Socialist Countries, Democratic Countries: Is it even an important distinction?

In my estimation we toss the terms socialist and democratic as terms to define countries and economies and political methods around far too freely and inconsistently. Russia was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic but in essence it was a communistic country ideologically. Yet there has never really been a totally communistic country, “from each according to their means to each according to their needs.” Nazi Germany may have claimed to be socialist, but it was really a fascist countries along with others; dictatorships. The U.S.A. has had a mixed economy for all readers entire lives despite rhetoric about being a free enterprise country. The 1900s certainly shows us what a mess that can be as Adam Smith knew controls were needed in such a system. And many question if we can really claim to be a democracy at this point in time with the rich having undue control over the government and the economy. We may promote democracy in the world but we also have shown that we are perfectly happy to work with and support any time of regime if it works to our own benefit.

I think that most political scientists and most economists would conclude that almost all countries today have mixed economies and mixed politics. That is certainly true of our own country. We should be over using these terms in a pejorative manner and try to use more useful and helpful jargon.

The Huffington Post had a blog in June of last year that described the 10 countries with the best Work-Life balance. The article was based on information done by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). They examined the overall well being of a country including things such as housing and income and especially the work-life balance in a country. They used three basic criteria: 1) amount of time spent on personal activities; 2) the employment of rate of women with children between 6 & 14 years of age; and 3) the number of employees working over 50 hours per week. It was a limited study of 34 countries.

Following is their list of the 10 best work-life balance countries:

10. France

9. Portugal

8. Germany

7. Sweden

6. Switzerland

5. Belgium

4. Finland

3. Netherlands

2. Norway

1. Denmark                       

Following is a list of the OECD members and partners

Current membership

Australia Austria Belgium Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland

France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan

Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovak Republic

Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom United States

On average persons in OECD countries work 1739 hours, or 217 days a year and spends 64% of their day on leisure and personal activities.

This really leaves me with more questions than answers but I find it interesting and though I’d pass it along. The OECD website can be found at http://www.oecd.org/home/0,2987,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html