- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Sweden has one of the highest suicide rates.

Posted by: David ( USA ) on September 17, 1999 at 08:07:06:

In Reply to: More of the same. posted by Nikhil Jaikumar on September 17, 1999 at 00:11:32:

: : : Really? Were you perchance aware that a Cuban on average lives longer than an American, a Shanghainese longer than a New Yorker, and a black man from Sao Tome longer than a black man from Harlem. Or that starvation and destitution are rare in any genuine socialist / communist society?

I won't dispute your life expectancy fact, but here are some other facts about life in cuba. Here is an excerpt from National Geographic:

"Hot clothes and cool cash from abroad brighten Cubans' lives. Relatives alone send hundreds of millions of dollars a year. 'If I didn't get money from my daughter in Miami, I couldn't make it,' says a Havana retiree."

"'No ES FACIL--it's not easy'applies to alomost everything now. With public transport scarce, some commuters squeeze into private vehicles...Others birke, walk, or hitchhike. A weekly blackout, relieved briefly by headlights in Baracoa, has also become common since subsidized Soviet oil that once helped fuel power plants dried up in the early 1990s."

Please, leave me out of your socialist paradise. Even if it meant living 20 years less than a Cuban, I would gladly chose my decadent American lifestyle.

: I believe in socialist democracy, which enbsures true freedom. Sweden to\day is the freest country in teh world, not the capitalist US.

What is ironic though, is that Sweden has one of the highest suicide rates. I believe it is topped only be Japan and possibly Norway. Gosh, maybe all that freedom drove them to taking their lives! Not likely, it is probably from the moral degradation that comes with having ones colleagues stay at home, get drunk and high and still get a paycheck. The funny thing is though, they have had to actually fire people because apparently there is a Lithuanian immigrant problem.



Follow Ups:

The Debating Room Post a Followup