Do you meet people beliving they dont live in capitalism?
Posted by alkorisno@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 56 comments
We all see regular people suffer financially and rich people controling politics. But there are people who seem that cant accept that this is how capitalism is in reality so they try to present this system as feudalism or even communism.
It should be clear that if you have a free market of stock exchanges, private media and political campaigns depending on donors from capitalists that you live in capitalism. But naturally capital creates monopolies like Rockerfellers Standard Oil so they pick a single party to invest in and it makes it appear as a single party system. These people sometimes think that is communism. Or becuase of lowering home ownership rates they think it is feudalism, but that is normal in capitalist sociaties.
Do you get the same impression?
SrboBleya@reddit
As a self-emplyoyed person, the cost of government regulation, contributions and taxes are around 400-500 euros per month just to exist legally as a tiny business in this country, even if your revenue is very low or you have a bad month. Thats after optimizing for expenses.
How is that capitalism, exactly?
Clearly you have never run even the smallest business in Serbia.
It's a mixed economy, buddy.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
In yugoslavia pdv was 3%. Taxes dont determine the system, if it did yugoslavia would be capitalist and this would be communists. It is the distribution of wealth, or more specificly, the control over the mrans of production
SrboBleya@reddit
Government spending is 43% in Serbia. So government controls a large part of the GDP. This is a mixed economy and actually quite far from pure capitalism.
Most countries today are mixed economies but some lean more towards pure capitalism than others. Serbia is simply not in that territory, sorry.
In Europe, among advanced economies, Switzerland and Lichtenstein have government spending at 30% of GDP or lower. So that is much lower than Serbia. Among emerging economies, Georgia has government spending at less than 30% of GDP: their growth is at 5-10% per year and is actually sustainable.
Serbia is more of a government controled economy. And if you try to start a business here, you must start paying all sorts of crap just to stay legally compliant. Labor is heavily taxed in Serbia.
I wrote elsewhere about Yugoslavia, including this sub. In Serbian my latest comment about it was here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSerbia/comments/1sw4cb7/comment/oideam6/?context=3
Yugoslavia's GDP was driven by government spending and it was not sustainable in many ways.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
43% of what? Where did you get those crazy stats?
SrboBleya@reddit
Ok. So you obviously have no idea about the structure of the GDP in this country, yet you want to talk about this. Why should I continue this conversation if these are "crazy statistics" according you?
Serbia's government spending constiutes 43% of its total GDP.
Public sector salaries are 10% of the GDP. . A large part is also going into public works projects, such as EXPO 2027, reaching less than 10%. Around 6% covers everyday running costs of the government, like energy and supplies. Subsidies are about 3%, mainly used for subsidies to foreign companies and domestic agriculture. Around 2%, goes to paying interest on government debt.
Social support outside pensions, such as child benefits and unemployment help, takes a bit over 5%.
That's around 33% GDP on government spending excluding pensions. If you add pensions it's 43% as originally mentioned.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Source?
SrboBleya@reddit
IMF and Serbian government, which gives them the data for 2025.
https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2025/12/17/pr-25427-republic-of-serbia-imf-concludes-the-2nd-rev-under-policy-coor-instrument
Under General Government Finances, it shows Expenditure (percentage of GDP) at 43.9%. This is government spending as a percentage of GDP.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Dude, these are pensions and healtcare, that comes straght out of workers salaries. Government has no control of it, these are seperate institutions that compoind money for decades out of salaries and then pay it back once you go to pension.
These arent salaries in government sector nor governemnt investment. Serbian government works with less then 10% of GDPnit gets mostly from VAT taxes.
It has nothing to do with means of production we are speaking about, it is insane you found this relevant in our disxussion.
SrboBleya@reddit
It's 32% without pensions. In other countries I mentioned, it's around 30% with pensions included.
Ye, it's relevant. Healthcare is government owned and they provide services by being funded by tax payer money. What exactly do you not understand?
What if someone doesn't want to use government healthcare? Why should he or she pay for it? It's a forceful taxation of resources from my pocket to their pocket. Pretty simple, actually.
When someone in my family was sick, for example, they didn't want to perform a surgery, so we had pay for a private option. Many people use SMS funding to cure their illnesses. So yes, for these people, healthcare taxes were mostly a waste of money.
Now about pensions. Pensions need to be paid out, but look, government is very bad at money management. They are not really good at it, you know ? So taxes are more expensive than they should be. This means lower net salaries for workers and self-employed people like me, because the contributions are really high. Example, in Serbia, net salaries are taxed at 60% because of past and current government mismanagement of pension money, and also owning a self-employed practice becomes a tougher venture than it should be.
There are private investment funds in that make 15-20% ROI annual with conservative investments, suitable for pensions. So basically you'd need about 20k euros total in lifetime contributions to finance a typical Serbian pension with this ROI, considering compounded returns over the year. And this money can be left to family successors easily. With the government system, they take much more over a lifetime!
So yes it's very relevant. It's a tax on government mismanagement. People have lower net salaries because of it. And entrepreneurship is being disregarded because of its burden.
But even without pensions, as i said, it's 32% government spending. This is very high for a country that needs economic growth.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Why should you pay for healthcare when they need it? Becuase we are not psychopaths like you. Even cave man would feed those that break their leg. What you are is an animal
SrboBleya@reddit
Investing 100 euros per month in an investment fund is total 563.177 € at 15% annual roi. Which then continues to grow at 15% annual when you enter pension. How much does government take over in porezi i doprinoisi per month?
Government control? Like in North Korea? Give me a break.
Like in China?
Sociopath? Perhaps you are that, taking 400-500 per month even when I earn 500 euros per month if I have a bad month, so you can finance a broken system that doesn't work.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Haha 15% roi, why not make 1000%? Just to prove the point haha GDP growth rate is about 3%, where the fuck do you come up with 15%? Where does the economy get 15% if the entirty grows less then 5% like in your link. What kind of nonsense is this?
SrboBleya@reddit
Over the last decade, for example, the MSCI World index has delivered a strong average annualized return of roughly around \~13%.
Now this index, that comprises of various companies around the world, is considered a bit conservative. There are investment portfolios that can grow faster. So 15% is more than realistic.
Serbia doesn't have a financial market because government is too big, but for pension planning we don't have to rely on the local market when there's the world market.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Oh my god. You are trolling, you cant be seroius, I am just wasting my time replting to you arent I?
If companies grow faster then GDP, it means they are taking wealth from poorer people, or companies so it balances out at 4%. If you have an entire countries penssions, you cant invest in few companies, but entire economy. Do you not understand that or are you trolling? I am clearly just wasting my time here, I will stop responding
SrboBleya@reddit
"B. Hathaway has achieved an average annual return of approximately 19.8% to 19.9% from 1965 to 2025, significantly outperforming the S&P 500's average return of \~10% during the same period."
"Alphabet's (GOOGL) annual return on investment (ROI) has generally shown strong performance, with estimates placing the 2025 annual ROI around 26.83% to 28.62%."
These are just some examples. There are others. So yes 15 is actually conservative and realistic. It shows
Now you don't even need 15%. Suppose it's 10% annual return, which is standard (World index or S&P 500 basically). A typical Serbian pension can be financed with 50 euros per month in this scenario over a lifetime. With 100 euros at 15% it would be much higher than the typical Serbian pension.
God you are an idiot for advocating for government management of pensions. You like poverty and to ruin people, don't you? Defending government just so you can have your fucking government job at other people's dime, not taken voluntarily, but by force.
But my fellow Serbs are not really a smart nation so they buy into your shit. Expensive government in Serbia, in the communist times but also in recent times, has cost them so much money and they don't even know it. Too bad my ancestors had to fight on the side of communists in WWII, because the alternatives happened to be even worse. What a shitty period in human history.
P-l-Staker@reddit
I don't think you understand capitalism quite well, mate. What you're referring to is Laissez-faire economics. It's just one aspect. A capitalist society can include government spending.
SrboBleya@reddit
I said it's a mixed economy. What exactly do you not understand? Do you object to this definition?
SrboBleya@reddit
43.3% government spending as a percentage of GDP is not enough socialism for some people.
You guys are really stupid.
RegionSignificant977@reddit
We don't live in capitalism. There's a huge difference between US and most of European countries. Especially Denmark and Scandinavian countries are far from capitalism. Also there is a huge difference in corruption level and influence from the rich people. Balkans are another story. And by the way, home ownership has downsides when you have good tenant protection and simplifies relocation for better working conditions. Home ownership rate in Italy is double of that of Germany as far as I can remember, and that's not because Italians are richer. Or Romanians for that matter. Or us. We also have very high home ownership rates. In the dawn of Rockerfellers and Standard Oil it was capitalism. Now, in Europe is very different.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
The difference is huge only if you never so an alternative. In yugoslavia we retired at 55, show me that kind of difference. You are moving the spectrum to the right and now you pretend that all possible ideas fit somewhere between ideologies that 50 years ago ware considered right wing and far-right
RegionSignificant977@reddit
I'm almost 55 so I saw the alternative. Although Bulgaria was different than Yugoslavia. Retirement age was 60 for man and 55 for women, just like in Yugoslavia. One of the reason for financial troubles of those countries is exactly the retirement age. Life expectancy was 62 years in 1960 and 72 in 1990. With women life expectancy growing more than man life expectancy and earlier retirement age you have to pay them for 20 years. And those money have to come from somewhere. In 1960 life expectancy for women is 64 and it's 75 in 1990.
50 years ago those ideas weren't considered right wing and far right, most of the world was more "rightwing" exempt the so called "socialist" countries. That even weren't so social, compared to some "capitalist" countries. Unemployment rate in Yugoslavia in the eighties is 15+% and that's a huge problem also. And I guess the reason for that is uncompetitiveness of the economy, compared to other countries.
People in so called "communist" China today have 10 days yearly holiday. Nearly 40% of the population works more than 48 hours a week without overtime pay. Which makes production costs lower and make the Chinese economy more competitive. "Communist" China is more capitalist than your country, whatever it is from ex Yugoslavia.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
You dont think sanctions had something to do with it? Capitalists love ignoring sanctions and blockades. In is actually in CIA manual to ignore it
RegionSignificant977@reddit
Why would sanctions mess with your economy if you have such research and industrial potential? Yugo was exported to the US, and not only. Skoda was the largest industrial complex before WWII. What left of it? It should be on par with leading engineering companies in the world. It wasn't
Also there were counter sanctions. My father wanted to buy himself a Renault, but he found out that there is 200% duty. Isn't that a sanction?
Fun fact! Bulgaria was very good at agricultural production pre WWII. Bulgarian gardeners were famous in Romania and Hungary, back then when those distances were huge. Then came collectivization, the land was nationalized. Now we are importing agricultural products from abroad. From Poland, for example, where 80% of the production was from private farms even during communist times. We had 3 airplane factories also pre WWII.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Because we fell for free market propaganda and started trading and therefor depending on capitalists, just turn and stab you in the back. Cuba isnt under sanctions, but under blockade, a lot worse and still they are standing, even after inavsion of the biggest millitary in the world. There are no private farms in communism, there are worker owned collectives. In yugoslavia we had collectives, not controled by the state, so during privatization they had to nationalize them first to steal them from the workers
RegionSignificant977@reddit
I repeat! We had very strong protectionalist politics. Like 200% duties on imported goods from the rotted west. I'm aware that Yugoslavia was more open, but the socialist block was so closed that Yugoslavia looked almost like West to us. There wasn't nearly anything imported. I told you that I'm over 50 and I have been in Yugoslavia and Western Europe, US and some African countries. By no means we had free market, nor we had western import of goods. It was so bad that in Africa, in the third world countries there were things that were unoptainable in our part of the world. Like freezers for example. Or air conditioners. At that time in Bulgaria at least you needed to know people to be able to buy yourself basic kitchen appliances like refrigerator, automatic washing machine even simple kitchen handheld mixer. No, we weren't trading with capitalists. Even import from other so called "socialist" countries were scarce. That's why we had 10 year waiting list for cars. Because of poorly functioning inefficient economy.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Gorbachev introduced capitalism and forgin investments, that drstroyed your economy. Until Gorbachev came, Soviet Unions economy was growing, while US had decreasing GDP
RegionSignificant977@reddit
We were collecting help for polish kids in school in 1980. Long before Gorbachev. Because Poland defaulted. Also we didn't had any foreign investments at the time of Gorbachev. Private production and trade property was banned. Literally. And Soviet economy was so strong that you could lay a Russian women just for lipstick or bottle of perfume. Before Gorbachev.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
That is not true, private companies was allowed, joint ventures with majority forgein ownership. You seem to be too young to rememver that. You need to be at least 70 to remember 70s well
RegionSignificant977@reddit
https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%B4%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B0_(1958_%E2%80%93_1962)
Only in Bulgarian, you can translate it. That's long before those joint ventures.
Apparently there were few joint ventures later on, but it wasn't the reason for economy crumbling, as those were mainly because of know how and technology transfer. None of those had majority. And no one was talking about that.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
They had majority, you can read it on gorbachevs wikipwdia page and it didnt help at all. I cant translate bulgarian, sorry, I assume you read it wrong like you clearly did for gorbachev
RegionSignificant977@reddit
Gorbachev was much much later. The article is about 1958-1962 when Bulgaria defaulted for the first time. No one knew Gorbachev at that time. Nor there were joint ventures at that time. There were a lot of investments in way bigger factories for the size of Bulgaria, that are decaying now, because they don't make sense.
At the time when Gorbachev came, socialist block was already crumbling, and that was the reason for opening the economy in an attempt to save it.
This is about Poland in 1979-1980
Debt Size: By the end of 1979, Poland's external hard currency debt grew to $20.5 billion. By 1980, this figure reached $25 billion, which was approximately five times higher than 1974 levels.
Causes:
Failed Modernization: Under the leadership of Edward Gierek, Poland took out massive loans from the West for industrialization, which failed to generate sufficient exports to repay them.
External Shocks: The second oil crisis of 1979 led to a recession in the West and rising interest rates, making debt servicing unsustainable.
Systemic Inefficiency: Poor management and corruption within the planned economy hindered investment returns.
Again, long before Gorbachev.
Also financial situation of Bulgaria wasn't great even before Gorbachev.
And by the way, China today is what it is exactly because there are a lot of joint ventures, with foreign technologies.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Dude, you can have one state defualt and not affect you if you have a bigger system. You are making things up about the soviet block being alredy in truoble before gorbachev. Until 70s the soviet unions gdp was rising
RegionSignificant977@reddit
I'm almost 54, I have lived during those times. How old are you? My great grandmothers pensions were buying 25L of sunflower cooking oil, or roughly 40L gasoline. My mother was an engineer and her salary worth was 100L cooking oil and less than 180L gasoline.
There you go, I translated it for you how that "bigger system" works. We hava a saying in Bulgaria "friendship is friendship, but the cheese cost money"
The Bulgarian debt crisis of 1958–1962 was a debt crisis that put Bulgaria at significant risk of being unable to service its public debt .
The cause of the crisis was the economic policy of the previous years, aimed at rapid industrialization , financed largely with foreign, mainly Soviet, loans, and the inability of the Bulgarian economy to achieve a positive trade balance. [ 1 ] Bulgaria's accumulated public debt by 1960 reached 3 billion leva. [ 2 ] After several years of attempts to overcome the crisis with short-term measures, a solution was reached in 1962, in contradiction to the legislation, 90% of the gold reserve (over 23.5 tons) of the Bulgarian National Bank was sold and part of the debt was repaid with the funds received. [ 1 ]
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
You lived in the early 70s? Do you even rememver anything before the 90s? When did you start working for good, 90s?
RegionSignificant977@reddit
Yes, I remember eighties very well. I was in New York and London in 1981 and I could see the VAST difference between communist heaven and rotted west.
And I remember well twin towers of WTC and 20USD fee for climbing on 110th floor. And why we reached only 107th. Also I knew what my parents salaries were. And the prices of some everyday goods.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Oh, well US didnt lose their infrastruture and lives in WW2, 40 years before that. It was wealthier, but their economy was shrinking due to capitalism, but Soviet Union was growing, in the 60s. By the 70s it was Gorbachev, who made a deal with Reagen and Tatcher.
RegionSignificant977@reddit
Gorbachev stepped in in 1985, not in seventies. Reagan became president in 1981.
Did you read London? And was London also unaffected by the WW2? I've been in half of western Europe at that time, in early eighties. And by the way, Bulgaria wasn't affected by the WWII also. Look at the stats of the victims. There weren't military actions on Bulgaria territory exempt bombing of Sofia. Sofia wasn't at all that important at that time, and the bombing wasn't extensive.
Mysterious-Put1459@reddit
Regular people suffer under any "-ism" governance. It has always been like that. Monarchism, feudalism, fascism, communism, capitalism, anarchism, etc. I don't get people who act like this has changed recently. It hasn't
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Everything is an ism. Every system falls within some definition of an idology. Saying things like that is just running away from disscussing politics
Mysterious-Put1459@reddit
Exactly, everything is an ism which means that regular people always suffer no matter who rules. Discussing politics does not change this.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Regular people need to rule with direct democracy
Mysterious-Put1459@reddit
Lol. What planet do you live on? There is no direct democracy. I thought we are talking about real functional systems, not theoretical utopias. Do you think any sane ruling class would allow the world and his wife to determine public policy?
CmdrJemison@reddit
Was there ever any system where this didn't happened?
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
To this extent? Not even close in communism
CmdrJemison@reddit
Doesn't matter. Even on communism were rich people extorting poor people.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
In communism "rich" people had about 10% bigger salary. Now they have yahts while people live on the streets. It cant even compare
EdliA@reddit
There is no free marked in countries with high corruption. I mean there is some free market because it's never an off/on switch but is highly corrupted.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
There is always a free market, that is why prohibition doesnt work. But there is no market without manipulation of prices.
EdliA@reddit
There is no market with no manipulation of prices but that doesn't mean all markets have the same manipulation? As I said is not an on/off switch, is a gradient. On some countries the markets are more open than others and it varies immensely from country to country.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Sure, what does that have to do with the post? There is a clear line between feudalism and capitalism. It is whichever means of production become dominant and it is not even close
SwimmingHelicopter15@reddit
Not really, in Romania we did have communism so is impossible to say that we now live in it. And feudalism a lot of people don't know about it.
Americans had campaigns to show social benefits as being communist, so its bad for you. Probably there people confuse it.
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Yeah, now a simple act of kindness is attacked as evil communism
No-Championship-4632@reddit
Capitalism has to balance between value creation and value extraction and neither of the extremes are OK. Too much value creation sounds good but it's damn ineffective, it also tends to creates bubbles and introduces instability. Too much value extraction is also bad, leads to stagnation, consolidation and concentration of power into a few wealthy people that erode the democracy for their benefit. Without that balance, you either get a casino economy (pure creation/speculation) or a feudal economy (pure extraction/monopoly).
alkorisno@reddit (OP)
Balance in capitalism? Show me one price chart in any free market that is balanced. Only planned economies achive balance, you are talking compleate nonsense
jinawee@reddit
I think only far-right weirdos think the Balkans is communist.
Young_Owl99@reddit
We are so weird on this. Our society is super open to be socialist and maybe even communist. But the US was so sucessful at portraying communism as atheism that even today if I go an tell an elderly that I am atheist, there is a good change they would angrily call me communist.