In a democratic socialist country, would there still be room for some private property & independent companies

Question

e.g. owning land or a house of one's own and passing on inheritance to children, owning and running a company of less than thirty employees....

Answer 1

no not really. at least not as much as capatilists :]

Answer 2

Yes, but it depends on the extent. Socialism is a mixed economy that combines elements of both command and free market systems to some degree or another. It would be more regulated than in a fully free market economy (where everything is left up to supply and demand), but less so than a command economy (where the State tells the producer exactly what they are going to make/receive).

If you want a good working example of property rights in a social democracy, think about how most modern Western European countries run as almost all of them qualify. Sweden is a great example.

Many people there own their own property, but there is also a practice of having the "right to live" in a property, but not being able to own it outright (this is also done in Britian). All this is highly taxed and things like how much you can charge for rent is highy regulated by the government (which may subsidise rent for some people).

There are many privately owned businesses (IKEA, H&M, Volvo, and a large tech and medicine sector). However, what those businesses can do is more limited and controlled (especially in agriculture) and there may be some suprising state-owned monopolies (like for alcohol).

Statistically, socialist democracies tend to be some of the richest per capita in the world and rate very high in standard civil liberty and happiness indexes like the ones put out by the CIA, Transparency International and Forbes. They also tend to have the highest tax burdens.