I found your post a bit late, but I found it very useful. It’s hard to find a good, clear description of social democracy – certainly, it’s not often defined here in the U.S.’s media – but your description is in keeping more or less with my impressions of it. If anyone has a good website or book recommendation on a readable (for economic and political laypersons) and sound discussion of social democracy, please advise.

There’s a great sadness in what happens when corporations wield the power that they do in the U.S. and when citizens don’t understand the issues or larger contexts. There really should be a bigger global discussion of this matter because, frankly, the international economic community is so tightly connected now that what happens in one place, certainly in the U.S., can have massive effects on the rest of the world.

As you wrote, “it’s unbecoming of a first world nation to let anybody starve.” It’s also unbecoming for any country’s people (mine included) to fail to compassionately and honestly weigh in on the pain that another country is inflicting on itself. In this case, this country, the U.S., must hear criticism and realize that there are alternate ways to handle our economy and social infrastructure. Right now, it seems to be too wildly laissez-faire. Your post here is very useful because it is not insulting or mean; it’s matter-of-fact. Too often Americans and others complacently point fingers and criticize, but for no productive reason. Hopefully, an informative useful dialogue can, at some point in time, begin.

in india, gandhi had a notion of capitalists as “trustees” of the nation’s wealth – an idea that doesn’t seem to have worked very well.

in our deeply fragmented society, we certainly badly need our public institutions to work (and work well). but in an economy increasingly driven by a “free-market” ideology (which, of course, is heavily loaded towards the already rich), ensuring universal access in sectors like education and health is becoming increasingly more difficult.

giri Rao
hyderabad
india
http://bolii.blogspot.com

My best regards , Glavkos