Talk:Social market economy

Economic performance

As per my previous edit - much more of a bandaid than an attempt at fixing this, since I'm not a regular editor - I believe this section needs a proper rewrite before it comes close to Wikipedia's standards on quality and neutrality.

First off, the entire current premise of this section is flawed and fails at any sort of neutrality - quite spectacularly. While comparing the USA and the EU as stand-ins for laissez-faire and social market economies respectively makes sense intuitively, a surface-level comparison between an individual country and a supranational political/economic union cannot be mistaken for a fair comparison. That is, unless there is a deliberate effort to disparage the Rhine model. Not all EU countries have embraced the model, some have turned away from it, and some have been forced to. In fact, much of the 2008-2015 chain of recessions, or rather, the failure of the economy to spring back to life as quickly as the US', could be blamed on factors outside the Rhine model, in fact strictly contrary to it - in particular austerity: reduction in public spending. See:

• Criticism of the Troika,
• this paper[1],
• "the turn to belt tightening was badly timed and therefore much more costly in terms of long-term output loss than a more gradual, backloaded consolidation" [2],

Seeing as the economic growth of (the wealthier part of) the EU was consistent with the US' until 2008, I believe the comparative underperformance within the 1996-2020 comes primarily from the 13-year setback, where pre-2009 levels weren't reached until 2021 (2010 for the US, 2011 for Russia); that in turn being largely a 7 year hysteresis effect from reduced government spending during/after the 2008 crisis.

And I am not even touching upon the fact that within this period, the EU has adopted and spread the Euro, gained 13 lower-income member states, lost one high-income member, and experienced multiple energy/fuel crises due to the unpredictability of Russian and middle eastern politics - at the same time the US remained one of the largest oil exporters.

In short, this section in its current state is absolutely indefensible, and potentially written specifically in order to slander welfare states. While a rewrite that would acknowledge the effects of austerity would be an improvement, there is in my opinion need for a complete reset of this section, and a new version that examines the performance of the Rhine model on its own merits rather than comparing it to the unique and hardly comparable circumstances of the US.

tl;dr: this section is bad, austerity exists, i think we should nuke the section 62.194.91.70 (talk) 01:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Agreed - this section is atrocious. In addition to your points, the author’s suggestion that GDP per capita is a measure of individual wealth ignores many of the flaws of GDP as a measure - specifically that it deals in aggregates and averages, and it is simply a measure of activity initially designed to assess wartime production capacity. To suggest that it is a measure of individual wealth or income (as the author has done) completely mischaracterises the concept. Noting this, the author’s comparison of consumer prices against GDP per capita to indicate a nominal drop in purchasing power is just absurd.

Your additional paragraph goes some way to introducing nuance, but (as you say) it is a Band-Aid solution. The section is fundamentally flawed and either needs a proper rewrite or should be removed. 220.244.100.88 (talk) 18:27, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I added material about quality of life. Coral matters (talk) 18:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I feel User:Chaotic Enby was unconstructive reverting my edit. I restored it. Coral matters (talk) 18:53, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I genuinely don't remember doing this revert, that must have been a misclick. My apologies, thanks for restoring it. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 18:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Why did this edit appear on my talk page? Coral matters (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the section is fundamentally flawed in regards to the arguments put forward. As ist stands it's at best flawed, but at worst very misleading. Stokehol (talk) 13:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)