IS THE SCANDINAVIAN MODEL SUPERIOR? Continuing my response to the Jeffrey Sachs article from yesterday, I think reasonable people can differ in evaluating the success of the most prosperous countries (including some Western European countries not included in the article). In evaluating France and Germany, for example, credit should be given for greater leisure, but how should this be done? For the United States, credit should be given, I believe, for relatively large immigration and for success at innovation. Sachs takes as his variables for consideration income per working age population, unemployment rate, budget balance as percentage of GNP, poverty rate and research and development expenditure as a percentage of GNP.
Of these, the unemployment rate, research and development expenditures and (given the closeness of the figures) the income per person statistics present thorny measurement problems. The first statistics I would look at would be income per capita (which is not dispositive for the large group of countries with roughly similar income per capita), rate of economic growth (also not dispositive) and the poverty rate. Sachs’s argument, I think, comes down to the poverty rate. Poverty rates are also difficult to measure. I am usually frustrated by articles discussing poverty rates. However, the difference of 12.6% in the English-speaking countries versus 5.2 % in the Nordic countries is a very large one. There is a final question: is there an alternative explanation for the Scandinavian success?
Could population size have an impact on the success of these various plans?
I remember in middleschool discussing what form of government we would pick for a small community, and we came around to the conclusion that Socialism would work excellently. Marx never intended for communism to be applied to large, agrarian countries, but to small, industrial ones.
The historical failure of communism might not be the fault of the theory, I guess.
Sorry about my earlier question. I missed this comment from Philip. Per capita income (as in the US) has little meaning without regard to the way it is distributed. Swedes emphasize everyone having enough to promote human well-being like education and health care in addition to basic survival needs. There is a Swedish concept called “lagom” meaning roughly to be enough or to be sufficient that explains why other values than wealth (including leisure and family time) regularly enter the discourse. (They are especially shocked by our 45 million plus with no health coverage!)
When my son Carl goes to Sweden, our friends wonder why he can only stay two weeks. After six years with one company, that is his vacation time. Swedes who get at least 5 weeks wonder how Americans can talk about “family values,” but have work dominate their lives to the detriment of that value. Note that despite their long vacations, Sachs emphasizes high Swedish productivity due to national investment in technological innovation.
Nick might be interested to learn that every Swede accepted to university pays no tuition and minimal fees. Moreover they get a monthly allowance of about $700 a month from the state for living expenses. Thus they can concentrate on their studies instead of taking onerous and distracting low-paying jobs like so many students in the USA (especially at an urban state university like the University of Toledo. They may have part-time jobs on weekends to make a bit more.) This cash living allowance is 1/3 grant and 2/3 loan to be paid back when they are employed. In Denmark it is all an absolute grant.
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