate journal). But hey, we're a wiki, we ain't that serious, maybe it's relevant if we have a bigger margin of error. How about a p-value of 0.05? No. Still irrelevant. Let's push to the limits then. A p-value 0.1!~ Still irrelevant. I'm removing right away, this is the kind of thing that people take screenshots in order to vilify sites over the Internet. GeeJayK (talk) 03:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You're so brave attacking someone who is banned and can't respond in kind. So courageous! SomeoneX (talk) 06:24, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * so to be clear you are not disputing the criticism, just that it is being made. well done. dumbfuck AMassiveGay (talk) 07:10, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Awn, did I strike a nerve of yours? Are you triggered that the banned person in question can't respond to criticism? Do you know what a multivariate linear regression is, then? SomeoneX (talk) 08:04, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Stop complaining and using fancy words to seem smarter than you actually are and come with actual salient arguments instead of mudslinging. Unless of course you're Raven, in which case; don't you have a wiki to attend to. 08:22, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, Raven. Now can you please explain why a simple linear regression, with outliers and without statistic significance is a good argument? GeeJayK (talk) 16:26, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * dont expect any defence of their edits. they never bothered when they were officially here. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:05, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * And this is what the modern day Giordano Bruno is reduced to! Implicitly admitting his own wiki is a failure, he bothers a superior community he otherwise pretends to have gotten over. Oh, and Raven still can't argue with any competence.-Flandres (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Then do this: collect all the countries data in regards to HDI, unionization, Gini index and make a MvLR. Instead of bitching about a user who is no longer on that wiki and can't defend himself (but still triggers the fuck out of the reactionaries in here that can't wait to judge said user), do that. Be better! SomeoneX (talk) 00:10, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

This may surprise you, but there is a big difference between criticizing the methodology (which, in the way it was used in the article, was fractally wrong) and the conclusion (which is reasonable). GeeJayK (talk) 00:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Possible source of Criticism -- I need to find the paper first which may require me to email one of my past profs.
I took a gender studies course in university and we covered an essay that described how social democratic countries and countries that use the Nordic system are especially reliant on the overseas labour of developing countries. Often from suppliers that have their workers work under conditions with zero health and safety protocols, extremely poor pay, etc. An example we covered in class in the company JSYK being supplied textiles from countries like Bangladesh where the workers have incredibly high cancer rates possibly due to work with hazardous chemicals with no PPE. The academic article we were reading itself was arguing that to be constantly sourced with relatively inexpensive goods in developed nations, these nations require the extreme exploitation of overseas labour. This also predominately means the extreme exploitation of people of Colour in service to white majority countries. This isn't really a problem unique to socdem countries per se but the author themselves felt the need to emphasize (or at least it needed to be emphasize in class) that the seemingly ethical Nordic model still rely on the extreme exploitation that other "less progressive" capitalist countries do. I am wondering if it's worth finding this article and including it or if such a piece would be more so relevant elsewhere on the wiki. I forgot the author's name and the title of the article itself, so to get the source I would need some time to contact my old prof. Does this raise any interest for anyone? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 03:48, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this is an aspect of social democracy that often gets overlooked. The Nordic Model doesn't rid itself of exploitation, it just exports the harshest forms of it to the global south. I have no qualms with you adding this here. Vee (talk) 06:00, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * While it's true that Social democracies take advantage of other countries in this way, it's hardly a criticism unique to Social Democracy. (I accept you make this point.)  It's really a criticism of all western cultures in general and which is shared by Social Democracies.
 * You could equally well point out that some forms of animal welfare (for example) could be improved in Nordic countries. But that's because animal welfare needs to be improved everywhere - it's a not a problem unique to social democracies.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:55, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * While that's true, many people seem to think the Nordic Model is this sort of utopia with no problems whatsoever. No system should be held up on a pedestal. This wiki criticizes neoliberalism, socialism, monarchism, and whatnot. Why is the Nordic Model exempt? Vee (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You may have a bit of a straw man with "many people seem to think the Nordic Model is this sort of utopia with no problems whatsoever". If not, it might be worth identifying these "many people" and pointing out where they go wrong. Furthermore, I would certainly say that if there are problems which are uniquely generated by Social Democracy then we should certainly mention them.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:50, 28 October 2022 (UTC)