

The Next Supermodel  - pappyo
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571136-politicians-both-right-and-left-could-learn-nordic-countries-next-supermodel?fsrc=scn%2Ftw_ec%2Fthe_next_supermodel

======
flexie
Nina Schmidt, Danish professor in economics, calculated recently that every
Danish baby girl born now, is expected to cost the government almost 300,000
dollars over her lifetime, and that every baby boy born, will contribute with
merely 110,000 dollars. <https://www.mm.dk/kvinder-er-en-underskudsforretning>
(in Danish).

The Danish government is running huge deficits on the budget and it is hard to
see how that will change in the coming years. Had it not been for the oil and
gas in the North Sea, which peaked in 2004 and 2000 respectively, we would
have been in a much worse situation.

The Danish version of the Nordic model is not sustainable. Not sure how it is
in the other Nordic countries.

~~~
bjourne
Life is so much more than being a profitable servant. The Danes have more than
enough food to feed themselves and enough houses to shelter everyone. Ensuring
those basic needs, food and shelter requires at most 10% of the workforce. The
remainder 90% can be allocated to schools, hospitals, retirement homes, tv
production, professional athletes, accountants, hairdressers, etc.

There is no shortage of either resources or labor. The only problem is how it
is allocated.

~~~
mseebach
> Life is so much more than being a profitable servant.

It is. So a lot of people rightfully feel a bit screwed over going to work,
having 56% marginal tax rate siphoned directly off the paycheck and then
another 25% VAT at the till (no "essentials" VAT rate, all is 25%). That is on
top of some of the most expensive groceries anywhere in Europe.

The system is setup to benefit those who spread their careers evenly over as
many years as possible - indeed, it's very well tuned to make that life very
comfortable. But save up for a few years, take a year off, be an entrepreneur?
You'll get screwed on all fronts.

The the extend the "servant" idiom is useful, if you work in Denmark, you're
as much a servant to the system as you'll ever be.

------
rasur
Leading the article with Britain under Thatcher as - presumably - a good
example (of Government reform).. Not their brightest move to anyone British
that grew up in the 80's and not in the "elite" classes. I was not compelled
to read further, which is a pity, since the Economist can have some quite
incisive articles sometimes.

But then again, I guess I'm not their target audience. I'll try and read it
again, once I've stopped gnashing my teeth :/

~~~
antonapa
As a Swede that's seen the change of the country growing up I couldn't stand
this propagandic piece of nonsense. This article is clearly a right-wing view
on what makes a country prosper.

Crime is up mainly because economic differences are bigger now than ever
before in my lifetime. My children are going to grow up in a country fixated
on doing budget cuts in the government spending. Sick people are no-longer
supported by the government and cancer patients are being forced to look for
work. Sweden haven't had this many homeless people for decades. This is not a
society with moral standards anymore.

Clearly skewed article.

~~~
sandstrom
You are right that crimes are up*, and theft seems to be one category that has
increased[2]. Don't know whether it's because of economic differences though.

That sick people aren't supported by the government and that cancer patients
are being forced to look for work is a bit of an exaggeration.

Also, I'd say the main point of the article isn't that Sweden is heaven.
Rather, it's trying to highlight some things that has worked well in Sweden
(and other Nordic countries), but the article also points out quite a few bad
things.

Sweden has many challenges ahead, and some things are worse nowadays compared
to 20-30 years ago. Increased crime is certainly one of them. But, there are
also things that have improved considerably, our debt is lower now than it
used to be, we can still afford a public -- which I'm dearly happy for.

I'd say the article is fairly balanced, but I'd prefer a more critical view on
the privatisation of the public sector. Some things have turned out well, but
many haven't. There is a Swedish expression for naive, 'blue eyed' -- that
word sums up many of our recent privatisations.

[1]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Anm%C3%A4...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Anm%C3%A4lda_brott_1950-2005.svg)
[2]: <http://www.brottsrummet.se/sv/brott-och-statistik>

~~~
subsystem
"our debt is lower now than it used to be"

Public debt that is. Private debt is higher than ever [0].

[0] [http://www.ekonomifakta.se/sv/Fakta/Ekonomi/Hushallens-
ekono...](http://www.ekonomifakta.se/sv/Fakta/Ekonomi/Hushallens-
ekonomi/Hushallens-skulder/)

------
noloqy
It might be so that there's a lot of clever Swedes living in London, but as
far as I know Stockholm has a rather strong entrepreneurial scene. In my view,
the main reasons why a Swedish entrepreneur wouldn't settle in Sweden is
because of the high expenses when it comes to housing and consumption; not
because of a high tax rate or other directly politically controlled factors
per se.

Swedish entrepreneurs get many things in return as well. First of all, because
the government covers most of the financing of studies, they don't get out of
university with a significant study debt. This is great, because debt inhibits
taking risks (i.e. becoming an entrepreneur.) Also, where most startups fail,
an 'unfortunate' Swedish entrepreneur has a decent safety net he can count on.

Providing the example that Sweden is cutting on its government expenditure, in
order to convince readers of the idea that small government is good is just
wrong. Due to the differences in welfare state, a baby born in Sweden has a
much greater probability of having good prospects than a baby born in the US
or the UK.

~~~
subsystem
Yes, more or less. People who care about tax go to Malta. There's also a lot
of Swedish entrepreneurs in Berlin and I'm not sure taxes are much lower
there, but rents are.

------
dimitar
I started writing a comment about this article, but it got too big, read it
here: [http://lazyfairyecon.tumblr.com/post/42208462291/the-
economi...](http://lazyfairyecon.tumblr.com/post/42208462291/the-economist-
magazine-no-analysis-and-cowardly)

tl;dr: The Economist magazine - no analysis and cowardly opinion. Centrism and
charts without context instead

------
VaedaStrike
The Nordic Model is horrid in the long term.

A better name would be the cut rose model.

Take a demographic that has little more than one child per woman fertility
rates, then, with per capita debt double what you have in the US achieve
spectacularly glowing vital statistics (happy, healthy, literate people).

Again you have almost two adults per child, their spending plus the spending
of the state which, overall (despite recent belt tightening) is twice per
capita what you have in the US. Throw in a culture that's been largely mono-
ethnic and with a population level that looks like a single relatively small
State in the US and you have something that looks pretty right now but is
completely unsustainable and will collapse a la Greece or worse as the present
demographic of youth come into the workforce with massive debt obligations yet
with none of the options their parents had.

------
mwc
The full special report (1720 words) is a worthy read.
[http://www.economist.com/news/special-
report/21570840-nordic...](http://www.economist.com/news/special-
report/21570840-nordic-countries-are-reinventing-their-model-capitalism-says-
adrian)

------
sheraz
Christ, the Ecomonist is hammering HN this weekend. Are they in cahoots with
The Atlantic?

~~~
kmfrk
It's no wonder that people post all the articles in the Nordic feature, but I
wonder how they consistently make it to the front page.

------
sergiotapia
Fifth post I've seen this week from the Economist and nordic countries'
economy.

What's the agenda? And what's with the astroturfing of articles here on HN?

------
oijaf888
Isn't Skype from Estonia? Not from one of the Nordic countries they list?

~~~
mseebach
From Wikipedia: "Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and
Niklas Zennström from Sweden. The Skype software was developed by Estonians
Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who together with Friis and
Zennström were also behind the peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa."

All three countries lay claim to Skype, but the Skype main development centre
(ie the juicy jobs) is (was? not sure after the sale to Microsoft) in Tallinn,
and while Friis and Zennström met in Denmark, they'd moved to Amsterdam by the
time they started work on Kazaa (from WP on Janus Friis).

------
begurken
But OH NOES, they are teh socialist!!11oneeleventy And we all know that
socialism always fails because socialist governments go bankrupt; at least,
that's what rags like the Economist have been telling me for the last 30
years.

<sarc>This is why free-market, no-social-services USA has such a low public
debt/GDP ratio, whereas quasi-socialist (public health: boo!) Australia has
high debt/GDP, and socialist hell-holes like Denmark have off-the-scale
debt/GDP ratios.</sarc>

Just look at the numbers in my (highly debatable and somewhat cherry picked)
loosely ranked list of least to most socialist countries.

Debt to GDP ratios (2010) USA: 73% UK: 86.8% Australia: 30% Canada: 83%
Germany: 82% Japan: 208% Finland: 49% Sweden: 38% Denmark: 46% Norway: 49%
Singapore: 118.2% France: 86%

DERP. Oh dear, the numbers appear to have little correlation with with how
socialist the country is, but may be more related to how 'innovative' a
country's banking sector is, how many 'state owned enterprises' there are,
national demographics, corporate political capture, and how distorting the tax
system is.

Even the neo-liberals at the Economist are starting to understand that
government provided social services, transport, health, and education aren't
the primary factor that sends countries broke. Perhaps one day they'll notice
the elephant in the room: the banking sector.

~~~
Tloewald
2010 figures are a bit out of date given the deficits the US has been running
(the US has risen over 100%). I think the Economist actually has noticed the
banking sector (consider this invited column from
2010:[http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-
contr...](http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-
contributions/more_substantial_reform_needed)). By and large, the shift in US
politics to the right has the Economist looking like a left-of-Democrat
newspaper these days. The idea that Obama is a "socialist" is, to anyone
versed in a tiny bit of history or political science, laughable.

~~~
begurken
Indeed; thanks for the update on the US.

I believe The Economist paid lip service to the role of the financial sector
in the collapse; but that's mostly my opinion; as you say, they definitely
covered it to some degree. At least they're apparently starting to realise
that chanting "cut public services" over and over isn't the answer.

One problem with the USA left-right false dichotomy is that when you pick a
middle point between the Republicans and the Democrats, you end up with
something that resembles no political party anywhere else (including in the
USA's history); everyone else's right wing parties (and the Republicans in the
past) resemble the Democrats or are even further 'left'.

As far as I can tell, there's almost no difference between Obama and (for
example) Reagan based on the left/right scale; yet US conservatives generally
idolise Reagan and demonise Obama. It's bizarre.

------
Evbn
Why did the mods remove the relevant context from the title?

