The more the state intervenes in the economy, the happier people get

[MarxSchmarx]

I guess we knew this all along, but now someone's shown it:

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — People living in countries with governments that have a greater number of social services report being more satisfied with life, according to a study by

Dr. Patrick Flavin, assistant professor of political science at Baylor, said the effect of state intervention into the economy equaled or exceeded marriage when it came to satisfaction. The study is published in the spring issue of the journal Politics & Policy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0505163753.htm

[stuckinarut]

The United States had one of the lowest levels of state intervention among the countries in the study, but "we still certainly have a more expansive safety net than most developing countries," Flavin said

I like how the US, the "largest economy in the world" is comparing it's social safety nets to those of developing countries. If people saw how bad it really is in the "greatest country on earth" *sarcasm* for the least among us, they would be shocked.

[caramelpence]

Since when do communists characterize our politics in terms of increased support for state intervention?! In any case, this article is flawed by virtue of the fact that it merges social provision with state intervention and therefore carries the implication that countries lacking social provision are more consistent with an idealized free market variety of capitalism in which the role of the state is much more restricted - but in reality the move towards state capitalism is a general tendency of late capitalist society, and the state is just as important in the economy of the United States, for example, as it is in the economy of somewhere like Sweden. There are differences such as the leading role of the military-industrial complex in the US but any clear-cut distinction betweens state and economy is generally impossible to maintain in the case of the most advanced capitalist countries, and all exhibit a trend towards state capitalism and the state takeover of society. The communist revolution is necessarily a revolution against the state because the state represents a limited form of communality and is the basis for the bifurcation of human beings.

[Delenda Carthago]

so, people in russia or china are happier than the average american rite?

[Rakhmetov]

Beautiful article

Beautiful ... Beautiful ... just Beautiful!

[MarxSchmarx]

Since when do communists characterize our politics in terms of increased support for state intervention?!

No one is saying communists "characterize their politics" in terms of state intervention in a capitalist economy.

In any case, this article is flawed by virtue of the fact that it merges social provision with state intervention and therefore carries the implication that countries lacking social provision are more consistent with an idealized free market variety of capitalism in which the role of the state is much more restricted - but in reality the move towards state capitalism is a general tendency of late capitalist society, and the state is just as important in the economy of the United States, for example, as it is in the economy of somewhere like Sweden. There are differences such as the leading role of the military-industrial complex in the US but any clear-cut distinction betweens state and economy is generally impossible to maintain in the case of the most advanced capitalist countries, and all exhibit a trend towards state capitalism and the state takeover of society. The communist revolution is necessarily a revolution against the state because the state represents a limited form of communality and is the basis for the bifurcation of human beings.

The problem with what you say is that no advanced capitalist country (or at least any country in the list of countries the authors studied) exists where the state has a minimal role in social welfare. Indeed, as the authors note, even in the united states, a substantial portion of the state's contribution to the economy comes in the forms of entitlements like social security. You could break it down further by entitlements versus defense spending or funding things like prisons or science, but all the study did was aggregate government spending as a fraction of GDP and ask, are people happier when the economy is under, you know, at least nominal democratic control as opposed to the whims of capitalists. And lo and behold democratic control of the economy made people happier.

[Sir Comradical]

The US intervenes heavily in the economy but in the interests of capital. Sure other countries are also like this, but the US being the prominent imperialist power takes the cake.

[nickdlc]

I'm actually reading an in depth book about this subject and it's good. It's called '23 things they don't tell you about capitalism' by Ha-Joon Chang.

They have an 8 part interview with the author on the real news network
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7m9wfFnH6o&feature=related


You can find a pdf of the book by doing a search on google

[twenty percent tip]

its more fun toget hammered than hammer your keyboard in disgust.for what?\liberlas and state capitalism? kiss myu ass. this\has nothing to do with it. you want stateinterference from the capitalist state?ytea nice and communist. eat it wit your tea and crompets

[Die Neue Zeit]

No one is saying communists "characterize their politics" in terms of state intervention in a capitalist economy.

The problem with what you say is that no advanced capitalist country (or at least any country in the list of countries the authors studied) exists where the state has a minimal role in social welfare. Indeed, as the authors note, even in the united states, a substantial portion of the state's contribution to the economy comes in the forms of entitlements like social security. You could break it down further by entitlements versus defense spending or funding things like prisons or science, but all the study did was aggregate government spending as a fraction of GDP and ask, are people happier when the economy is under, you know, at least nominal democratic control as opposed to the whims of capitalists. And lo and behold democratic control of the economy made people happier.

Comrade, you're forgetting one phenomenon here. What about sovereign wealth funds? I'd like to see happiness indexes in relation to the presence or absence of sovereign wealth funds, despite their being state-based speculation schemes.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No, no, no, no, no.

That study is so massively flawed. What it finds is a correlational link between a self-answered question and four measures that have little to do with genuine pro-welfare state intervention.

Let's look at the four measures used.

1) Govt tax revenue as a % of GDP. Quite obviously flawed measurement. Says nothing about how the tax revenue is recovered (from workers or corporations), and nothing about how it is spent. It is a massively speculative measure.

2) Government consumption of GDP. Can quite easily be buffeted by government purchases, a la USA 1960s and 70s.

3) Generosity of unemployment benefits. Fair enough, yet it doesn't say anything about benefits to the long-term unemployed - those who are too sick and/or disabled to work in an increasingly technological and skilled workforce in the developed world. Often these people are termed as economically inactive, so as to disguise the fact that the new-natural rate of unemployment in neo-liberal countries is often far higher than even the 6% NAIRU rate that Friedman advised, let alone the Keynesian full employment objective or, god forbid, a genuine, Socialist, full employment objective.

The fourth measurement is fair enough, though it doesn't identify and isolate useful welfare expenditure from wasteful welfare expenditure.

Finally, the study is of 15 countries, so has little scope to actually show anything meaningful regarding state intervention at all, let alone genuine pro-worker state intervention.

This really isn't a great study at all. I don't want to be shooting it down for no reason, but we need to keep to higher standards of critique of Capitalism than this if we are to be taken seriously by the wider working class.

In sum, I stress, this limited article finds only a correlational link, not a causal relationship between the questionable measures it chooses to cover 'state intervention', and an equally flawed, self-answered question to the sample population.