# Ideology and General Welfare: Part I



## cuchuflete

Background:  I was looking at a BBC article that showed a map of the Americas, from Mexico south to Tierra del Fuego.  It showed countries that had recently, or were thought likely to elect "left-leaning" governments in pink, and those leaning to the right or center in blue.  A few were grey, indicating either no near-term elections or possibly some mystical indifference.

This got me thinking that it would be interesting to discuss whether the so-called left-leaning or right-leaning governments, over some reasonably long time span, do better at improving general social welfare, broad national economic growth, etc.

The difficulty I have, and with which I request your collaboration, is in finding a way to pose the question, such that it will not evoke (1)impassioned statements, declarations, and proselytizing in favor of any particular ideology (These are deadly boring, and we have all read lots of them already.); (2)similarly impassioned statements about the progress or failings of any one country, with attribution to a particular ideology; (3)conspiracy theories of any stripe.

For this particular thread, let's try to determine some useful measures and standards to apply:  


> I. What do we generally accept as a definition of
> -left-wing
> -right-wing
> -centrist
> and are these definitions particular to individual countries, _i.e._, relative terms, or are there definitions that comfortably cross borders?
> 
> II. What are some useful measures or standards of social and economic well-being, or measures of progress?


The specific objectives of this thread are to try to find common ground in answering questions I and II above, and then to open _another_ thread which will discuss whether the ideological leanings of governments tend to affect general welfare. 

Staying on topic will be critical to having a useful discussion.
Please try to restrain the natural instinct to argue, here at least, the inherent superiority of left or right.


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## Macunaíma

Hi Chuchuflete,

This question is becoming incresingly difficult to answer, "what is left-wing and what is right-wing?", as there seems to be a growing consensus about how national economies should be administered: achieve budget surplusses (when a government spends less than its revenue in order to be able to make investments) and low inflation, so as to secure steady growth, from which both rich and poor can benefit.

Brazilian President is an icon of the worldwide left-wing: a former metal worker, son of illiterate peasants, who became politician and eventually president through trade union activism. However, his handling of the economy has won him praise even in Wall Street.

The other day he said during a conference: "There is certainly something wrong with those who keep left-wingers when they grow old and probably something wrong with those who aren't left-wingers when they are young", suggesting that the ideal is a compromise between a social-focused (?not sure about the term here) administration and a responsible handling of the economy.

The boundaries of left-wing and right-wing seem to be disappearing in modern democracies as they converge into one "ideology": the pursuit of economic prosperity and a sound democracy.

As for democracy in some Latin-American countries, well, that's another issue...


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## JamesM

I tend to agree with Macunaima.  I am only really familiar with U.S. politics to any degree, so I would use that as my reference point.  In the early 20th century and well into the 80s, there seemed to be a much clearer definition of "left-wing" and "right-wing" positions.  Our two dominant parties were equated with one side or the other.  In the last twenty years, though, there has been a shift, at least on the economic side, so that the lines are less clear. 

I can remember hearing Democrats=Big Government, Republicans=Small Government in my younger days.  It was a truism.  The recent track record, though, gives us a Democrat who shrank the Government both in size and expenditures and a Republican who has created entire new departments, offices, and functions within the government while radically increasing spending.  

Are we looking primarily for economic definitions here - in other words, are we trying to define a government's political leaning by the way in which it spends its resources?   I think it would be best if we could isolate the particular arena before trying to define "left-leaning" and "right-leaning".  

To me, at least, there are several arenas in which these concepts seem to be applied on a regular basis - Economics, Social Values, International Politics, Internal Governmental Policy, and so on.   A particular administration in a country might be "left-leaning" in one arena while "right-leaning" in another, and vice versa.  To try to lump the entire government under one label could lead to some confusion in trying to discuss things.  Someone might attribute economic success to "left-leaning" governments who might be "left-leaning" in social values but "right-leaning" in economics.  In that case, would you say it was a "left-leaning" government that produced a better economic picture or a "right-leaning" one?  I hope I've made some sense in all of this. 

To simplify, I suggest:

Pick an arena
Define the terms based on that arena only
Then, pose the question


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## Macunaíma

> I. What do we generally accept as a definition of
> -left-wing
> Governments which undertake to actively reverse historical social imbalances, whether through redistributive or anti-poverty programmes or by narrowing opportunity gaps between rich and poor. Whether they have proved efficient in achieving it through the methods they have traditionally used is another issue.
> -right-wing
> Governments which attempt to promote economic growth with a minimum of state intervention, very often using monetary policy as their only means to control the economy. The right-wing tends to support a _laissez-faire_ policy, further free enterprise and hope that econimic growth can bring poverty reduction. Whether this is the most efficient way to deal with all the complex problems and needs of a country is another issue.
> -centrist
> Governments which try to promote social welfare as well as keep public finances on a sound footing. This may prove rather difficult to do.
> 
> and are these definitions particular to individual countries, _i.e._, relative terms, or are there definitions that comfortably cross borders?
> The definitions depend on each country. For example, in Brazil the term _liberal _is usually connected with the right-wing parties (it's used to describe the idea that the less state intervention the better and it has an economic connotation, having proprably come from Adam Smith's economic theories). In Brazil neither the term right-wing nor left-wing has other implication than economy and how they address our social problems. Matters such as race, religion, immigration and foreign affairs are consensual, I guess, and absolutely out of the question in politics here.
> 
> II. What are some useful measures or standards of social and economic well-being, or measures of progress?
> UNO's Human Development Index. It measures not only how rich a coutry is in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, but how that richness affects its population's quality of life, whether it's well distributed, and so on.


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## ernest_

I will try to address point 2. To me, economic well-being has to be measured in terms of cost of living, this cost being measured in terms of work (hours or effort employed). That is to say, how much I have to work in order to get a certain amount of goods and services that I need or want.

This roughly equals to what economists call labour productivity (the output produced by one unit of labour), if I'm not wrong. I believe that this method is far more accurate than indicators based on income, because these do not take into account the cost of working. For instance, if I work 18 hours a day I'll have a higher income than if work, say, 8 hours a day. But would I be better off? Hardly.

In conclusion, I do not think standard income-based measurements of well-being (including UN's HDI) are anywhere near reliable, because they are flawed by design. The may be good indicators of income, but certainly not of well-being.

Of course, we should also consider other aspects such as (perception of) equalty, fairness, love, friendship, the ability to maintain your body in one piece and a long et cetera.


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## .   1

This question is impossible for me to address without falling into anecdote.
I left school in 1976 at a point when Australia was right in the middle of a very pleasant social time.
The prosperity of a country surely should be measured by the contentment of the citizen.
I entered a workforce with virtually full employment.
The working week was 38 1/2 hours per week.
Most families could aspire to owning their own home.
University education was free.
Hospital free.
We were so heavily left leaning that we were an almost socialist country where blokes of my father's generation called each other 'comrade'.
We have now entered the Global Economy dominated by the bottom line rule.
I am led to believe that the average working week has now increased to effectively more than 50 hours.
We have high unemployment and the true figure is masked by the sad fact tha many people are now working as 'casuals' or on contract and can be terminated at a whim.
I prefer to be called comrade rather than pal.

.,,


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## cuchuflete

ernest_ said:


> To me, economic well-being has to be measured in terms of cost of living, this cost being measured in terms of work (hours or effort employed). That is to say, how much I have to work in order to get a certain amount of goods and services that I need or want.
> 
> This roughly equals to what economists call labour productivity (the output produced by one unit of labour), if I'm not wrong. I believe that this method is far more accurate than indicators based on income, because these do not take into account the cost of working. For instance, if I work 18 hours a day I'll have a higher income than if work, say, 8 hours a day. But would I be better off? Hardly.
> 
> In conclusion, I do not think standard income-based measurements of well-being (including UN's HDI) are anywhere near reliable, because they are flawed by design. The may be good indicators of income, but certainly not of well-being.
> 
> Of course, we should also consider other aspects such as (perception of) equalty, fairness, love, friendship, the ability to maintain your body in one piece and a long et cetera.



Labor productivity does, as you say, measure output per unit of labor, and is very much affected by capital investment...thus favoring the productivity of richer nations.
Output per hour in agrarian societies will automatically be much lower, unless there is substantial investment in mechanical equipment, chemicals, etc.  The cost of living in such places will also typically be higher than in less developed countries.

I would prefer an income measure, adjusted for local purchasing power, which takes into account your desire to see local costs in the standard.  I don't know how to adjust for average hours worked.  Measures across national boundaries are easily made with the purchasing power parity forumla...google The Economist +"Big Mac Index" for a useful example of PPP theory applied to nations.  

Your final point goes beyond ideology.  I don't see how the ideology of a regime can be measured in terms of a possible impact on love and friendship.  These seem to endure despite
the political leanings of governments.


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## TRG

This is a rather heavy thread, but it is but is basically a question about economics, and we all know something about that, right. 

The first question on how to define left vs. right politically is best answered by looking at the degree of centralization and government control of economic activity. I'm overlooking non-economic issues to the extent that you can separate economics and politics. Specific things to evaluate are tax rates, centralization of services such as health care, government ownership of business functions, etc.

Measurement of social and economic well being? First, I would say the economic and social well being are one and the same thing. When a society's basic needs are being met (economic security and prosperity) then people are going to be content with life. A system with economic prosperity but limited political freedom will survive, but the converse is not true.

If you want to answer the question of what works the best, you might peruse the list of Nobel laureats in economics which I have listed below. I do not know most of them, but if you check them all out, I think you will find more Hayeks and Friedmans than say, marxists. 

2006 - Edmund S. Phelps 
2005 - Robert J. Aumann, Thomas C. Schelling 
2004 - Finn E. Kydland, Edward C. Prescott 
2003 - Robert F. Engle III, Clive W.J. Granger 
2002 - Daniel Kahneman, Vernon L. Smith 
2001 - George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence, Joseph E. Stiglitz 
2000 - James J. Heckman, Daniel L. McFadden 
1999 - Robert A. Mundell 
1998 - Amartya Sen 
1997 - Robert C. Merton, Myron S. Scholes 
1996 - James A. Mirrlees, William Vickrey 
1995 - Robert E. Lucas Jr. 
1994 - John C. Harsanyi, John F. Nash Jr., Reinhard Selten 
1993 - Robert W. Fogel, Douglass C. North 
1992 - Gary S. Becker 
1991 - Ronald H. Coase 
1990 - Harry M. Markowitz, Merton H. Miller, William F. Sharpe 
1989 - Trygve Haavelmo 
1988 - Maurice Allais 
1987 - Robert M. Solow 
1986 - James M. Buchanan Jr. 
1985 - Franco Modigliani 
1984 - Richard Stone 
1983 - Gerard Debreu 
1982 - George J. Stigler 
1981 - James Tobin 
1980 - Lawrence R. Klein 
1979 - Theodore W. Schultz, Sir Arthur Lewis 
1978 - Herbert A. Simon 
1977 - Bertil Ohlin, James E. Meade 
1976 - Milton Friedman 
1975 - Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich, Tjalling C. Koopmans 
1974 - Gunnar Myrdal, Friedrich August von Hayek 
1973 - Wassily Leontief 
1972 - John R. Hicks, Kenneth J. Arrow 
1971 - Simon Kuznets 
1970 - Paul A. Samuelson 
1969 - Ragnar Frisch, Jan Tinbergen


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## .   1

TRG said:


> If you want to answer the question of what works the best, you might peruse the list of Nobel laureats in economics which I have listed below. I do not know most of them, but if you check them all out, I think you will find more Hayeks and Friedmans than say, marxists.


I do not know the term for this type of argument but I have seen it before and it is clever.
It is of utterly no surprise that an award bestowed by a Capitalist foundation will routinely favour Capitalism.  No further inference can be logically drawn from such tainted data.

.,,


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## TRG

. said:


> I do not know the term for this type of argument but I have seen it before and it is clever.
> It is of utterly no surprise that an award bestowed by a Capitalist foundation will routinely favour Capitalism. No further inference can be logically drawn from such tainted data.
> 
> .,,


 
_It is of utterly no surprise that an award bestowed by a Capitalist foundation will routinely favour Capitalism. No further inference can be logically drawn from such tainted data. I do not know the term for this type of argument but I have seen it before and it is clever._ Hope you don't mind my little rearrangement. 

It never occurred to me the the Nobel Foundation, being Swedish through and through, would be biased on the matter of economic policy. Have you a better reference?


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## .   1

TRG said:


> It never occurred to me the the Nobel Foundation, being Swedish through and through, would be biased on the matter of economic policy. Have you a better reference?


In 1833 Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His father, Immanuel Nobel, declared bankruptcy.
Between 1853 and 1856 during the Crimean War the Nobel Company first flourished but then undergoes bankruptcy as the war ends and the Russian military cancels orders.
In 1856 Alfred Nobel established the United States Blasting Oil Company in the U.S.A.
In 1867 Alfred Nobel obtained a patent for dynamite.
In 1873 after a mere 6 years at the age of 40 Alfred Nobel was a wealthy man and moved to Paris.

One year before his death he changed his will to establish the foundation.

Alfred Nobel was a Capitalist through and through. His family routinely used legal loopholes to avoid paying their debts. He became wealthy by inventing products that killed and maimed millions of people and then used his wealth to establish a foundation that must embrace some of the idealogies of Alfred Nobel.

Robert


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## cuchuflete

Interesting to have to find grounds for honest disagreement with two people who are busy disagreeing with one another.

To TRG-  If you go to the extremes of left and right wing governments, they converge in terms of state control of commerce.  Both run highly centralized economies.  We can still accept your statements, broadly, if we exclude these extremes, and look only at the more centrist varieties of left and right wing governments.  

Yes, it's mostly about economics, but there are other useful measures of social welfare, including medical care and education.   



> A system with economic prosperity but limited political freedom will survive, but the converse is not true.


 I haven't been to Cuba, but all I read and hear tells me that some measures of social well-being, such as universal health care and education, are present, along with a weak economy and a general lack of individual freedom.  Where does that fit if we limit the discussion to economics only?   Yes, we need to make some simplifying assumptions to carry on a discussion, but we can become overly simplistic if we eliminate all the salient exceptions.

Robert (.,,)- Alfred Nobel may have had a belated attack of conscience, thus leading him to leave his wealth for a nobler (no pun) purpose than military munitions.  Dynamite has also been used extensively for road building, mining, and civil engineering.  Does bankruptcy always equal a legal loophole to avoid paying debts?  Not so far as I know.   Have you studied the details of the two bankruptcies you refer to?  I haven't.  If a business goes belly up, that in itself is not a suggestion of any kind of debt avoiding chicanery.  Most business owners would prefer to operate a going concern, pay their creditors, and earn a profit.  Bankruptcy leaves creditors holding a much diminished or empty bag, but hardly serves to enrich equity owners.  

Finally, you assume, without evidence presented here to support your assumption, that the members of the Nobel foundation share the ideologies you impute to Alfred Nobel.
That may be true.  It may be totally false as well.  Worth looking into before just assuming one or the other.


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## .   1

G'day Cuchu,
The entire point of my post was to point out that Alfred Nobel was a capitalist and was thoroughly entrenched in the capitalist ideology and that his foundation is a capitalist foundation and therefore would favour capitalists over socialists when bestowing awards.
The reference to his family use of bankruptcy was that this entrenches them even more deeply in the capitalist machine.
I could be wrong about the bised bestowing but there is no doubt that the foundation set up by the arch capitalist Alfred Nobel is a capitalist foundation not a socialist foundation.
Human nature being what it is I am sure that any socialist foundations would favour socialist nominees.

Robert (.,,)


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## cuchuflete

What on earth is a "capitalist foundation"?  The mission of the Noble foundation is to give away money and provide recognition to leading artists in literature, people who promote peace, developers of world-serving science and technology, and yes, practioners of the "dismal science"
of economics.  

I'm not familiar with any reknowned economic theorists of a socialist stripe after Karl Marx.  Are you?

No argument about Nobel being a capitalist. He was also a poet.  He was also a philanthopist.  To be the latter, one must necessarily be either a capitalist, the heir to a capitalist, or the winner of a large lottery.

I am unaware of any practioners of socialism who leaves huge sums of money to philanthropic foundations.  Are you?

I didn't find the laundry list of Nobel Prize winners in economics particularly interesting or germane to this thread,
but the attempt to discredit the prize based on the personal life of the man who donated money to create the foundation that awards it is not especially instructive either.

As to the earlier claim that Nobel enjoyed great profits from military munitions...As nearly as I've been able to find out over the past hour (not very extensive research) of all of his inventions, only one was used in war during his lifetime.  That was Ballistite, which he licensed to the Italian government a few years before he died.  

Among the "capitalists" awarded Nobel Prizes are the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa,  along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,  Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and Mother Teresa.

Many prominent leftists, including Pablo Neruda, have won Nobel Prizes.


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## .   1

This seems to be getting me into trouble but it is also quite revealing.
I did not know that I was attempting to denigrate the Nobel Prize by pointing out that I thought it to be a capitalist prize awarded by a foundation founded and run along capitalist lines.
There are no similar awards based on socialist ideology but this is probably due to the nature of the capitalist concept of one individual aquiring vastly more than they could ever use.
The Nobel Prize is an excellent concept and does much good but it was founded by a capitalist and funded by capitalists.
I was refuting the concept that the lack of socialists among award recepients indicates that capitalism is somehow superior.
A flawed data base results in flawed conclusions.

Robert


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## ernest_

Hello cuchuflete and the rest of you,



> To TRG- If you go to the extremes of left and right wing governments, they converge in terms of state control of commerce. Both run highly centralized economies. We can still accept your statements, broadly, if we exclude these extremes, and look only at the more centrist varieties of left and right wing governments.


Wait a minute. If by 'extreme left' you mean socialism, I have to say that socialism have little to do with centralised planning. Socialism advocates social ownership of the means of production, not a state-controlled economy. It is true the USSR operated under heavy centralised economic planning, but I wouldn't say this is what defines socialism at all. In fact, at some point they tried to get rid of centralised planning and adopt some sort of market-based mechanisms, though they never succeed.

But, as you say, these are extreme cases. If we focus on capitalism and its different forms, there's little centralised planning. Some areas, such as education or health services, may be highly regulated or even state monopolies, but at the same time other areas are entirely left to the free market. So we have to be careful not to oversimplify things talking about state control.



> I'm not familiar with any reknowned economic theorists of a socialist stripe after Karl Marx. Are you?


There are few economic marxist theorists left nowadays, but there are still some of them that are well-respected. Of course you can't expect them to be working for the State Treasury or in big corporations, where they could get public recognition, right?



> I am unaware of any practioners of socialism who leaves huge sums of money to philanthropic foundations. Are you?


I am unaware of any practitioner of socialism that has a large sum of money to begin with. I don't believe in this kind of philantropy, though.  These people, think of Bill Gates and the like, have so much money that don't even know how to spend it. It's no wonder that they become philantropists.



> I didn't find the laundry list of Nobel Prize winners in economics particularly interesting or germane to this thread,
> but the attempt to discredit the prize based on the personal life of the man who donated money to create the foundation that awards it is not especially instructive either.


Right. However this prize descredited itself long time ago, when a serial killer like Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That speaks pretty clearly about Nobel Prize's credibility.


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## cuchuflete

Ernest,
I was referring to the USSR and the Chinese regimes up until about the mid-1970s as extreme left, centrally owned and controlled economies.  These no longer exist in that form.
Socialism is another matter entirely.  I don't think we disagree, and it's useful to clarify the terms we are using.

The entire Nobel matter, the list of capitalist economist names and the foundation, and the founder, are of little interest in this conversation.  Sorry for the protracted aside.  It results, I think, from two members trying to get in a little early support for their preferred ideologies.  How very human of them. 
The Nobel matter might make for an interesting thread of its own.

For the purposes of trying to advance the thread question, can we agree to some measure of economic welfare?
No static number will be useful.   How about a measure of change over a decade?

Possibilities, all with their flaws, might include GDP per capita, (with some adjustment for income distribution?).  Is there any reliable, semi-trustworthy data available that "corrects" for
concentration of wealth [frequency distribution of income], and gives weighted average income for all but the wealthiest ten percent?
Cost of living further muddles the picture.  What would be useful would be some measure of purchasing power of the average wage earner.


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## TRG

First, let me apologize for ever bring up the Nobel Prize list. I only thought that if you wanted an assessment of the state of the art of the science of economics you might look at a group of prominent economists and I happened to think of what is arguably the most notable of such groups. I should have remembered the words of GB Shaw who said something like, "If all the world's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion."

Back to the question at hand. Aren't there already many studies and surveys available which purport to measure economic and social well being? It seems a little presumtuous that a bunch of amateurs (speaking for myself of course) could improve upon what has already been done or is being done. Here is one that I just googled up from The Economist that rates many countries based on numerous factors. The usual suspects head the list.

One of their parameters is political freedom. In the context of left vs. right it has been pointed out that political freedom goes to zero in the extreme left and the extreme right. I find this sort of circular political spectrum somewhat nonsensical. A system that rates on a linear scale from zero (anarchy) to 10 (100% state control) might make more sense. So with my system Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany would both get a 10. As I'm writing I'm thinking that maybe the scale should be inverted and logarithmic, but you get the idea. You could have a similar and independent scale for economic systems, but one suspects that the two scales would be highly correlated. 

I'm not sure I can really contribute much to this, but I look forward to the discussion.


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## ernest_

cuchuflete said:


> For the purposes of trying to advance the thread question, can we agree to some measure of economic welfare?
> No static number will be useful.   How about a measure of change over a decade?
> 
> Possibilities, all with their flaws, might include GDP per capita, (with some adjustment for income distribution?).  Is there any reliable, semi-trustworthy data available that "corrects" for
> concentration of wealth [frequency distribution of income], and gives weighted average income for all but the wealthiest ten percent?



Aye, there is. It's called Gini index. It is a ratio that goes from 0 to 1. Zero means that GDP is perfectly equally distributed amongst the whole population. One means a single person receives all income. Note that we are talking about income here, not accumulated wealth.

Wikipedia has an article about the Gini index:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient



> Cost of living further muddles the picture.  What would be useful would be some measure of purchasing power of the average wage earner.


Usually all statistics are already corrected to take into account differences in cost of living, so we don't need to worry about that one. For time-series data constant dollars are used (e.g., everything is calculated in dollars of 1981). For cross-section data, PPP dollars are used (meaning that exchange rates are corrected to reflect differences in purchasing power).


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## TRG

ernest_ said:


> Aye, there is. It's called Gini index. It is a ratio that goes from 0 to 1. Zero means that GDP is perfectly equally distributed amongst the whole population. One means a single person receives all income. Note that we are talking about income here, not accumulated wealth.
> 
> Wikipedia has an article about the Gini index:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient


 
I would like to challenge somewhat the concept that equality of wealth distribution is a good measure of the general social and economic well being of a society. It tends toward the view that economics is a "zero sum game", i.e., one individual can only gain at the expense of another. In reality wealth accumulates continuously over time so that each generation is wealthier than the preceeding. It is not necessary to transfer wealth from the haves to the have nots in order for the least among us to achieve a reasonable degree of prosperity. When and if we reach that point, the world is in big trouble, IMO. Accumulation of wealth (capital) is essential for economic growth and for people with the least to have a chance to better their life. I would add that if those accumulating the wealth were to use it only for their own extravagant consumption then that could undermine the potential for positive economic growth. This seems somewhat unlikey, however. As for myself, I don't really care how much someone else has as long as my basic needs are met. So I would say that if you are going to have wealth distribution as a factor in rating an economic system, it should not be done without considering how well the basic needs of the least prosperous segment of the population are being satisfied.


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## ernest_

TRG,

I don't support economic growth, because growth is unsustainable.  Instead, I support stagnation. But anyway, what you say is true, equality by itself doesn't tell us anything. However, it does tell us something if we look at it along with the GDP per capita. For instance, if a country like the US has a high GDP per capita, we may be fooled into thinking that people in the US are very rich. But we don't know! Because GDP per capita is an average. It could be that few people are very rich, and the great majority very poor. So, the Gini Index tell us how reliable (or representative of the whole population) that average is.


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## TRG

ernest_ said:


> TRG,
> 
> I don't support economic growth, because growth is unsustainable. Instead, I support stagnation.


 
This is not too surprising to me although it's not an idea that gets talked about much. Do you then think that we can achieve a fairly high general level of economic prosperity and then flatten out or was Malthus right?


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## Athaulf

TRG said:


> Back to the question at hand. Aren't there already many studies and surveys available which purport to measure economic and social well being? It seems a little presumtuous that a bunch of amateurs (speaking for myself of course) could improve upon what has already been done or is being done. Here is one that I just googled up from The Economist that rates many countries based on numerous factors. The usual suspects head the list.



The problem is that such professional "quality of life" studies usually do little more than apply the same old amateurish criteria, only backed up by somewhat more systematic and reliable data, with some abstruse statistics thrown in to give it an aura of learnedness. But there is nothing really sophisticated in their methodology, and they often end up using criteria even more absurd than those used by typical amateurs. 

For example, take a look at the above quoted Economist study. They measure the quality of "community life" by the raw numbers for the rate of church attendance and trade union membership! Anyone who has ever lived in an environment with a reasonably rich and interesting community life can only laugh at that (even if it's used only as a dummy variable). And  using the raw divorce rate to measure the quality of family life?! Give me a break.

Even those supposedly precise and objective econometric measures are dubious upon closer inspection. GDP per capita seems like a very well-defined measure, but in fact that little issue called "PPP adjustment" hides a world of possibilities for manipulating the numbers. (There are also other problems with the concept of GDP, but it would take me too far for the purposes of this discussion.) The unemployment rate also seems like a truly precise measure -- until you realize that in countries with high unemployment, the official figures usually have no connection to reality because many (or even most) people are employed in the informal sector. And so on -- one could easily find serious faults with most of the other criteria used in the study, too.

Thus, when you really dissect the logic of those professional "quality of life" studies, they aren't really that much better than our own amateurish discussions. 



> One of their parameters is political freedom. In the context of left vs. right it has been pointed out that political freedom goes to zero in the extreme left and the extreme right. I find this sort of circular political spectrum somewhat nonsensical. [...]


I find it generally nonsensical to use a single number of some kind to measure such a broad concept as the political or personal freedom. It might make sense when one compares extremes -- one certainly wouldn't be wrong to say that, say, Canada is generally much more free than North Korea. But when it comes to comparing countries that are all relatively free, it will usually be the case that the limits to freedom in individual countries are of entirely different kinds. Thus, it makes sense to directly compare only the levels of freedom when it comes to particular concrete issues; which country is more free overall will depend on one's subjective preferences, i.e. what things one considers as more important to be free to do.


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## Athaulf

ernest_ said:


> Aye, there is. It's called Gini index. It is a ratio that goes from 0 to 1. Zero means that GDP is perfectly equally distributed amongst the whole population. One means a single person receives all income. Note that we are talking about income here, not accumulated wealth.
> 
> Wikipedia has an article about the Gini index:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient



However, the Gini coefficient has some serious flaws when comparing countries with different political and economic systems. 

The first problem is that in every country, there are at least some people whose power, influence, and effective command of material resources are disproportional to their wealth and income on paper. To take an extreme example, the high officials in Communist countries often formally had only meager incomes and almost no personal property, but of course, in practice they had vast power and their standard of living was beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary people. This is of course an extreme example for illustrative purposes, but even in moderate political systems, there are always people whose effective power and wealth is derived from their political status, rather than the material wealth they have on paper. The Gini coefficient fails to take into account such inequalities.

The second problem is the unavailability of reliable data on the wealth and incomes of rich people. The governments certainly try hard to get their assessment for tax purposes, but the rich folks (and their armies of lawyers and accountants) are very good at finding ways to minimize and avoid taxes. The old cynical remark that only poor people pay taxes is an exaggeration, but certainly not one without any basis in reality. This is especially relevant for high-tax countries such as, say, Sweden. I'm pretty sure that Swedish billionaires -- some of whom, like Ingvar Kamprad or Stefan Persson, are among the handful of world's richest people -- have their ways of saving most of their billions from the Swedish taxation. Thus, they probably don't count in the Swedish Gini coefficient either -- whereas they might wildly increase the Gini coefficients of various tax havens. 

I'm not saying that the Gini coefficient is entirely worthless as a measure, but one should keep the above facts in mind when making conclusions based on it. 



> Usually all statistics are already corrected to take into account differences in cost of living, so we don't need to worry about that one. For time-series data constant dollars are used (e.g., everything is calculated in dollars of 1981). For cross-section data, PPP dollars are used (meaning that exchange rates are corrected to reflect differences in purchasing power).


But in many cases, the PPP adjustment is very difficult, if at all possible, to compute truly meaningfully and objectively. It's hard to determine in what cases one purchases _exactly_ the same good or service in different countries and what weights should be assigned to various goods and services in cases of widely varying consumer preferences. However, such a situation does offer a lot of space for manipulating the numbers for whatever purposes. That's why one sometimes sees the PPP-adjusted GDP figures for certain countries that vary wildly, even from quite reputable sources. (As an illustration, google for the PPP-adjusted GDP of Croatia and you'll get anything in the range from, say, $8,000 to $13,000. Amusingly, the World Bank website has obviously combined data from several different sources, since it claims that the Croatian GDP grew by over 100% in the period 2000-2005. )


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## beakman

cuchuflete said:


> it would be interesting to discuss whether the so-called left-leaning or right-leaning governments, over some reasonably long time span, do better at improving general social welfare, broad national economic growth, etc.
> Please try to restrain the natural instinct to argue, here at least, the inherent superiority of left or right.


 
To begin with, it's easy to me to "restrain the natural instinc to argue" the superiority of left or right.

"What do we generally accept as a definition of 
-left-wing
-right-wing
-centrist
and are these definitions particular to individual countries, _i.e._, relative terms, or are there definitions that comfortably cross borders? "
Now I'll try to answer these questions from my viewpoint. Left-wing ideas stand for providing equality to everyone (emigrants included), watching over common property and general welfare, social services (hospitals,cheap public utilities, cheap public transport, education, medical care, etc.) the same, available and free (in case of many of them) to everybody, more jobs and less differences in salaries among people. 

Right-wing ideals pursuit the economic prosperity, privilages only for selected groups of people, supportting individual property versus common capital. To put it clear: who has enough money can buy a service, who doesn't have - manage without a service.

At the same time the definitions of left-wing can't be the same if it's applied to different social systems. Left-wing government of some social country can't be compared to left-wing government of some capitalist state. Because the latter subdues the rules of the capitalist system, where everything depends on private capital. 

"II. What are some useful measures or standards of social and economic well-being, or measures of progress?"

Social and economic well-being standards? They are vary from person to person, depends on what is vital, essential, most important for this person. I can put you an example: the fact that I possess a car ( statistics like to use this factor) for me isn't very important as I prefer not going by car. The factor of heating at home is more important for me. My home has a deficient heating/ not have any. If I suffer from cold in the winter (and I still have a car) doesn't it reflect my social level? Some things are not being considered by statistics then.


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## TRG

Athaulf said:


> The problem is that such professional "quality of life" studies usually do little more than apply the same old amateurish criteria, only backed up by somewhat more systematic and reliable data, with some abstruse statistics thrown in to give it an aura of learnedness. But there is nothing really sophisticated in their methodology, and they often end up using criteria even more absurd than those used by typical amateurs.
> 
> For example, take a look at the above quoted Economist study. They measure the quality of "community life" by the raw numbers for the rate of church attendance and trade union membership! Anyone who has ever lived in an environment with a reasonably rich and interesting community life can only laugh at that (even if it's used only as a dummy variable). And using the raw divorce rate to measure the quality of family life?! Give me a break.
> 
> Even those supposedly precise and objective econometric measures are dubious upon closer inspection. GDP per capita seems like a very well-defined measure, but in fact that little issue called "PPP adjustment" hides a world of possibilities for manipulating the numbers. (There are also other problems with the concept of GDP, but it would take me too far for the purposes of this discussion.) The unemployment rate also seems like a truly precise measure -- until you realize that in countries with high unemployment, the official figures usually have no connection to reality because many (or even most) people are employed in the informal sector. And so on -- one could easily find serious faults with most of the other criteria used in the study, too.
> 
> Thus, when you really dissect the logic of those professional "quality of life" studies, they aren't really that much better than our own amateurish discussions.
> 
> I find it generally nonsensical to use a single number of some kind to measure such a broad concept as the political or personal freedom. It might make sense when one compares extremes -- one certainly wouldn't be wrong to say that, say, Canada is generally much more free than North Korea. But when it comes to comparing countries that are all relatively free, it will usually be the case that the limits to freedom in individual countries are of entirely different kinds. Thus, it makes sense to directly compare only the levels of freedom when it comes to particular concrete issues; which country is more free overall will depend on one's subjective preferences, i.e. what things one considers as more important to be free to do.


 
I wasn't necessarily endorsing the Economist study, just pointing out that there are many such studies to pick from. Do you know of one that is more credible than others?

As far as not being able to characterize political, social, and economic freedom with a number, I don't see that it is so complicated. You could start by listing some basic freedoms:

Freedom of speech
Freedom of association
Freedom of the press
Freedom of religion
Freedom of own private property
Freedom from taxation
Freedom to travel or emmigrate
What's wrong with listing as many of these as you can think of, then for a particular country you would assign a number from zero to 10 for each category and then do a weighted average. The ratings are of course subjective, but so what, it can still give an assessment of relative freedom as long as the raters methodology is consistent from country to country. I'm probably missing your whole point, so please explain if so.


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## ernest_

TRG said:


> This is not too surprising to me although it's not an idea that gets talked about much. Do you then think that we can achieve a fairly high general level of economic prosperity and then flatten out or was Malthus right?




Well, I can't tell. I think that now that we have a more than acceptable standard of living (in the developed countries), we should stop growing and start producing more efficently, that is to say, using less energy, less human labour, recycling materials, etc. I don't know how much time we will be able to keep it up, but the sooner we start, the longer it will last.


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## Kajjo

Cuchuflete, you opened a very interesting and stimulating thread. What is left or right is a highly controversial and mostly unanswered topic -- a situation that is interestingly in stark contrast to the daily routine usage of these difficult terms.

It is very demanding, almost impossible, to answer your title questions without bias. I will try to restrain from any personal comment and try to convey a very fundamental point of view.

*Definition of the political spectrum*

_ The left-wing tries to make people equal, who are in fact not equal at all.
The right-wing detects unequality between people who are in fact equal.

_Starting from the equality definition some further corner-stones follow:

_ left-wing favors common property -- state control and state responsibility -- small or no individual gain by personal merits
right-wing favors private property -- individual freedom and responsibility -- meritocracy
_
*Useful measures of social welfare*

When trying to be independent from any special society, there are only very essential and elementary points to consider: No hunger and thirst, no immediate danger to life or health, reasonable living conditions (heat/cold, general protection, health), general happiness. 

When accepting modern, Western societies as standard, we could add: high level of education, medical services and security, personal freedom and happiness.

It is easy to realise that values such as _freedom_ or _happiness_ are very individual and difficult to define, while they are generally quite easy _to feel _for each single person.

Kajjo


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## TRG

Kajjo said:


> *Definition of the political spectrum*
> 
> _The left-wing tries to make people equal, who are in fact not equal at all._
> _The right-wing detects unequality between people who are in fact equal._
> 
> Kajjo


 
This is interesting, but I'm not sure how you would use it to measure whether a country or person is left or right.

Here is another attempt at categorizing. Let's consider four spheres of influence:

Economics
Politics
Religion
Psychological
*Economics*
right - free reign of capitalism and markets
left - state socialism

*Politics*
right - libertarianism, minimal government
left - authoritarian and statist

*Religion*
right - moralistic, religious
left - tolerant, secular

*Psychological*
right - conservative, establishment
left - progressive, nihilistic

Immediately you can see problems with these categories, right? I do. To use these, you would have to toss out some of the classical definitions of left/right. But, why not? Say we do, then you have some inconsistencies. How can you be a libertarian and be moralistic at the same time? I don't know, but in the US, the libertarians tend to be on the political right along with the religious people. Seems a little strange. As far as religion, people on the left should be tolerant and not moralistic. Are they? Not always. Many people who support the left politically are very moralistic, judgemental, and intolerant. "Political correctness" is a phenomenon of the political left, IMO. Furthermore, the "establishment" view of the right is really not consistent with unrestrained capitalism. To do so would threaten the status quo. I could go on for a while, but I think you get the point that we are so mixed up in terms of our social, political, and economic thought and many of us don't know what we are. It's very hard to sort it all out in way that would make good sense to everyone. Perhaps this is why many people just start out associating themselves with either the political left or the politcal right without ever thinking it all through. They may have a few "hot button" issues and those are the only ones they pay attention to so they never see the inconsistencies. And for some, politics is like sports; the home team is always right, no matter what. Then, when the home team runs amuck, they just blindly continue to cheer even though it may be contrary to their own best interest. This really doesn't help, does it.


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## Kajjo

TRG, well, I think left-wing and right-wing should not be defined about extremes.  This can be very misleading: Please compare the Nazi regime in 3rd Reich Germany or the communists in the former USSR or China with your definitions! For example, are communists tolerant to religion? Have they been progressive?

I figure that in the normal, real-life spectrum of modern nations like US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and so on being left-wing or right-wing cannot be defined by individual's view of democracy, moral values or religious fervor. There are usually both sorts on both sides, even if it might be unbalanced. The questions remains whether such associations (e.g. religious = right-wing) are conincidental, whether such notions just fit to each other or whether they are really an integral part of one another. I do not believe in the latter.

Kajjo


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## Kajjo

> _The left-wing tries to make people equal, who are in fact not equal at all._
> _The right-wing detects unequality between people who are in fact equal.
> _TRG: This is interesting, but I'm not sure how you would use it to measure whether a country or person is left or right.


_ left-wing favors common property -- state control and state responsibility -- small or no individual gain by personal merits
right-wing favors private property -- individual freedom and responsibility -- meritocracy_

Well, TRG, I added the above lines to fill the aphorism with a little bit more reality. I usually can detect whether someone ticks more left- or right-wing by listening to his opinions about the above mentioned issues.

Kajjo


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## beakman

TRG said:


> Perhaps this is why many people just start out associating themselves with either the political left or the politcal right without ever thinking it all through. They may have a few "hot button" issues and those are the only ones they pay attention to so they never see the inconsistencies.


Hi, everybody!
I have some questions:

Could emigration issue be one of those "hot buttons" you've mentioned?
And soil management? (I refer to soil speculation which take place in many developed countries, for instance in Spain).
And issues concerned with ecology? Is this left-wingness or right-wingness?

TRG, I wouldn't give so much importance to religion nowadays. I don't think that it's decisive anymore. I don't see much difference among "moralistic"/ "religios"/ "secular", etc...hence, religion isn't a "distinctive feature" between right-leaned and left-wing. At least, not for many of us.

I totally agree with Kajjo's defenition of what is right-wing/ left-wing. I also think that the extremes of any are always not good. Left-wing favours the majority. ("No hunger and thirst, no immediate danger to life or health, reasonable living conditions (heat/cold, general protection, health), general happiness"). While right-wing only defends selected groops of society.


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## Athaulf

TRG said:


> I wasn't necessarily endorsing the Economist study, just pointing out that there are many such studies to pick from. Do you know of one that is more credible than others?



Hardly. But my point was that the results of such studies generally shouldn't be held in particularly high respect. Their inherent flaw is that they are trying to precisely measure and quantify things that by their very nature elude objective quantification. 



> As far as not being able to characterize political, social, and economic freedom with a number, I don't see that it is so complicated. You could start by listing some basic freedoms:
> Freedom of speech
> Freedom of association
> Freedom of the press
> Freedom of religion
> Freedom of own private property
> Freedom from taxation
> Freedom to travel or emmigrate
> What's wrong with listing as many of these as you can think of, then for a particular country you would assign a number from zero to 10 for each category and then do a weighted average. The ratings are of course subjective, but so what, it can still give an assessment of relative freedom as long as the raters methodology is consistent from country to country. I'm probably missing your whole point, so please explain if so.


There are very many problems with the methodology that you describe, but I'll focus on three principal ones. These are enough to demonstrate that such a methodology can do nothing more than identify the countries that best conform to the ideological prejudices of the authors, if even that. 


(1) Impossibility of assigning individual marks objectively. What makes a country have a 10/10 in "freedom of speech," for example? Some people will say that it means that anyone can say anything, period -- no matter how offensive, disturbing, and/or blasphemous. This is the approach of the current U.S. constitutional law. But others will say that forcibly suppressing and censoring various forms of offensive, disturbing, or blasphemous speech is not only compatible with freedom of speech, but in fact a prerequisite for a state of "true" freedom; this is the prevailing view in most other countries. Furthermore, the effective freedom of speech depends very much on what you have to say; thus from the points of view of two different individuals, the same country might seem to have drastically different effective levels of the freedom of speech. You'll never get people to agree over this, and you'll encounter analogous problems in assigning the marks for all the other types of freedom, too.


(2) The impossibility of assigning weights objectively. Individual people value different kinds of freedom differently. How would you weight e.g. the economic freedom against the freedom of speech, unless you refer to the preferences and prejudices of some particular individual?


(3) There are many kinds of freedom that aren't necessarily tied to the political and legal system. A society that is generally puritan, moralistic, and uptight will seem very unfree to someone who likes having fun in life, even if the only problems are the informal social disapproval of his activities and the lack of company of other fun people, rather than the formal legal restrictions. On the other hand, someone who is moralistic and uptight will feel very bad if he is forced to live in a permissive society, surrounded by people engaging in fun and debauchery. (Even the formal legal limits to various forms of having fun can be perceived as both oppressive and liberating by different people; some people want to be free to have a smoke in a bar, while others believe that it's their freedom to prevent them from doing it.) These issues really have substantial effect on people's happiness and thus they should be included in any realistic measure of the overall quality of life. But obviously, they are hopelessly subjective and impossible to quantify.


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## cuchuflete

We may be making some small progress.  I think those who have joined the conversation so far are in general agreement to exclude the extremes from our attempt to define terms.

I would propose that we also give limited attention to state ownership.  There are many examples of capitalist nations with some state ownership of natural resources, whether complete or partial.  Take, for example, Petrobras and Pemex.  

I wonder if it would be useful or harmful to also discard the underlying ideologies—which in the event are often compromised by a government once it takes power—and focus more on the degree of regulation and control of an economy actually put into effect.  That may leave us with a useful continuum.  Of course the right will advocate for more _laissez faire_ policies, while regulating much, and the left will advocate more regulation, while selectively leaving some sectors alone.  Still, as working generalities, regulation and control may be a good differentiator.


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## Kajjo

cuchuflete said:


> I think those who have joined the conversation so far are in general agreement to exclude the extremes from our attempt to define terms.


Agreed.



> I would propose that we also give limited attention to state ownership.


Agreed only partially. State ownership of certain ressources is of no central importance here, but how people view private property is very important (see below).



> I wonder if it would be useful or harmful to also discard the underlying ideologies—which in the event are often compromised by a government once it takes power—and focus more on the degree of regulation and control of an economy actually put into effect.


The title question can be discussed with both persons or ideologies as the object of our investigation. In the core we have to focus on _policies_ and _opinions_, not on systems and their status quo.



> That may leave us with a useful continuum.  Of course the right will advocate for more _laissez faire_ policies, while regulating much, and the left will advocate more regulation


Agreed. One major point in which left- and right-wing differ is the amount of regulation.

Another _very important_ point from my point of view is the issue of meritocracy. Shall individual work, special abilities or particular enthusiams be rewarded? Is it OK if someone who works very much and very successfully, someone who has special capabilities does lead a better life, has more property (see above!), more prosperity? And is it OK that someone who avoids work and contribution willingly has to lead a worse life, has only little personal property?

Both above issues (regulation and meritocracy) are in direct, mutual interaction with the center theme of equality. One could say the issues are both consequences and origins of the degree of equality a policy or ideology wants to enforce. While equality is more difficult to quantify, the above issues are a lot easier to discuss and measure.

Again, seeking equality where there is or should be none, is typical left-wing. Seeking difference where there is or should be none, is typical right-wing.

Kajjo


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## TRG

cuchuflete said:


> This got me thinking that it would be interesting to discuss whether the so-called left-leaning or right-leaning governments, over some reasonably long time span, do better at improving general social welfare, broad national economic growth, etc.
> 
> For this particular thread, let's try to determine some useful measures and standards to apply:
> The specific objectives of this thread are to try to find common ground in answering questions I and II above, and then to open _another_ thread which will discuss whether the ideological leanings of governments tend to affect general welfare.


 
What would you say is a reasonably long time span. I would think 20 years at least, maybe more. I know that according to every political pundit I've ever heard it's four years (at least in the US) unless you're in the House of Representatives, in which case it's two years. 

I'm not going to try to suggest any more measuring of "social well being"; Athaulf has persuaded me that it's much too difficult. I will share a personal anecdote on this point, however. I remember the first time I ever traveled outside the US. Growing up in the US, I had the sense that we had this disproportionate material prosperity and that people all over the world who didn't have the same level of prosperity were miserable. I quickly learned that people could be quite happy living with much less than the average American and they were in no sense of the word miserable.

I will suggest one parameter which should be the very essense of quality of life, and that is life expectancy.


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## cuchuflete

Thanks Kajjo-  good synopsis.  Let's see if others are comfortable with it as a basis for Part II...if we ever get there.

TRG- very good question.  I guess I had a decade in mind.  It certainly takes more than four years for a measurable shift to take place (though a regime can run an economy into the ground a lot more quickly than that, it takes a while longer to establish a healthy one.)  Most regimes of either left or right don't last as long as twenty years, so while that is more measureable, it's hard to find examples outside of dictatorships.  Can you live with ten years as a working number?


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## TRG

It was my impression that the focus of this effort would be to compare one country to another or to compare groups of countries. If it is to attempt to draw comparisons within a single country then I'm not sure it's possible unless there has been a sea-change in the political order such as what's happened in eastern Europe or perhaps, what is about to happen is Venezeula. I would especially regard with skepticism any attempt to do such an analysis within the US since, IMO, there is not a dime's worth of difference between our various "regimes" when it comes to economics.

This is just an aside, forgive me, but in using the phrase "sea change", I wanted to make sure it was a correct usage so I looked it up. According to one source, it's from Shakespeare's _The Tempest._

_Full fathom five thy father lies:_
_Of his bones are coral made:_
_Those are pearls that were his eyes:_
_Nothing of him that doth fade_
_But doth suffer a sea-change_
_Into something rich and strange._ 

Running across such tidbits is one of the joys of participating in such discussions and one of the great benefits of the internet.


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## cuchuflete

TRG said:


> It was my impression that the focus of this effort would be to compare one country to another or to compare groups of countries. If it is to attempt to draw comparisons within a single country then I'm not sure it's possible unless there has been a sea-change in the political order such as what's happened in eastern Europe or perhaps, what is about to happen is Venezeula. I would especially regard with skepticism any attempt to do such an analysis within the US since, IMO, there is not a dime's worth of difference between our various "regimes" when it comes to economics.



I'm not sure that comparing one country to another would be
possible unless they were to share a common starting level, by whatever measure, and common natural resources, freedom from war, and a load of _ceteris paribus_ assumptions.
If we can determine a useful set of measures, then these would need to be applied to countries, one at a time, under regimes with differing ideological and operational styles.  
I agree with you about the US, as the two major parties coincide so much on the essence of their economic viewpoints.
A change did occur, however, in special circumstances, when Hoover Republicans (laissez faire) were replaced by FDR and the New Deal (interventionist).
Lately it's been tweedle dee and tweedle dum, and most recently tweedle dumber.  

Venezuela and Bolivia and other countries with more dramatic shifts would be better examples to study.  Likewise the former Soviet bloc nations. Sharp contrasts are also visible in Cuba under the Batista regime and that of F. Castro.
That's why it is critical to define our measures first, before attempting to argue whether a more equitably shared 'pie' is a good thing, and if our opinion changes if the pie itself is growing or shrinking while being consolidated or sliced into smaller pieces.


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## ernest_

Kajjo said:


> Agreed. One major point in which left- and right-wing differ is the amount of regulation.



While this may be not entirely wrong, it is debatable. Right-wing politics often favour "free market" over anything else, and people may think that here "free" means "unregulated" but that's far from the truth, because free market only works when certain conditions are met. Thus, real right-wing policies will try to create such conditions, and this can only be done by means of regulations. For instance, think of anti-trust laws. Anti-trust laws are regulations, but anyone who believes in "free market" has to support these. They will probably also stand for strong "property rights". That is regulation too. And so on.



> Another _very important_ point from my point of view is the issue of meritocracy. Shall individual work, special abilities or particular enthusiams be rewarded? Is it OK if someone who works very much and very successfully, someone who has special capabilities does lead a better life, has more property (see above!), more prosperity? And is it OK that someone who avoids work and contribution willingly has to lead a worse life, has only little personal property?


Right. However this can also be misleading, because for meritocracy to be credible, there must be equality of opportunities. It is a farce to talk of meritocracy if some play with marked cards, likesay, e.g., if only the wealthy can go to the best schools and universities, and thus get the best jobs. But then again, to guarantee equality of opportunities strong State intervention is required, so these two are tightly tied to each other.


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## Athaulf

ernest_ said:


> While this may be not entirely wrong, it is debatable. Right-wing politics often favour "free market" over anything else, and people may think that here "free" means "unregulated" but that's far from the truth, because free market only works when certain conditions are met. Thus, real right-wing policies will try to create such conditions, and this can only be done by means of regulations. For instance, think of anti-trust laws. Anti-trust laws are regulations, but anyone who believes in "free market" has to support these.



Regardless of one's opinion about these issues, this is not  an accurate description of many (arguably most) strong advocates of free markets. Many free-marketers argue that the unregulated market does not lead towards monopolies and that most monopolies in fact emerge because of government policies encouraging or even mandating them directly or indirectly (this might arguably even happen as a result of the abuse of anti-trust regulations themselves). Many of them even believe that if a company achieves monopoly status on a free market, its monopoly shouldn't be interfered with for as long as it lasts. Consequently, they are opposed to anti-trust laws. (I can provide many examples of such people if necessary.)

Thus, regardless of whether such claims are true, you're being factually inaccurate about the beliefs of many proponents of the free market.


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## cuchuflete

ernest_ said:


> Right. However this can also be misleading, because for meritocracy to be credible, there must be equality of opportunities. It is a farce to talk of meritocracy if some play with marked cards, likesay, e.g., if only the wealthy can go to the best schools and universities, and thus get the best jobs. But then again, to guarantee equality of opportunities strong State intervention is required, so these two are tightly tied to each other.



This is a nearly off-topic quibble, but in some countries equality of opportunity has been based on wits and hard work in the marketplace, together with equality of access to education.  That has not required strong State intervention, although such intervention has been helpful in terms of access to education.  In general, I agree with your statements, but they may be misread by some people without experience in or awareness of societies that historically have had little or no state intervention in the educational arena.


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## TRG

ernest_ said:


> While this may be not entirely wrong, it is debatable. Right-wing politics often favour "free market" over anything else, and people may think that here "free" means "unregulated" but that's far from the truth, because free market only works when certain conditions are met. Thus, real right-wing policies will try to create such conditions, and this can only be done by means of regulations. For instance, think of anti-trust laws. Anti-trust laws are regulations, but anyone who believes in "free market" has to support these. They will probably also stand for strong "property rights". That is regulation too. And so on..


 
I enthusiastically agree with this statement. Furthermore, at least in the US, I would say that each of the major political groups is about equally in favor of regulating whatever it is that they think will help them in the next election. 



> Right. However this can also be misleading, because for meritocracy to be credible, there must be equality of opportunities. It is a farce to talk of meritocracy if some play with marked cards, likesay, e.g., if only the wealthy can go to the best schools and universities, and thus get the best jobs. But then again, to guarantee equality of opportunities strong State intervention is required, so these two are tightly tied to each other.


 
I'm fairly lukewarm on this part. It is my belief that people almost always rise to the top based on merit and virtually never based on your parents or the amount of wealth they have. (And I know what you're thinking )


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## cuchuflete

I think we have gone around the block a few times on the fact that both left and right use regulation for their various objectives.  What may be more useful to distinguish them is the amount of additional regulation one group or the other would propose.

Law is regulation.  The right often wants a strict interpretation of older law, while the left frequently finds the body of statute and case law insufficient for its aims, and would therefore add additional law/regulation.  Does that ring true for you?


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## TRG

cuchuflete said:


> I think we have gone around the block a few times on the fact that both left and right use regulation for their various objectives. What may be more useful to distinguish them is the amount of additional regulation one group or the other would propose.
> 
> Law is regulation. The right often wants a strict interpretation of older law, while the left frequently finds the body of statute and case law insufficient for its aims, and would therefore add additional law/regulation. Does that ring true for you?


 
I guess I would say that the concept of libertarianism is not really practiced anywhere and that all political parties exert as much control and regulation as they think they can get away with and will help them maintain political power. There is a dividing line where you cross over to the type of system that essentially doesn't believe in capitalism and free markets. I would say these countries are very few in number and that basically, we are all social democrats. If you want to measure the extent of regulation and control imposed by the government then perhaps the best measure is the effective tax rate. The more regulations you have and the more government services are provided then necessarily you must have a higher tax rate. Along with that you should account for government ownership of business. One way to look at this might be to count the number of government employees, including those employed in areas that could arguably operated by the private sector.

If you like this stuff, you may find this interesting.


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## maxiogee

Why is this thread entitled "*: Part 1*"?


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## Kajjo

ernest_ said:


> Right-wing politics often favour "free market" over anything else, and people may think that here "free" means "unregulated" but that's far from the truth


First of all, I said "amount of regulation". This does not mean that left-wing regulates _everything_ and right-wing regulates _nothing_. Laws and rules are part of any society and without them it just does not work. We need a regulative scaffold. But it is observable that left-wing opinions regulate much more areas and topics of everyday life. This usually leads to more equality and less plurality.

By the way, while participating in this highly stimulating thread I noticed that many US members focus on economics. Certainly econony is an important part, but it is by far not everything. When I talk about regulation, I apply this concept to education, working conditions, health system, security, personal liberty, religious issues and so on. I agree with Athaulf, that Ernest's description of free market is not accurate and in the best a picture of today's US system, but not of ideal free market situation (whether the latter is desirable is another issue anyway).



> For meritocracy to be credible, there must be equality of opportunities. But then again, to guarantee equality of opportunities strong State intervention is required, so these two are tightly tied to each other.


No, I do not agree. What you call "strong state interaction" is more or less the liberty to study at universities, which is the case in many countries (while not in the US). You raised a valid point regarding educational systems that favor equal chances and I am entriely with you. In order to offer people equal and full chances schools, universities and libraries need to be in excellent care, in free access and unregulated in what they teach and research. Again, we will not be able to ensure this without any regulations, but there is a huge discrepancy between "strong intervention required" and "liberal access guaranteed".

And again, this issue is one more that influences the balance of _equality _and _plurality_, which is the focal point in discussing left- and right-wing policies.

Kajjo


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## Kajjo

cuchuflete said:


> Law is regulation.  The right often wants a strict interpretation of older law, while the left frequently finds the body of statute and case law insufficient for its aims, and would therefore add additional law/regulation.  Does that ring true for you?


Partly true. I agree that many right-wing parties are conservative and favor traditional values, thus they want to stick to established laws. However, personally I to not feel that all right-wing policies are connected to conservatism. For example, one can be in favor of plurality, liberty, free market and meritocracy without being religious or for traditional laws.

I agree that left-wing policies often want to enforce equality by new laws, regulation and state intervention.

Kajjo


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## ernest_

Athaulf said:


> Regardless of one's opinion about these issues, this is not  an accurate description of many (arguably most) strong advocates of free markets. Many free-marketers argue that the unregulated market does not lead towards monopolies and that most monopolies in fact emerge because of government policies encouraging or even mandating them directly or indirectly (this might arguably even happen as a result of the abuse of anti-trust regulations themselves). Many of them even believe that if a company achieves monopoly status on a free market, its monopoly shouldn't be interfered with for as long as it lasts. Consequently, they are opposed to anti-trust laws. (I can provide many examples of such people if necessary.)



Maybe I was wrong. To be honest, I knew there are people who say such things, but at least in Europe this would be considered downright extremism.  Perhaps in America these views are more common, I don't know. Just out of curiosity, can you give me a few names? I still doubt your argument applies to every kind of regulation, though. For instance, are these free-marketers opposed to trademarks laws too? What if I start building cars, putting a well-known emblem on top of them, calling them a Mercedes and selling them in the market? Would that be alright according to these people?


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## Kajjo

ernest_ said:


> I still doubt your argument applies to every kind of regulation, though. For instance, are these free-marketers opposed to trademarks laws too?


No, a free market is not a market without conscience, morals or intellectual rights. Of course, there are extremists everywhere, but please do not try to see this as black-and-white options. For example, most moderate right-wing policies (and we agreed on excluding extremists!) accept regulations concerning quality, warranty, security and health issues. Left-wing policies might further claim to regulate who is allowed to produce, how much he is allowed to produce, where he might sell his product, how much he might import or export, to which minimal or maximal prices he is allowed to sell his products. Usually left-wing regulate much more than right-wing, but that does not mean that laws, regulations and protection of customers is not compatible with right-wing policies!

To the monopoly issue: There are at least three main categories of monopolies. (1) There are monopolies introduced willingly by the state through laws, rules and the state acting as company, e.g. power, telephone and drinking water supply were all state-owned in Germany and have been privatised during the last 20 years. In many cases, the new companies are still monopolies because they own the networks, too. (2) Dominant companies acquire smaller competitors or join with each other. These monopolies are in many cases conceived as a threat to society, because the now single supplier of a good or service can dictate product quality and prices and create a dependency. (3) People invent new products or services and are without competition because there just is no competition yet.

While many people agree that (2) requires some sort of regulation, at least central to right-wing policy is to grant (3) a free market, because competition is surely to develop if that is economically reasonable.

To the patent issue: This is a highly controversial topic, because patents enable companies to spend a lot of money in the development of products and subsequently to gain profit from successful ideas and methodology. On the other hand, too strict patent laws create monopoly issues and restrict the competition so severely it might be undesirable for the society.

Kajjo


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## TRG

Kajjo said:


> To the patent issue: This is a highly controversial topic, because patents enable companies to spend a lot of money in the development of products and subsequently to gain profit from successful ideas and methodology. On the other hand, too strict patent laws create monopoly issues and restrict the competition so severely it might be undesirable for the society.
> 
> Kajjo


 
Patents should not be a controversial issue. A patent is used to define intellectual property and is a necessary component of of a well functioning economy. I suppose patents wouldn't be necessary where all property belonged to the state, but we have yet to see such a state that also had what could remotely be termed a "well functioning economy". I do think there are problems with how patent law is administered as one or more of parties involved, including government, will attempt to game the system. But cheaters and thieves will always be with us so we need good government.  The ability of people to have and protect their intellectual property is a measure of how well a society is working.


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## Athaulf

ernest_ said:


> Maybe I was wrong. To be honest, I knew there are people who say such things _[that antitrust laws are unnecessary, or that they are even damaging for the free market -- A.]_, but at least in Europe this would be considered downright extremism.  Perhaps in America these views are more common, I don't know. Just out of curiosity, can you give me a few names?



For example, the recently deceased economist Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate and a proponent of unregulated markets, criticized the antitrust laws on grounds similar to those that I mentioned in my previous post.  Whatever one might think of his views, he was certainly an economist with a strong worldwide influence. For many more examples, just google for the relevant terms. 



> I still doubt your argument applies to every kind of regulation, though. For instance, are these free-marketers opposed to trademarks laws too? What if I start building cars, putting a well-known emblem on top of them, calling them a Mercedes and selling them in the market? Would that be alright according to these people?


Well, we're now getting to the problem of what laws fall under "regulation." My impression is that the enforcement of basic laws against theft, fraud, trespass, etc. that is necessary for markets to operate is normally not considered as "regulation." 

In this example, you would be committing a fraud by falsely claiming that your cars are endorsed by Mercedes, just as if you were forging someone's signature for the purpose of a fraud, so I think the case is straightforward. As for the other types of intellectual property, the situation is less clear; see more about that below. 



> Patents should not be a controversial issue. A patent is used to define intellectual property and is a necessary component of of a well functioning economy. I suppose patents wouldn't be necessary where all property belonged to the state, but we have yet to see such a state that also had what could remotely be termed a "well functioning economy". I do think there are problems with how patent law is administered as one or more of parties involved, including government, will attempt to game the system. But cheaters and thieves will always be with us so we need good government. The ability of people to have and protect their intellectual property is a measure of how well a society is working.


Well, you might be surprised to find out that many 19th century classical liberals -- who were certainly among the most consistent and intellectually strongest proponents of free markets in history -- were opposed to patents, seeing them as an unjustified  and artificial government-granted privilege. Their influence was strong enought that at the time, abolishing the patent systems was considered very seriously in many countries. The Netherlands actually abolished its patent system in 1869, and didn't reintroduce it until 1912. 

Furthermore, the abuses, inefficiencies, and outright absurdities of patent systems are well-documented, to the point that it's quite justified to question whether they produce any net benefit in practice. Add to it the fact that even without patents, inventors often have other ways of protecting their trade secrets that are truly worth keeping, so it's questionable whether taxpayers should be forced to finance such a huge and expensive bureaucratic and judicial system for this purpose. In the light of these facts, the case for patents becomes much less clear than you present it. 

I'm not going to engage in an essentially off-topic detailed discussion of your opinions stated above, but I hope that I've managed to convey the point that these issues are more complex than you seem to imagine.


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## TRG

Athaulf said:


> Well, you might be surprised to find out that many 19th century classical liberals -- who were certainly among the most consistent and intellectually strongest proponents of free markets in history -- were opposed to patents, seeing them as an unjustified and artificial government-granted privilege. Their influence was strong enought that at the time, abolishing the patent systems was considered very seriously in many countries. The Netherlands actually abolished its patent system in 1869, and didn't reintroduce it until 1912.
> 
> Furthermore, the abuses, inefficiencies, and outright absurdities of patent systems are well-documented, to the point that it's quite justified to question whether they produce any net benefit in practice. Add to it the fact that even without patents, inventors often have other ways of protecting their trade secrets that are truly worth keeping, so it's questionable whether taxpayers should be forced to finance such a huge and expensive bureaucratic and judicial system for this purpose. In the light of these facts, the case for patents becomes much less clear than you present it.
> 
> I'm not going to engage in an essentially off-topic detailed discussion of your opinions stated above, but I hope that I've managed to convey the point that these issues are more complex than you seem to imagine.


 
Perhaps some in the 19th century were a little behind the times since Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution says:

The Congress shall have the power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Sounds like patent and copywrite protection, no? I don't for a minute think is simple or easy, it's just extremely necessary, IMO.


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## Athaulf

TRG said:


> Perhaps some in the 19th century were a little behind the times since Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution says:
> 
> The Congress shall have the power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
> 
> Sounds like patent and copywrite protection, no? I don't for a minute think is simple or easy, it's just extremely necessary, IMO.



They might have been wrong, but they certainly weren't "behind the times," since patents had been part of various European legal systems long before the U.S. Constitution came into being -- the section of the Constitution you're referring to only codified what was already common practice at the time. Patents aren't a late 18th century American (or anyone else's) innovation. 

The 19th century liberal perspective I was referring to viewed patents as another type of various old-fashioned government-granted monopoly privileges that had been common historically, such as e.g. crown-granted monopolies on international trade in certain goods, which should disappear along with other such privileges as the world would move towards free trade. (This was of course what they were hoping for at the time, not what happened historically.) 

As for the supposed extreme necessity of patents -- and copyrights, which are another story altogether -- you should open a new thread if you wish to debate that issue. In these posts, I merely wanted to point out that your blanket statements about the issues regarding the intellectual property aren't taking into account many of their important and complex aspects.


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## don maico

In the UK we have two major parties one of the right-Tory, and one of the left- New Labour. In truth, though both are broad churches embracing party members with all sorts of political view points.Many indeed are career politicians some of whom will think nothing of changing sides if it should suit them. Winston Churchill was such a man as he changed parties twice .
 The Tories have an ideological right which believes in free market , low tax ,mimimal Government interference policies. It is also, on the whole ,anti the EC believing that it should merely be a market place with no powers of interference on sovereing issues. . They also have a pragamtic or centrist wing which recognises the need to feel the public pulse and determine policy on what would get it elected therefore support for "Socialist" programmes such as National Health Service are seen as essential.It more than likeley supports the EC viewing it as a community which best serves our interests.
New Labour likewise has an ideological socialist   and a pragmatic Social Democratic wing.  The latter has always been the most influential nad also the most pro EC.
Because the mass of the electorate lies in the middle it is in the centre ground where politics are mostly fought ie which party has the the most appealing pragmatic policies and which the most charismatic and able leaders.
As to the question which political doctrine is best able to deliver welfare and general economic growth. The Tory right will argue that am unconstrained market is best able to deliver , whilst this might be true to the extent that the majority might have their needs met its also true that those at the top would take  the lions share whereas those right at the bottom would be left with the crumbs. The market simply cannot meet all the demands.Socialism ,by contrast, because of its adherence to high taxation and overbloated beaurocracies damages  incentives and entrepeurnership leading to very slow growth and poor economic growth.Therefore one must conclude that it is the centre ground, with its alliance of market and social policies, (aka known as the social market)is where most of the answers must be found . The real question therefore must be which party is best able to deliver in this area ideologies being entirely subserviant to this cause
The Tories might argue that they are best placed being as they have been  the most succesful party in the last 100 years. But it was Labour's post war government which introduced most of the social programmes we now take so much for granted ie the Soclal healthcare ,social housing programmme, welfare etc. Subsequent Tory governments maintained them in the sure knowledge that dismantling them would have meant electoral suicide.
Mrs Thatcher came at a time of great strife when the Trade unions were held responsible or our then economic ills . A free market set of policies( ie low taxes / less beaurocracy) and strict new  laws  saw the disolving of Union power, the destruction or traditional "lame duck"industries which were replaced by vibrant new ones which embraced new technologies and were best able to meet the challenges of the modern era.The aforementioned social prgrammes , though, continued to be maintained.Tony Blair' Labour Government has done little to change any of Thatcherts policies.
The conclusion therfoe must be  that right wing / left wing concepts are rather meaninglesss in terms of individual parties rather it is  which party's policies are best able to  maintain a succesful economy whilst running  effective social and welfare programmes.


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