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critique requested -- why scandinavian states have better run social programs

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3 hours ago, happycamper said:

Are those SAT scores comparable,  though? I mean,  the south famously has lower average SAT scores than the rest of the country... because they test everyone, not just people anticipating college. If 60% of the country is now scoring a little bit worse than what 30% used to be, that's a win. 

 

The SAT has changed so that certain people get more time if they can get a doctor to say they have ADH or some other learning disorder.  Which should raise scores because even guessing improves your score.

There are now tutoring services and tons of books you can get to help you.  None of that existed when i took the SAT.

Yet the SAT scores have continued without any improvement and even a slight depression over the decades.   The federal department of education is a trillion dollar boondoggle.

 

There are two big problems in our public education system.  First are federal standards that are way too low.  But you can't get a Mississippi senators vote if you don't lower those standards.  Second the money the feds give is earmarked for purposes that are dumb in many cases.   We spend more money on handicapped students who will never ever be employed because of their handicaps then we do on our brilliant children who might someday find a cure to help those handicapped kids.  Federal mandates are always stupid, they may fit one area of the country well but the rest of the country is stuck with them.   Third the teachers unions increase in power correlates to more and more wasted education money.  Teachers unions have no interest at all in helping kids.  All they care about is making sure all money goes to teachers and administrators and how many more of those jobs can we create.  How can we have assissistant to the assistant vice principal, that is there goal.   Providing money for science equipment, teaching equipment or an after school resource where kids can do homework is not something they care about.  Teachers are the problem in large part and the fact the administrators come from their ranks perpetuates it.  There should be business people running schools, not politicians who will take bribes from unions to get re-elected or former teachers who have no experience at all in management.  It should be a business person put in charge.  Not to mention your average teacher is ignorant, their education is pathetic so a business person could give them some remedial education too.

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16 hours ago, happycamper said:

We have a big GDP. We still only spend like 2.5% of it on war stuff. A world that is open to trading with us is worth a lot more than that. Hell, I don't totally buy @thelawlorfaithful's assertion that the nordic nations can afford their social spending due to us footing the military bill. Norway spends 1.6% of its GDP, Sweden spends 1%, Denmark spends 1.2%. We spend 3.2% (now that I'm looking it up). Looking at it, if we swapped ~ 1.8% of our GDP from military spending to social spending, would that really get us to the level of the Nordic nations? 

No, it wouldn't. Just getting the ~30 million of uninsured Americans on Medicare eats up more than that 1.8%. 

What about intelligence? We have 17 (that we know of) functioning intelligence agencies. The NGA has about 10 000 govvies and contractors and they're kind of minor league in the IC

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16 hours ago, SleepingGiantFan said:

But not always. My father's family came to America because Norway was very poor in the 19th century.

As for the Danes, that Rasmus guy is a major turd. OTOH, the leftist "fanatic" who started pushing the Australian journalist because he was reporting something about her country she didn't like is just as bad. And wtf is up with passing a law that pork can't be served in public schools because at most 12% of the population don't want their kids eating it? If you come to a country you accept their cultural norms and if you don't like them, leave.

My grandfather's family was poor & came from Norway too.  That would explain why my skin gets dark easily in the sun LOL.

People are just weak & disrespectful these days.  People are weak by simply not standing up to the disrespectful bullying from people who should be grateful they are living in a new land instead of where they came from.  That's why those nationalist groups are rising up in Europe.

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9 hours ago, bluerules009 said:

The SAT has changed so that certain people get more time if they can get a doctor to say they have ADH or some other learning disorder.  Which should raise scores because even guessing improves your score.

There are now tutoring services and tons of books you can get to help you.  None of that existed when i took the SAT.

Yet the SAT scores have continued without any improvement and even a slight depression over the decades.   The federal department of education is a trillion dollar boondoggle.

 

There are two big problems in our public education system.  First are federal standards that are way too low.  But you can't get a Mississippi senators vote if you don't lower those standards.  Second the money the feds give is earmarked for purposes that are dumb in many cases.   We spend more money on handicapped students who will never ever be employed because of their handicaps then we do on our brilliant children who might someday find a cure to help those handicapped kids.  Federal mandates are always stupid, they may fit one area of the country well but the rest of the country is stuck with them.   Third the teachers unions increase in power correlates to more and more wasted education money.  Teachers unions have no interest at all in helping kids.  All they care about is making sure all money goes to teachers and administrators and how many more of those jobs can we create.  How can we have assissistant to the assistant vice principal, that is there goal.   Providing money for science equipment, teaching equipment or an after school resource where kids can do homework is not something they care about.  Teachers are the problem in large part and the fact the administrators come from their ranks perpetuates it.  There should be business people running schools, not politicians who will take bribes from unions to get re-elected or former teachers who have no experience at all in management.  It should be a business person put in charge.  Not to mention your average teacher is ignorant, their education is pathetic so a business person could give them some remedial education too.

Ok,  but how many people  take that extra time? I mean,  about 25 percent of people went to college in the 70s and it's about 40 percent today. You didn't address that at all. 

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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13 hours ago, happycamper said:

Are those SAT scores comparable,  though? I mean,  the south famously has lower average SAT scores than the rest of the country... because they test everyone, not just people anticipating college. If 60% of the country is now scoring a little bit worse than what 30% used to be, that's a win. 

I mean... provide literally any

(Also,  dude,  this is America.  Scandinavian grandparents are like jameis Winston interceptions)

You just chased off another Mugtang customer with that mocking comment. 

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3 minutes ago, soupslam1 said:

You just chased off another Mugtang customer with that mocking comment. 

 

280px-Snowflake_macro_photography_1_(cropped).jpg

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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1 hour ago, happycamper said:

Ok,  but how many people  take that extra time? 

No one had that option so any increase you would think would raise test scores.   My understanding is it is something all the rich kids do now.

1 hour ago, happycamper said:

 I mean,  about 25 percent of people went to college in the 70s and it's about 40 percent today. You didn't address that at all. 

Everyone took the test in my school, not just those who went to college.

They just do worse no days then they did prior.

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On 11/26/2019 at 9:25 AM, soupslam1 said:

Our population, culture, and race makeup as you mentioned is nothing like those countries. Another huge factor is they spend very little on defense and thus that additional money goes into health care and other programs. If we were a small country that was not a threat to anyone we could also do things a lot different. 

A better comparison would be with countries with a large population such as China, Russia, India, and Brazil. We are light years ahead of those countries in regard to health care. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/world/asia/chinas-health-care-crisis.html

https://www.expatica.com/ru/healthcare/healthcare-basics/russian-healthcare-the-russian-healthcare-system-explained-104030/

I would think using Russia and Brazil is setting the bar pretty low.   

But another factor in the problem is related to the cost of delivering health care.  The US spends 1.8 times the next most expensive country per capital on health care and our returns are poor.   

If you look at the link you will see the US is way off the norm in terms of spending on healthcare as a percent of GDP.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-relative-size-wealth-u-s-spends-disproportionate-amount-health

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18 minutes ago, soupslam1 said:

You want to fix health care. Convince Americans exercise is good for you and obesity is not. It’s not a coincidence that health insurance and health care costs have risen dramatically since we started ignoring those two things. 

While I agree it is part of the solution as it will reduce the incidence of chronic problems it is naive to think it is the whole solution.   When treatment for disease X costs significantly more to treat per person in the US than in Germany you are kidding yourself.

BTW, not sure why the “Republican Team” is arguing this point.  It’s the Dem’s who put the clause in ObamaCare that the US government has to pay full retail on drugs.   Both sides are fully in the pocket of Big Pharma.

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On 11/27/2019 at 8:03 AM, Jalapeno said:

My grandfather's family was poor & came from Norway too.  That would explain why my skin gets dark easily in the sun LOL.

People are just weak & disrespectful these days.  People are weak by simply not standing up to the disrespectful bullying from people who should be grateful they are living in a new land instead of where they came from.  That's why those nationalist groups are rising up in Europe.

Yeah, I don't really subscribe to the old "melting pot" philosophy because it seems to presume that immigrants must totally conform their conduct to the new society. However, there's a difference between being allowed to retain one's own culture and expecting that those who allowed you to live among them should have to conform to YOUR culture.

That said, I realize that being almost entirely from a European background I might be sounding hypocritical vis-a-vis how caucasians expected Native Americans to eschew THEIR culture. Although my parents' families didn't come to the US until after the virtual genocide occurred, since no whites ever spoke up for the Indians until late in the 20th century, I have little doubt that had my ancestors come here earlier, they would have condoned that mistreatment too.

Boom goes the dynamite.

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Haven't read all five pages, but is there any data/info on the how large the "affluent" communities are in Scandinavian countries? Could it be that places with larger affluent communities exist are the places where socially run programs are stigmatized?

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"Affluent community" implies there are poor communities and as applied to Scandinavian countries and Finland (technically a Nordic country but not a Scandinavian one), it is therefore probably an oxymoron. See this: https://ips-dc.org/take-lesson-nordic-countries-inequality/

For anyone really interested in how much more egalitarian government policies in those countries make society, I'd recommend this: https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Theory-Everything-Search-Better/dp/0062316559 or for those less inclinded, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

I think the US would be much improved for the vast majority of its citizens if we adopted some of the Nordic approaches to society. However, the uneducated have been persuaded by the filthy rich that anything they can label as "socialist" must be the work of the Devil.

Boom goes the dynamite.

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1 hour ago, SleepingGiantFan said:

"Affluent community" implies there are poor communities and as applied to Scandinavian countries and Finland (technically a Nordic country but not a Scandinavian one), it is therefore probably an oxymoron. See this: https://ips-dc.org/take-lesson-nordic-countries-inequality/

For anyone really interested in how much more egalitarian government policies in those countries make society, I'd recommend this: https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Theory-Everything-Search-Better/dp/0062316559 or for those less inclinded, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

I think the US would be much improved for the vast majority of its citizens if we adopted some of the Nordic approaches to society. However, the uneducated have been persuaded by the filthy rich that anything they can label as "socialist" must be the work of the Devil.

Those Nordic approaches are falling apart now they are running out of oil wealth.

They are going to be the biggest losers over the next few decades and all those socialist programs you love are going away as we speak.

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