How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013)

#41

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #39

mlevental wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Romania in 1800 was comparatively poorer than Sweden in 1800, but richer than Asgard® in 1800. So, Romania was still poor, but not as poor as other places. this is exactly /my/ point: which countries were poorer than romania. if there were any then you're talking about basically indigenous peoples that still lived pre-agriculture another commenter makes the point that serfdom had been eliminated by 200 years ago. fi…

Quoting myself, from the original comment: > You don’t have to believe me, check the Maddison Project. But hey, let me Google that for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P... (Romania is lumped up in Eastern Europe, just sort to find the regions considered poorer) There are a million shades of "poverty". To paraphrase Tolstoi: rich people are rich in mostly the same way, poor people are e…

[deleted]

Re: How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013)

#42

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Mar 26, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

data_required wrote: post #40

CryptoPunk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I think the fact that steadily increasing tax rates over the decades before 1974 also coincided with high economic growth is a good point against libertarianism. I think one could reasonably attribute the growth for the first decade or two after tax rates began increasing to the momentum built up during the previously laissez faire era. Supply chains, investor sentiment, etc all take time to change so a tax hike mi…

>I think one could reasonably attribute the growth for the first decade or two after tax rates began increasing to the momentum built up during the previously laissez faire era. It's a bit much to expect growth to peak during the era 20-40 years after laissez faire ended, and think that it was because of the previous laissez faire policies. >Supply chains, investor sentiment, etc all take time to change so a tax hike…

>>It's a bit much to expect growth to peak during the era 20-40 years after laissez faire ended

We need to look at Sweden's peak growth relative to other countries in my opinion, because its absolute growth rate was mediated by more than its own policies.

For example the entire developed world saw its peak economic growth rates during the postwar era, suggesting there were certain global economic conditions created by the establishment of the post-war order that could have played a major role in their economic performance.

So a better indicator of policy effectiveness would be to look at its economic growth relative to its contemporaries.

IIRC, Sweden's economic performance relative to its contemporaries, like the US, began to lag soon after it increased its tax rates to above theirs.

>>Without a doubt at least, high taxes and health and wealth clearly coexist in many countries.

But that's not in dispute. The dispute is over whether those countries are rich because of their current high tax policies, or their past low tax ones.

The article tries to demonstrate that in the case of Sweden at least, it acquired most of its wealth during the past eras.

Re: How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013)

#43

Post by data_required » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #42

data_required wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think one could reasonably attribute the growth for the first decade or two after tax rates began increasing to the momentum built up during the previously laissez faire era. It's a bit much to expect growth to peak during the era 20-40 years after laissez faire ended, and think that it was because of the previous laissez faire policies. >Supply chains, investor sentiment, etc all take time to change so a tax hike…

>>It's a bit much to expect growth to peak during the era 20-40 years after laissez faire ended We need to look at Sweden's peak growth relative to other countries in my opinion, because its absolute growth rate was mediated by more than its own policies. For example the entire developed world saw its peak economic growth rates during the postwar era, suggesting there were certain global economic conditions created b…

Those are some good & reasonable points, thank you for making them :).

It would even be quite interesting if potentially the best approach to a healthy & wealthy society would be to be very libertarian for a while, and then very high tax after that...