Quote:I was speaking only of illegal immigrants there, not people who just don't vote.

Quote: As I said I'm always very bad with giving my sources, but I can not imagine they used illigal imigrants in those numbers, because they are not registered anywhere.

Quote:The Dutch system of disability benefits has been a particular focus of reform. It has been described as the "weak spot of the Dutch welfare system" and by 1993 nearly a million people were receiving disability payments, nearly one adult person in seven. (7) The response was to begin to reduce the control of the social partners and to introduce extra inducements to employers to retain or hire the disabled. This was linked with a more stringent definition of disability coupled with a broader definition of the ‘suitable’ employment a person could be expected to undertake. The revised tests were applied to all new claimants, and those already receiving benefits are being reassessed. The impact was initially significant and the number receiving disability benefits fell to 850,000 in mid-1996, a fall of over 8%.

Another major change in the Dutch system has been in the approach to lone parents, who are now expected to actively look for work once their youngest child reaches the age of five (previously it was twelve). This reflects an important change in social attitudes, partly linked to the overall increase in part time work and in women’s participation in the labour market. Lone parents are likely to receive their assistance payments through the municipalities, so local integration strategies now have to address their needs around child care, flexible working hours, and so on.

The National Assistance Act was revised in 1996 and the different categories of social assistance recipients have now been replaced by an overall assumption that all those who need assistance who can work should seek to secure an income by participating in the labour market. Welfare benefits should only be provided for those who are unable to get jobs and benefit levels should be set at rates that are sufficient but which preserve incentives to work.

• Netherlands has 7.2 million workers (44.1%) with a population of 16.3 million, low unemployment rate of 2% to 4% and GDP per capita of $28,600.
  <>
  
• United States has 141.8 million workers (48.4%) with a population of 293 million, unemployment rate of 6.2%, and GDP per capita of $37,800.<>
  [st]

Quote:Unemployment provides one of the most important  challenges for economic policymakers in Europe over the next ten years. The  question is – how should they  respond to the challenge?

Quote:Persistently high unemployment  threatens the economic and social cohesion of the EU. European countries  now have targets for raising employment and  the participation ratio in the European labour market – but the most  significant problems appear to be structural in nature and may take several years to resolve.


Europe’s labour market shows clear signs of market  failure and this threatens living standards for millions of people in the  years ahead.

Quote:How bad is unemployment in the EU? ... The fall in unemployment in the European Union during the late 1990s was  steeper than that experienced in the USA over the same period. However, it  served mainly to narrow what appeared to have become a permanent gap in jobless  rates between the two areas.


Unemployment in the EU as a whole has not fallen  below 8% of the labour force since 1990. The latest data shows unemployment  edging up to 8.6%, some 2.5%  above that in the United States and over 3% higher than the UK.


Unemployment  is a lagging indicator of the economic cycle – the slowdown  in real GDP growth in the European Union over the last two years will continue  to push unemployment higher.


The evidence is that the more deregulated labour  market in the United States has reduced the time lag between changes in real  output and employment for  the USA. Notice from the above chart for example, how quickly the US unemployment  rate started to pick up once the cyclical boom experienced in the US came  to an abrupt end from the 2nd half of 2000 onwards.

Quote:There are large differences  between EU countries and also within nations. Some economists have questioned  whether there is in fact a “European  unemployment problem” at all.


According to Professor Stephen Nickell  from the London School of Economics (www.lse.ac.uk)


"Unemployment is high in the four largest economies of Continental  Western Europe, namely France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Exclude these  four countries and the famous European unemployment problem more or less  disappears”

Quote: I think you flirted with Socialism after WWII because you could afford it due to your past colonial adventures, particularly the diamond trade in Africa. Your society has some very extremely wealthy people who were supporting an inordinately large welfare population. Your society was once described to me when I was younger as a place where half the population supported the other half, but I think that level of generosity had faded recently.

eppie,Sep 8 2004, 04:44 PM Wrote:We did not "flirt with socialism" I'd like to think we still have a system which combines market economy...

dwa@Sep 12 2004, 01:33 PM Wrote:It should be obvious that one cannot "combine" them; one can only replace one with the other, depending on the sphere of economics one is discussing

Quote:We declare that capitalism has failed and that immediate steps must be taken by the people to abolish capitalism in a peaceful and lawful manner, and that a new, sane, and just society must be established, a system in which all the natural resources, machinery of production, transportation, and communications shall be owned by the government and operated democratically for the benefit of all the people, and not for the benefit of the few.

Quote:It should be obvious that one cannot "combine" them; one can only replace one with the other, depending on the sphere of economics one is discussing. And, historically speaking, it should be obvious which one is prefered; things like the potato famine in Ireland (where, due to the Corn Laws, Ireland was a net grain exporter during the famine, as it was economically unfeasable to sell to the local populace), the current ongoing famine in North Korea, the various 5 year plans of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's PRC, are not anomolies, there are the inevitable result of implementing socialism.

Minionman,Sep 12 2004, 07:49 PM Wrote:The sphere of economics he is talking about is the economy of a whole country.&nbsp; In that case, some industries may get run by the government, some may have no government in them at all, and some may have both the government and people running the companies making decisions about the economics, for example governments having some say in how utility companies are run, how much they charge, etc.&nbsp; These are exaples of "combined" socialism and market economy.&nbsp;

Also, some people talk about socialism as a mixed economy and use communism for what you describe.

Quote:How Do You Solve the Problem of Sharia?&nbsp; Canada grapples with the boundaries of legal multiculturalism.
By Dahlia Lithwick&nbsp; Posted Friday, Sept. 10, 2004, at 2:55 PM PT

This week has seen protests around Canada—and at Canadian Embassies worldwide—as citizens grapple with an issue that blurs the boundary between religious tolerance and oppression. The Ontario government is considering a proposal to allow certain family law matters—including divorce, custody, and inheritance—to be arbitrated by panels of Muslim clerics. Supporters of the proposal say that Canada's commitment to cultural diversity requires that Muslim law be accorded the same respect as other legal systems. Opponents say Muslim law inherently conflicts with the basic freedoms guaranteed Canadians.

Marion Boyd, Ontario's former attorney general, has been appointed by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to determine the appropriateness of these sharia, or Islamic law, tribunals. She's in a tough spot. Ultimately, the question comes down to whether sharia is fundamentally different from other religious codes. And making that sort of determination should not be the responsibility of any democratic government.

The plan to use formal panels of imams and Muslim scholars to resolve family-law disputes is neither radical nor subversive. For one thing, Canadian imams have been informally using sharia law to settle disputes between Muslims for years. For another, a 1991 Ontario law known as the Ontario Arbitration Act permits Orthodox Jews and Christians to submit to voluntary faith-based arbitration. These agreements are then ratified by secular civil courts, so long as their rulings conform to Canadian law, and both parties were willing participants.

Ontario Muslims have merely sought to officially reap the benefits of the Arbitration Act, leaving the Ontario government with two unpleasant alternatives: They must either scrap the act altogether or unearth some principled justification for allowing some religious citizens, but not Muslims, to benefit from its protections. The question somehow comes down to whether sharia is too inherently sexist to be reconciled with Canada's civil rights laws. And if anything definitive can be said about sharia, it's that no such definitive pronouncements can be made.

It's probably no surprise that some religious groups find themselves in the strange position of wholeheartedly embracing the wonders of sharia. For instance, this week B'nai Brith Canada endorsed the tribunals. And while Canadians are deeply divided over this matter, no one is more divided than the Canadian Muslim community. The Muslim Canadian Congress urged the Ontario government to reject the tribunals, describing sharia as uncodified, racist, and unconstitutional. The Canadian Council of Muslim Women similarly says, "We want the same laws to apply to us as to other Canadian women." But Syed Mumtaz Ali—the lawyer demanding that sharia be made available under the Arbitration Act—last month declared that Muslims cannot live under secular law alone: "Every act of your life is to be governed by [sharia]. If you are not obeying the law, you are not a Muslim. That's all there is to it."

If you hear echoes here of religious citizens of the United States who claim they cannot be asked to abide by any secular law that conflicts with God's law, you'll begin to grasp the problem: How does a liberal democracy permit unfettered religious freedom without eventually becoming a theocracy?

Sharia is a centuries-old system of justice based on Quranic law, and while it includes general provisions about the importance of justice and equality, as practiced throughout the world it has been used to justify stonings, the flogging of rape victims, public hangings, and various types of mutilation. In her weird and provocative book, The Trouble With Islam, Canadian commentator Irshad Manji reminds us that on average, two women die each day in Pakistan from "honor killings" (a husband's revenge for adultery, flirtation, or any perceived sexual shaming) and that, in Malaysia, women may not travel without the written consent of a male. Saudi Arabian women may not drive. Moreover, under sharia, male heirs receive almost double the inheritance of females. Spousal support is limited from three months to one year, unless a woman was pregnant before she was divorced. Only men can initiate divorce proceedings, and fathers are virtually always awarded custody of any children who have reached puberty.

Still, supporters of sharia tribunals in Canada have strong arguments—in addition to claims of basic fairness suggesting that if Catholics and Orthodox Jews can have divorces settled by religious courts, fundamentalist Muslims must be allowed to do the same. They insist that these religious arbitrations are voluntary. No one is forced into religious courts. They say that if a party to an arbitrated agreement is dissatisfied, she may always ask the civil courts to overturn it. And proponents urge that this is an opportunity to reform and revitalize sharia; creating a hybrid of Canadian-style freedoms and traditional values.

Perhaps most important, supporters of these tribunals argue that any aspect of sharia that conflicts with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would simply not be enforceable by the tribunals. The charter expressly provides that "Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons." Worries about a subclass of impoverished women and their abandoned children are misplaced, they insist, as is xenophobic hysteria over stonings or polygamy. Such measures violate the laws of Canada and are simply not available to sharia panels.

Truth be told, it's pretty hard to tease out a meaningful objection to sharia panels under these circumstances. If participation is indeed purely voluntary, if all agreements are reviewable by civil courts, if parties are already submitting to these panels informally anyhow, and if any provision that violates the Canadian civil rights laws is null and void, what do Muslim and feminist groups find so appalling? At worst, some kind of toothless sharia-lite will govern. At best, a more equitable, kinder, gentler sharia may be forged.

But Canadian feminists argue that there is no such thing as purely voluntary arbitration. They insist that isolated immigrant women with limited English are coerced into appearing before sharia panels and never advised of their rights. Refusal to abide by the dictates of these panels results in being shunned in the Muslim community. Supporters of the panels, including B'nai Brith, say this problem can be easily solved by educating women about their rights under the law and enacting protections and safeguards into the arbitration process, including female arbitrators and formal records.

This raises another objection to sharia: Unlike other forms of religious law, there is little consensus on any standardized interpretation. It's hard to advise women about their rights under a set of rules that are always subject to reinterpretation. Inadvertently setting his cause back a few steps, Mohammed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress—another group endorsing sharia in Ontario—recently claimed that: "There are only a handful of scholars in Canada who are fully trained in interpreting and applying Sharia law—and perhaps as few as one." All of which makes the sharia panels sound less like a court than a Magic Eight Ball. Elmasry confirmed that point when he added cheerfully that: "The arbitrators use gut feeling, they use common sense, and in many cases they are successful."

Despite this protest, it is hard to distinguish sharia law as uniquely more sexist, homophobic, or misogynistic than other religions. The brutal truth is that there are sexist and homophobic aspects to most religious law—including Orthodox Jewish and Christian law. (Indeed, some Orthodox Jewish women have used this period of review to question the appropriateness of grafting Jewish law onto the Ontario civil laws in the first place.)

Certainly anyone can waive the right to have a court settle a civil dispute, and religious Canadians have every right to submit privately to tribunals of any religious stripe to mediate their differences. The question is whether the state should be putting its imprimatur on these negotiated agreements.

This Canadian fondness for multiculturalism at any cost stands in stark contrast to the French approach to religious diversity. Last week, the French government began enforcing its controversial new ban on the wearing of overtly religious symbols—Muslim headscarves, large crosses, yarmulkes—in public schools. French democracy now means that everyone must subordinate their religious differences to their French citizenship, whereas Canadian multiculturalism means the civil law must bend and bend again to accommodate religious differences—even where those religious differences violate the spirit of Canadian equality. Somehow, the Canadians are prepared to sell the farm, while the French will settle for shooting all the animals.

When an official government policy of diversity and tolerance gives its official thumbs up to any legal system—Jewish, Muslim, or Martian—fraught with judgment and intolerance, the consequence is a legal hall of mirrors: A system of laws equally protecting the rights of religious minorities to treat one another unequally.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.&nbsp;&nbsp; Photograph of Canadian flag on the Slate home page by Rob Howard/Corbis.

Quote:But Canadian feminists argue that there is no such thing as purely voluntary arbitration.

Quote:A system of laws equally protecting the rights of religious minorities to treat one another unequally.

Quote:All religions are NOT created equal, though an athiest might comment here that all are of equal value: low. Some are better than others, maybe, but some are more suited to the modern world than others, and some to a Free modern world. Some are less harmonious with modern, Enlightenment based political philosophy: Islam must bear that charge, since the shoe fits. It does not fit a non autocratic social model. Will people please wake up? (At least, not Islam in its present form. Reform is, I suppose, possible.)

Jester,Sep 13 2004, 07:39 AM Wrote:"...the current ongoing famine in North Korea, the various 5 year plans of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's PRC, are not anomolies, there are the inevitable result of implementing socialism."

I suppose I missed the part where any of that happened in, say, Sweden.

Might I point out that those were totalitarian nations with enormous class and wealth disparity prior to their revolutions, and whose governments have always been despotic, whether devotedly capitalist, communist, or otherwise?

Jester

Quote:Actually, it isn't obvious at all. Ever since the 'evolutionary socialism' of Eduard Bernstein and the British 'Fabian Socialists', there have existed social democrats/democratic socialists who envision socialism as an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process

Quote:As a side note, the Corn Laws weren't socialist; they were mercantilist. In fact, Marxists actually supported the anti-Corn Law movement as it was seen as a class struggle against the landed aristocracy.

Quote:Another point worth noting is that, particularly in Canada, the public ownership of utilities was viewed as a boon by capitalists, and it has often been argued that the public ownership of industries and utilities povided capitalists with the necessary infrastructure to advance industry in general. Of particular note is the Canadian National railroad and Ontario hydro

Quote:Furthermore, capitalists and economists alike endorsed the Keynesian economic movement of the 1950's-1970's and, more than any other period in history, that period was marked by an explosion in the creation of jobs and capitalist infrastructure. This was the period when the Western world truly separated itself from the rest...

Quote:In other words - and the net increase, over the past 20 years, in the gap between our own economic well-being and that of those in the third world serves as proof - protectionism and public ownership isn't always a burden on capitalist economies. In fact, the development of native infrastructure and industry can often benefit greatly from it.