(03-26-2014, 09:24 AM)Phoenix Wrote: Perhaps you would like to explain, after I'm sure is you're own extensive research on the subject. Why countries such as Norway, Sweden, which have very generous welfare, scores better on measures of societal health than the less generous countries where there is high inequality, such as the USA, the UK, Australia, Portugal etc.
These measures of societal health are as follows: Trust. Women's status. Illegal drug use. Infant deaths. Obesity. Teenage pregnancy. Prisoners as percentage of population, and the combined index of health and social problems.
Another country that scores well on these measures is Japan. Japan has a high level of equality because of higher wages. The point is that how the equality is achieved doesn't matter, it is the fact that it is there.
Perhaps your views are based simply on your own prejudices and aren't a reflection of reality... Fang.
Phoenix, your comment illustrates the positivistic reason one can observe everywhere: "Because this measure goes up, it follows that this characteristic feature of a country is correlated with another feature and thus there might be some causal effects." I consider this onesided positivism as one of the main reason why we face so many political, societal, environmental and other problems today. This may sound hard, but I think it is a really big problem.
In case of Norway, this country mainly performs so well because of its huge oil revenues, not because of its massive welfare state. I cannot say for all other cases, you would have to study each for itself. Norway's welfare system will break down as all other welfare systems of the Western world will ultimately collapse.
Basic income will cause involuntary unemployment. How much is impossible to predict, the future is always uncertain.