Link fixed. Thanks to James
From Bird Dog's links over at Maggie's is a report by a Finnish think tank on the Swedish economy, It's not as long as it looks. I am always irritated by truncated graphs, but these seem less bad than usual. I'd like folks to read it before I put in my two kroner.
To bear in mind: left-and right- of center in this context refers almost entirely to economic, free-market issues, not social or foreign policy ideas. There are scandinavians more right of center on those other issues than Americans, but there aren't many. In free-market ideology, however, their categories are roughly comparable to ours.
Much of this was half-known to me, but this is more complete and organised a summary than I have encountered over the last few years.
3 comments:
The link doesn't seem to work.
My 1.5 kroner is that although the analysis is probably correct, it is not adequately supported by the proffered statistics. That would need more comparisons with other countries and figures on jobs with small and large firms, etc.
I haven't read the entire article...but I am reminded of PJ O'
Rourke's Eat the Rich.
O'Rourke compares Capitalism that works (USA, exemplified by an afternoon on Wall Street) with Capitalism that doesn't work (Albania).
He also visits Socialism that works (Sweden) and doesn't work (Cuba).
I think the biggest lesson of all this is that the System, while dominant, is not the entire explanation for success or failure of an economy.
In Sweden's case, I think O'Rourke mentions most of the items in this study, hinting that Socialism may not have been the original reason for Sweden's success, and may not be the cause of its current status.
Overall, the book was pretty thoughtful for a humorist attempting to explain economics without using math.
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