Socialism correlates with higher living standards

"The relationships between PQL and political-economic system deserve more serious attention than they have received in the past. Our findings indicate that countries with socialist political-economic systems can make great strides toward meeting basic human needs, even without extensive economic resources. When much of the world's population suffers from disease, early death, malnutrition, and illiteracy, these observations take on a meaning that goes beyond cold statistics." [ibid]

• I question any quality of life index that does not consider human freedom a foremost variable.  Cereseto ranks how countries fed and educated and doctored themselves (by 1981, using mostly American and Western democratic models of agriculture, medicine, and education).  But I personally would rank my physical quality of life quite low if I was not free to decide what crops to grow or things to study or  how many children I might raise.
  
• It looks like the World Bank (and Cereseto by extension) was using some fucked up Reagan Era definitions of SOCIALISM and CAPITALISM where every country in the World must be one or the other and only one or the other but this has never been true.
  
• CAPITALISM is "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."  By definition, CAPITALISM can only exist in those states where the decisions about trade and industry are mostly protected from government interference.  No authoritarian govt. can be Capitalist by definition.
  
• Cereseto places Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran in the Capitalist column but using what definition? Is any part of the Saudi economy protected from state control?  No.
  
• SOCIALISM is "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."  By definition, SOCIALISM can only exist in those states where the decisions about trade and industry represent the majority will of the people- by a democratic system.  No authoritarian govt. can be Socialist by definition.
  
• Cereseto places China in the Socialist column but using what definition?  Did the people decide how many children they'd like to parent or did Deng Xiaoping make that decision for them?
  
• All modern democratic nation states are mixture of socialism and capitalism.  No private company runs any nation's  military.  No community votes on the price on gas.  It's always a mix between 30-70% of the economy for either.
  
• By 1981, a good argument can be made that the US was not only the largest Capitalist economy by raw value but also the world's largest Socialist economy.
  
• Cereseto's division of all the national economies into either entirely socialist or entirely capitalist simply does not reflect how trade and industry are controlled in either democracies or autocracies.  All democracies are a mix. 
  
• All autocrats make the decisions about how trade and industry are controlled in their nations.  Cereseto's attribution of some to socialist and most to capitalist seem pracitically arbitrary if one does not study who was aligned with the West and who was aligned with Russia and China in 1981.
  
• I think we can dismiss Cereseto's work as badly distorted by Cold War propaganda and 100% unhelpful to economic decisionmakers today.
  

When you compare socialist and capitalist countries adjusted by level of economic development -- like the study does -- socialist countries take the crown in 28 out of 30 cases.

In other words, once you remove the massive, overwhelming, near-undeniable advantage of capitalism by "adjusting" for it, capitalism doesn't look as good.

• No REAL socialist country existed at the time
  
• No REAL capitalist country existed at the time
  

Do you consider "being a more developed nation" an advantage of capitalism?

Like, do you actually buy the claim that socialism keeps countries poor and underdeveloped despite technological advances?

Or do you simply think that the wealthy capitalist countries didn't have decades of head start industrializing.

Nobles and monarch were also individuals you know.

you don't have slaves or serfs but employees.

to a spacefaring superpower in three decades, DESPITE all the internal problems and world wars, and while everything being executed in a flawed, inefficient manner due to bad leadership and logistical hurdles.

That is called DEVELOPMENT, and it occured without capitalism.

That seem like a bonkers argument to make. Of course countries in the real world are never fully and literally socialist or capitalist.

That doesn't detract from the fact that the countries ruled by socialist or communist parties did better in almost every measure compared to countries who didn't.

Your point about liberty is totally irrelevant to a discussion about PHYSICAL quality of life. I agree there were a lot of authoritarianism in the 20th century, but the socialist regimes were evidentilly better at serving the people than the non-socialist dictatorships.

If there's ever been a sincerely Communist state as Marx defined it, I am not aware of it.

The planned economy of the Soviet Union transformed it from a primitive  agrarian society to a spacefaring superpower in three decades, DESPITE all the internal problems and world wars, and while everything being executed in a flawed, inefficient manner due to bad leadership and logistical hurdles.

That is called DEVELOPMENT, and it occured without capitalism.

Societies with more economic freedom tend to be far better for their least influential members than those with less economic freedom.

• One can have freedom from slavery OR freedom to own slaves.
  
• One can have freedom from crime OR freedom from police.
  
• One can have freedom from taxes OR freedom to enjoy a functional state.
  

Societies with more economic freedom tend to be far better for their least influential members than those with less economic freedom.

Russia industrialized slowly.

At the turn of the century Imperial Russia was lagging behind its neighbors to the west in practically all aspects of economic development. Weakened by World War I and the civil war that followed, Russia was in ruins in 1918.

Electric energy supply was ensured through the construction of dozens of hydroelectric and fuel-operated power stations; one of them, a Dnieper plant, was canonized as a symbol of Soviet industrialization. Railroads and waterways were modernized and built to ensure uninterrupted flow of resources. Automobile and aviation industries were built from scratch. Whole plants were purchased in the West, mostly from the United States, and put in operation in the Soviet Union. Stalingrad Tractor Plant and Gorki Automotive Plant began production in the early 1930s. New weapon systems were developed and put into production at the expense of consumer goods. On the eve of World War II the Red Army had more than twenty-three thousand tanks—six times more than Fascist Germany. Similar ratios applied for artillery, aircraft, navy vessels, and small arms. The relocation of industry during the war to the east ranks among the most difficult organizational and human achievements of the Soviet Union during World War II.

The industrial foundation laid between 1929 and 1940 proved sufficient for victory over Fascist Germany in World War II.  [encyclopedia.com/industrialization-soviet]

Economic development can occur under socialism, but it is much slower and much bloodier, and very little of it reaches the common man.

The Russians were ahead at the beginning of the space race, this was, counterintuitively, because of their technological inferiority

It's true that many capitalist countries did have a head start. However, Hong Kong did not, yet it caught up in decades. 

Isn't there a price to paid and sacrifice in capitalism for economic growth and a better future? People complain about the inequalities in Capitalism, however, the poor are better off every decade

The faults of the system are not with capitalism.

The faults of the system are not with capitalism. Its with rent seekers, authoritarians and criminal syndicates