As someone who keeps relatively up to date with what's going on in the world and is studying the social sciences, I often have a lot to stay on various political and social issues so I recently figure I would create a blog to share those thoughts. The blog can be accessed here: https://arantingswede.wordpress.com/

Right now my plan is to publish something at least each week or biweekly. I might share my thoughts on an issue or perhaps write something educational on a topic related to society. I'm plugging it on here because I don't really have any readers yet, I just created it, and very few people know about it so I'm hoping to spread the word at least a little bit. I just posted my very first article. In short, if social commentary interests you or it sounds interesting for any other reason, I urge you to give it a look. Aside from this, if you have any questions or feedback feel free to share it in this thread (though I am aware the site is rather plain looking).

I really agree that this video is a really heavily veiled political agenda. But I actually do agree with many of its points. That said, Income Inequality is not the hero. Hard work and ingenuity is. Income Inequality provides an incentive that doesn't pay off the same for everyone. Not anyone can become Bill Gates overnight or even over a lifetime. Many of us are trapped in a "bubble" that we cannot burst because we do not have a needle large enough to pop it. Perhaps equal opportunity is true in eternity, but it certainly is not true in this life.

I'm actually saddened that a socialist framework will never work in America. We've put way too much power into the hands of a few people, people who have plenty of experience but lack enough of the key part of what makes experience so wonderful: Empathy. And recent elections have shown that the popular vote often isn't the deciding factor. It's ridiculous how little power the people have over the country they call their own!

I truly believe the socialist framework is essentially built to be the best system overall. If the people and the leaders were on the same wavelength, if they all cared, then socialism isn't an agenda. It is the system that works best. But history and recent events show that that isn't the case. Not everyone cares. Leaders and people alike show a drastic disregard to empathy and care.

In our current society, socialism won't work because certain people just plain won't agree on what's best even if they know it. Others choose better options, but still hold out in many ways. Society is a great thing. But it's messed up right now, and people have the freedom to choose even the worst option available to them. Sometimes they do.

Thank you for sharing your opinions!

I looked at the website.  I like the clean, plain design.  You don't need a whole lot of decorations to attract attention.  As long as you're writing well, you're staying informed and making interesting points, you'll build readerships.  You wrote well and clearly.

My criticisms are as follows.  Now these are opinions so take them as simply the thoughts of one person.

1.  "Ranting Swede"  The name isn't bad but 'ranting' in American English means you're just going to complain about things.  You're not going to offer solutions.  You can look at opinions of others, like income inequality, and say, "Yeah, that sucks," and then go back to whatever you were doing.  As long as you're offering ideas or thoughts about solutions, simply pointing out wrong things is going to get old for readers.  There are more than enough YouTube channels dedicated to ranting, yelling, and complaining.  Too few websites have thoughts about solutions.

I almost didn't read the content when I saw "Ranting" in your title because I didn't want to read about someone complaining for 2,000 words and then simply ending the piece.

Also, you need to have an area for comments, forums, or conversations immediately below the pieces.  Remember when Vizzed was awesome four to six years ago?  That's because so many people were chiming in with their thoughts and opinions.  To engage a community and build a readership, you should provide them the chance to talk with you and each other.  That's how blogs survive, through groups forming by people talking.

It's good work.  It's hard to look at a problem and offer solutions.  I would like to have seen a little more raw data or at section dedicated to statistics.  For example, the 'hours worked' cost of eggs and milk has decreased sharply in the United States over the last 100 years.  Eggs cost much less to the normal American compared to the 1900s.  The rate has declined throughout the past 100 years so it goes against your claim of food costs going up.

And lastly, if we could have posted, I would have disagreed with you.  It doesn't matter if Bill Gates makes 100b dollars and I make 60,000 as long as I can support myself.  1% of the country making a ton of money shouldn't impact the happiness of the rest of the population as long as that population has the opportunity for growth and the freedom to make decisions. 

Keep at it.  It takes time to build up a reader group.

Thank you both for the detailed responses, I'm finding it very interesting and helpful in determing on what I should focus on.

Ghostbear1111 : That is a fair point, I did not spend a ton of time coming up with the title so I may have to go back and change, since I certainly do not want to come across as someone who just complains. The site actually does have a comment system but I haven't gotten to see it in action yet since it requires a word press account. I would like to have a better system for discussion as in one where you can interact without needing an account but it seems to be the limitations on having a free account, perhaps I can upgrade it later on. You also aren't the first one to say that you want statistics/more direct examples so I will definitely take that into consideration for my next post.

I do partly agree with your conclusion, I mentioned at the end that we don't all need to strive for the 1% to live a happy life or that income inequality in itself is a bad a thing but that the level of it bothers me and that tacking it could provide more freedom to the bottom 90% and by extent create a happier population. I firmly believe this is part of the reason why the countries that are topping happiness charts are overwhelmingly countries that have adopted this system (the Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, Germany etc.)

supernerd117 : I am not surprised, the reason I picked this video is in large part because of how popular it is in the US (though how it was presented did bother me). I know Sweden and by extension Europe in general is quite different politically from the US (so many years posting on vizzed and other sites has taught me as much) so I felt like I could provide a different viewpoint which I'm hoping people will find interesting, perhaps even insightful. Overall I'm not advocating a socialist framework as much as a partial redistribution of wealth through tax and establishing a robust welfare system (focusing on improving access to education and healthcare). This is something I did not go into too much detail about since I didn't want to deviate too much from the main topic but it's the case in pretty much all major European economies. I think making basic changes like getting rid of tuition fees and guaranteeing health care could go a long way, similar to parts of what Bernie Sanders wanted to implement. With how much support he got, particularly from younger people I would say the interest is there, thus establishing some aspects of social democracy could likely work as it's not really anti capitalism. With how politically fragmented the country already is it would be at the bottom of my concerns at present.

On a side note, empathy is one of the subject ideas I have for a future article. I was thinking I could write a bit more of its existence and psychology. It would be more on the educational side but it's a subject that has helped me become a bit less pessimistic about these issues. So perhaps you would find that interesting. Ideally I would like to balance out the pure opinion based pieces with some more insightful pieces so to keep things more varied and unexpected.

That's really cool, I'll definitely look at it when I get home. From the other posts it seems to be somewhat political, which seems pretty fun.

You posted on article and linked a video to support your own argument.

I haven't seen anything since.

Are you going to continue with the website or are you one-and-done?

Ghostbear1111 : For now at least, I'm aiming for at least one installment per week like I mentioned in my initial post. The next one should be up either tomorrow or on Sunday.

I published a new post if anyone wants to take a look.

Ghostbear1111 :

Two quick updates for anyone interested:

1. I addressed a previously held complaint by making it easier to comment on my posts. You no longer need to fill out your name and email address, hopefully this will encourage more people to get involved in the discussion.

2. I just published a new piece which is on everyone's favorite topic feminism! Feel free to take a look if it sounds interesting as I tried to tackle the topic from a slightly different perspective.

I mean, feminism isn't my favorite topic.  But I have daughters so I'm interested in seeing equality across the board.  I'm also an economist so I recognize that the American trope of "Women earn X number of cents on the man's dollar" is misguided and inaccurate.

Your argument is accurate describing feminism as an equality ideology, not an advancement-of-women-only ideology.  And, unfortunately, those who don't understand economics think that the advancement of women automatically means the loss or reduction of power in men.  Productivity as a whole is not a zero-sum game and everyone can become more wealthy at the same time.  It's fascinating science but people get mired down in the phrases and words and not the thought process.

And let's not call the comment button a "complaint."  Let's just say it's an observation to help pave the way for people to connect with each other via ideas and thoughts.

Ghostbear1111 : I was referring to wanting me to make it more easily accessible. I don't view a complaint as an inherently negative thing but if you insist. I suppose I can understand the negative connotation associated with it. 

There are a lot of issues one can discuss relating to gender equality but that would be significantly more time consuming to get into and in the end I'd likely only be preaching to the crowd. I felt like this was a good angle to approach it from as it somewhat touches on many of the basic issues people have. I feel like it could help increase understanding of the opposite viewpoint even for people whom do not agree with me. 

Zlinqx : American English automatically assumes 'complaints' to be negative.  Our definition of the word means someone is criticizing negatively or expressing dissatisfaction with something when they complain.  I wanted to point out the distinction for my culture.

That is all.  Carry on.

It doesn't matter what type of English you use, the word "complaint" has negative connotations. It's root word, "complain" and it's literal meaning in any form of English, do that. It's actual meaning is to file a grievance, isn't it? Ie: usually in written form? That seems to not have positive connotations. But that's jut my two bits worth.

Ghostbear1111 :
manicman66 :

My bad for misunderstanding the word then. I thought it could be used without neccessairly having a negative meaning attached. 

Zlinqx : Not your bad at all.  We're teaching and learning here and understanding different languages.  We're providing you with secondary information about the word usage.

It's a good thing.  Apologize for nothing.  You are learning.  Good job!