I really dont know what Im talking about here, so I porbably shouldnt be, but Im gonna go ahead and ask anyway.

It seems to me that all these social security-esque programs just bring about problems, dont they? From getting taken advantage of, to having an improper ratio of suppliers of the $$$ to those granted the $$$. Is there any social plan that can really work? Or are governments/societies/whatever better off not having such programs. Sure its good for those that aren't so lucky, but all this talk about reaming the economy doesnt sound good to me.

Someone please explain this shit to me, it just doesn't make much sense.

that is an extremely over simplified notion...

also its contradictory. Without the provision of education by the state, how can the poor ever gain opportunities to escape the pverty? without health care and social housing, how can they be well enough to work? So surely you need some aspect of a welfare state for the poor to have the technical possibility to support themselves?

This is why I oppose teaching children anything. It's a huge waste of money and a lot of rich families just leech off the taxpayers by sending their kids to state funded schools. There should be no public education when children are born with the technical possibility of at least educating themselves.

Also, we should eat all the Irish babies.

and what are you then, the most enlightened man in the universe? it helps if you actually know a bit about what you are talking about, it stops you from looking so darn ignorant.

and if you're gonna start flaming us well why don't you just fuck off then.

I am not sure what you mean that the Nordic model "isn't exactly reaming the economy in America" - they are reaming us in GDP per capita, quality of life, standard of living, etc. Obviously the Nordic economies aren't as large as the US, but "pound for pound" they are clearly superior.

Social security is one small aspect of a social welfare system.
Re: Our social security - you hear a lot of talk about it failing because a large number of people have figured out it is in their economic interest to restructure social security so that the money is invested in the stock market (i.e. Wall Street will make billions of dollars if this ever happens). If they wanted to they could add something like another 130 years of solvency to it by a few simple tweaks (e.g. remove the $100,000 cap so the wealthy pay the same percentage as everyone else). If the social security system in the US can't afford to pay us when we reach retirement it won't be because the system is a failure, it will be because it was intentionally destroyed. The more likely scenario is that they let it sit for awhile longer without fixing it until people are really clamoring,  then they institute one of the various models which hands over a big chunk of the money to Wall Street and we wind having to put off retirement for awhile whenever the market is down. That said, I wouldn't count on social security - maybe they will kill it before we are old enough to get our money back, I'm saving money for my retirement with the assumption that social security won't be there even though I really assume it will be. Better safe than dying miserably poor like old people used to before social security existed.