Comments for PolEmics

Comment on In Jyväskylä: professional news again by Mike

Mike — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:50:21 +0000

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Comment on Finnish general elections 2007: results, analysis and forecast by Idetrorce

Idetrorce — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:53:16 +0000

very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce

Comment on on hungarian riots 22 october 2007 by polemics

polemics — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:14:21 +0000

I guess it’s not that much different from the riots currently taking place in France… Intifada is slightly different.
I’m not saying these were very extensive – that you can judge yourselves after watching the video.
Of course we could decide to ignore these riots completely, as some do – but that’s a political move.

Comment on on hungarian riots 22 october 2007 by John Chester

John Chester — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:50:49 +0000

‘Riots’? Well, apart from the fireworks and rather tame-looking petrol bombs – and the odd political flags – I have seen worse on a Saturday night in Colchester. This stuff about ‘riots’ seems a bit exaggerated – Not exactly the intifada is it? I guess Hungary is normally a very peaceful and boring place.

Comment on Hungarian riots: the Aftermath of a Crushed Fantasy by on hungarian riots 22 october 2007 « PolEmics

on hungarian riots 22 october 2007 « PolEmics — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:26:08 +0000

[...] elsewhere in this blog for my analysis of last year’s riot. Explore posts in the same categories: [...]

Comment on Finnish general elections 2007: results, analysis and forecast by PhD thesis reviewed online « PolEmics

PhD thesis reviewed online « PolEmics — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 20:37:13 +0000

[...] thesis (the manuscript is rewritten as we speak into a book) and my comments on Finnish politics here last spring. It’s actually a very nice blog, with stuff on Central Eastern Europe and beyond [...]

Comment on Slovakia: Vote against (neo)liberal reforms by polemics

polemics — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:22:46 +0000

Thanks for your comment, John. I agree, there have been calculations on how high a flat tax should be in order to sustain a certain level of public funding (of services) – and these in welfare systems like Finland would imply that the tax ought indeed be very high.
Indeed, social democracy was a RESPONSE to the socialist system created basically out of the fear of the calls for an actually existing socialist system and those for greater social justice in postwar Europe (a good read on this would be Tony Judt’s Postwar).
Nevertheless, let me stress again the relation between communist economic system and the postcommunist turn to neo-liberalism. The individualism inherent in those two systems – and the sense of equality as the (finally very uneven) equality under the state power rather than actual sharing and redistribution are very similar. They therefore set those two systems apart from the social or christian democratic ones.
In this piece I did not seek to explore flat-tax systems as such. My main argument here has been that IF taxation models are not related to notions of equality, fairness and so on, which are value judgements rather than scientific truths, they are in fact very simplistic.

Comment on Slovakia: Vote against (neo)liberal reforms by John East

John East — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:32:36 +0000

This is a rather simplistic assessment of flat taxation, the precise mechanics of which can vary hugely, and tends – like its advocates to confuse flat taxation with low taxation. In fact some flat tax states have quite high rates.

Your remark that “neoliberal policies and the ethics of the flat-tax model can be seen already as an extension of the communists economic system” also makes little sense . It makes sense only in the sense that both are economistic and concerned with efficiency and productivity. In this sense, social democracy and social liberalism would also be “extensions of the communist system”, Basically, it is a rather cheap throwaway remark, which doesn’t really stand up to critical scrutiny.