But you can't say it was Capitalism that caused our problems when it was Corporatism that you are actually thinking of.

Whether you think true Capitalism is even possible (a philosophical debate on some levels) is irrelevant when that's not what the problem was.

Agreed, I am sorry. Just like it wasn't socialism that killed off the soviet union but Communism.

Indeed.  Mixed with some poor foreign and economic policy.

Medicaid which caters to an entirely different demographic is also $7,900 per recipient. The service varies from $5,000 - $8,000 per state depending on benefits, and is still higher than private insurance.

Feel free to look up the data. Every government health care system in the US is more expensive than private insurance - Medicare, Medicaid, and of course, the champion, the Veterans Administration (about $8,500 per person).

If you read what I stated, the said European nations ranked high for labor freedoms.....Which was my point.

When it comes to the fundemental issues of a nation like America which has less social welfare than a comparable nation in Europe, the reason that Happy and I argue its circumstanial is that there are significant difference between Americans and Europeans. The European model of care is the only one that has had success implementing massive safety nets that have ever survived - even then, the stated nations rely heavily on a few factors that America doesn't have.

My argument is that socialist successes seem to be generally correlated with the size of a nation - and I can understand you vouching for such systems when you live in a very small nation. But as you can see with the American model, its a harbinger of what will likely happen to the EU if they merge. Even then, we're seeing what is happening with nations like Greece, which have the potential to significantly screw up the system.

Hilarious.

So 'Americanism' has failed, eh? Despite being the 3rd largest nation in the world and maintaining a median income that is higher by significant multiples of any nearby nation, we have failed? Really?

If you want to believe that, then I really don't see how I can respond to you. If you feel so strongly about America's failures, then I suggest you move far and away from here.

I will pitch in and agree with Viper1 - America isn't a capitalist paradise. We are increasingly corporatist/socialist. Our tax codes and regulatory structure are consistently getting larger, not smaller - despite the supposed tax cuts. Ironically, we had far less rules, regulations and the like years ago when America was supposedly in its golden age. Coincedence?

did the US invade us again when i wasnt looking and now declare us as a territory or something?

Whether you want to believe it or not, most forms of social spending have negative consequences associated with them ...

Spending acts as an incentive and taxing acts as a disincentive for particular behaviours, because of how social spending operates it tends to create incentives for the negative behaviours they're trying to treat the symptoms of while creating disincentives for positive behaviours they would like to see emerge. This is not only in reference to social behaviours as it also has massive impacts on the economy.

To demonstrate what I mean, in most jobs the total income and benefits received for a particular position that requires similar education and experience varies quite a bit from company to company; and if you plot all incomes for this position requiring similar education and experience it would demostrate a normal distribution with a large standard deviation. The reason for this is simple, some companies try to keep costs as low as possible while other companies try to pay better believing that increased productivity and quality can compensate for higher labour costs. When you introduce subsidies to help low income earners (like food stamps or rent subsidies) you reduce the benefit of paying employees more while reducing the penalty of paying employees less, and create a financial incentive to pay employees less while creating a financial  disincentive to paying employees more because the net taxation on a company that has employees receiving subsidies is negative while the net taxation on a company that has employees above the cut off for subsidies is positive.

What is hilarious is that you seem to think that US's dominance is because of Capitalism. Luckily, I however do know how to respond to you if you actually believe that to dispel any illusions you might have.

During WWII every major industry was destroyed except for the US. Literally, everyone else was bombed out and destroyed and the US was left untouched. Obviously that is great for business if you are the only supplier in the world. This is what led to what you jsut called "its golden age." Remeber how factory workers in car companies could have amazing quality of life? That's because they were the ONLY workers inthe world for several decades while the rest of the world competed. Notice how everything started going downhill super fast when the other countries got their shit together? Then around the 80s is when the broken philosophy of the US caught up with it and you had staglflation. How did the US get out of that? $13 trillion to date (started with nearly 3 trillion under Reagan). If you give most nations $13 trillion, they too would be on top.

Basically the US succeeded DESPITE Capitalism, not BECAUSE of it. They succeeded out of sheer dumb luck of having an ocean between them and the Nazis. Now that its luck has run out, it is only running on empty fumes and debt.

Edit: This should have been implicit when I mentoined WWII but I jsut want to make sure you realize that there was a huge talent drain DURING WWII, again to sheer dumb luck.

I am referring to our relative size vs. GDP. For example, only Japan has over 100 million people and a median income over $20,000 USD. The rest are between $500 and $13,000.