Now as I've said before, I'm impressed with the Scandinavian and Nordic countries' abilities to maintain not only high standards of living for their people, but do so without deficit spending and all of this in the face of high taxes.
I opined this had to do with their cultures being more mature and "adult" enough to handle something like socialism and not take advantage of the welfare net and use it as a hammock (I additionally forecasted that human nature would override this cultural trait in the long run and they'd start to look more and more like Italy).
Perhaps I spoke too soon.
For Sweden seems to have been massaging their unemployment figures and things may not be that great to begin with.
First, the majority, practically ALL of the jobs growth in the past 40 years has come from the public sector.
Immediately I'm sceptical because the public sector responds to political demands, not the demands of a free people through a free market. The result is what one can expect from make work, government jobs;
No wealth production;
Now there are many other aspects to the article that I haven't addressed here, but one thing that was scary and inevitably all European countries AND America will face is that everybody in Sweden is in one way or another dependent upon the government for some of the butter which their bread is buttered with. Thusly, they are somewhat loth to vote in reforms that would shrink the size of the government no matter how inefficient it may be.
Democrat readers no doubt are having a wet dream right now.
5 comments:
Living in Denmark I can only agree with this. We are only marginally better off than Sweden.
Another interesting fact is that the unemployment statistics do not include the 100s of thousands of people on government sponsored get to work schemes or the people who aren't working due to imagined deceases. I've seen estimates of %17 unemployment in Denmark if you include them. Sweden is similar.
See my post Bad lessons from the North for more.
Now, if only someone, who may or may not be the owner of this blog, would have taken the time and minimal effort to, oh, I don't know, READ at least ONE of those fascinating things called, as I recall, *finger quotes* "books", that his good friend Mahan lent him, he just might have found that this one already HAD this information at hand.
Of course, this would have taken intellectual effort, and he wouldn't have gotten his kickback from The Economist.
Just kidding! Mostly! It's all there, you know. Even without finger puppets and pop-up tabs. And it was done almost a decade ago. All I'm asking is give books a chance.
What, are you insane man!???
READ A BOOK!
WITHOUT pictures????
Do you how much time I'd have to give up to do that?????
Pelle,
Yeah, the article does mention it. I also recall reading something about the "magic" of unemployment figures in Europe.
You guys draw any pictures of Mohammed recent?
Yeah, that chapter entitled "Good Socialism" on Sweden must have been all of thirty pages long. And you'll miss out on the interesting picture inside, but hey, your loss, since you don't read books, after all.
Good God MAN!!!
30 pages!
That would be like a whole hour!!!
And no action pop-ups?
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