Nordic Model: a balance of regulated capitalism, universal social welfare, political democracy, and

[midnight]

the highest levels of gender and economic equality on the planet.



"In all the Nordic countries, there is broad general agreement across the political spectrum that only when people’s basic needs are met -- when they can cease to worry about their jobs, their incomes, their housing, their transportation, their health care, their kids’ education, and their aging parents -- only then can they be free to do as they like. While the U.S. settles for the fantasy that, from birth, every kid has an equal shot at the American dream, Nordic social welfare systems lay the foundations for a more authentic equality and individualism.



These ideas are not novel. They are implied in the preamble to our own Constitution. You know, the part about “we the People” forming “a more perfect Union” to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Even as he prepared the nation for war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt memorably specified components of what that general welfare should be in his State of the Union address in 1941. Among the “simple basic things that must never be lost sight of,” he listed “equality of opportunity for youth and others, jobs for those who can work, security for those who need it, the ending of special privileges for the few, the preservation of civil liberties for all,” and oh yes, higher taxes to pay for those things and for the cost of defensive armaments.



Knowing that Americans used to support such ideas, a Norwegian today is appalled to learn that a CEO of a major American corporation makes between 300 and 400 times as much as its average employee. Or that governors Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chris Christie of New Jersey, having run up their state’s debts by cutting taxes for the rich, now plan to cover the loss with money snatched from the pension funds of workers in the public sector. To a Norwegian, the job of government is to distribute the country’s good fortune reasonably equally, not send it zooming upward, as in America today, to a sticky-fingered one percent."




http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/11/country-crazy-inquiring-minds-elsewhere-want-know

[longship]

1. The Four Freedoms speech, January 6, 1941.

Here is the money line:

FDR understood the principles.

Enjoy.

[midnight]

3. I have never heard this awesome speech. But if I were running for office.

I would take this one out and use it point for point to show how it was rolled back and taken from us.

[longship]

6. They'd call you a Commie-Pinko. If it were me, I'd wear that badge honorably.

Not that I am a Commie-Pinko. However, if what FDR said means he was a Commie-Pinko, then that's what I am.

[midnight]

9. Taking care of all the citizen's in one's country should be what leadership is all about….

Taking care of the most able is something else…

[jwirr]

12. Absolutely.

[Doctor_J]

26. Or a racist who never learned anything about civics

[longship]

35. Indeed! nt

[onehandle]

2. Godless Commies!

Struggling to live and being ignorant is the 'merican way.

Corporations are our masters! For instance in Pennsylvania, gun corporations have dictated the laws of individual municipalities over the wishes of the majority.

THIS IS HOW WE WANT IT, YURPEANS.

[midnight]

4. Onehandle the struggle seems to be the manufactured outcome from the deregulation of the banks.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I think that's only part of the story.

The advancing depredations by the rich upon the rest of us have been accelerating since Nixon & the energy crises of the early 70's.

[midnight]

10. Yes indeed… President Carter took steps to create an energy independent country…

[freshwest]

7. I was amazed to have a talk with a bagger relation. I brought up the Nordic model and summed it up.

'It means we are all in it together.'

This relation is old enough to remember the advantages the New Deal gave, despite years of Fauxian propaganda and living in a very red state.

The bagger thought it was great! There was actually a tone of joy in her voice and she is gradually leaving hate.

It was a lightbulb moment...

[midnight]

11. Glad to hear this...

[jtuck004]

8. Dark lands: the grim truth behind the 'Scandinavian miracle'

I never take any source as the only truth, so I like to read the other side...it's like dragging a jigsaw puzzle out of 12 boxes of other puzzle's pieces.

...
So let's remove those rose-tinted ski goggles and take a closer look at the objects of our infatuation …
...

Why do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they also work fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four times as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to obtain goods and services. Perhaps the Danes' dirtiest secret is that, according to a 2012 report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, they have the fourth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US. Those offshore windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, but Denmark burns an awful lot of coal. Worth bearing that in mind the next time a Dane wags her finger at your patio heater.
...
Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best public services? According to the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark's schools lag behind even the UK's. Its health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at my local A&E to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can't help feeling rather misunderstands the nature of the service.) According to the World Cancer Research Fund, the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet. "But at least the trains run on time!" I hear you say. No, that was Italy under Mussolini. The Danish national rail company has skirted bankruptcy in recent years, and the trains most assuredly do not run on time. Somehow, though, the government still managed to find £2m to fund a two-year tax-scandal investigation largely concerned, as far as I can make out, with the sexual orientation of the prime minister's husband, Stephen Kinnock.
...
Other awkward truths? There is more than a whiff of the police state about the fact that Danish policeman refuse to display ID numbers and can refuse to give their names. The Danes are aggressively jingoistic, waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest provocation. Like the Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm (even the ambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularly unsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of black people with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon in the national press). And if you think a move across the North Sea would help you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodging corporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I'm afraid I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.
...
Like the dealer who never touches his own supply, those dirty frackers the Norwegians boast of using only renewable energy sources, all the while amassing the world's largest sovereign wealth fund selling fossil fuels to the rest of us. As Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen put it to me when I visited his office in Oslo University: "We've always been used to thinking of ourselves as part of the solution, and with the oil we suddenly became part of the problem. Most people are really in denial."
...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden

That last paragraph reminds me of Texas. Bet the drop in prices has them moving around.

[Fred Sanders]

13. The author's take on Iceland leaves me wondering if this whole article belongs in The Onion?

Iceland

We need not detain ourselves here too long. Only 320,000 – it would appear rather greedy and irresponsible – people cling to this breathtaking, yet borderline uninhabitable rock in the North Atlantic. Further attention will only encourage them.

....??....

[midnight]

15. I was hoping to show you another article printed a few months ago. However, here is something

else that lends some info.



"Then there is the theory of rehabilitation, which is the core philosophy of the Danish prison system. It encourages solving the problems that led an individual to crime rather than punishing the crime itself. It works to retrain and reintegrate criminals back into society.

The features of this system are based on the idea of “normalization,” where the prisoner’s environment closely resembles the outside world that they will ideal return to and function in. In fact, most Danish prisoners, usually those with sentences shorter than 5 years, live in open prisons, which typically lack walls and the security features we normally associate with prisons.

The prisoners attend classes, work a standard Danish workweek (37 hours), and even do their own shopping and cooking. Married couples are often allowed to live together and even with their children if under 3 years old. The result, seemingly, is an extremely low rate of recidivism. Inmates are able to easily transition from prison to everyday life.

In comparison with the US, Denmark has 73 prisoners for every 100,000 residents, while the US has 730. Denmark has a recidivism rate of 27% while the US has one of 52%."

http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/letters/the-danish-prison-system

[jtuck004]

22. The idea I liked best from there are the Folkschools. I did a fair amount

of reading about N.F.S. Grundtvig and how he developed them. I thought, and still think, a network of those around this nation for continuing education for the spirit and engaging each other would be a good investment for us.

[midnight]

23. I like your appreciation of keeping people connected to normalcy and agree

it would be a huge improvement for us..

[kelliekat44]

14. An a relatively homogenous society...nt

[Faygo Kid]

16. Ya sure, you bet. Half Norwegian, half Swedish here.

And all American. About time we recognized their successes. When we have emulated them, we have had a better country.

[daleanime]

17. K&R....

[valerief]

18. But how does that help very rich people? Their increasing wealth is the most important

thing in the world, after all. No one else matters.

[midnight]

20. I couldn't imagine the difficulty that those who have to do without

and the difficulty that those who have couldn't be balanced out with more equity. At least... so everyone mattered.

[valerief]

34. No. As long as unrich men with guns protect the narcissistic demands of the very rich, nothing

will change.

[jberryhill]

19. Nordic Model: Thor Knai

[midnight]

21. Ha…Ha… Thanks for your input...

[Scuba]

24. Yeah, but how is that going to make the wealthiest people even wealthier?

[Doctor_J]

28. And actually run the country

I think the Kochs fear less about losing their money than they do about the underclass actually having rights.

[midnight]

29. Hi Scuba. That is a dilemma I hope their accountants

will advise them on.

[grahamhgreen]

31. A rising tide lifts all boats

[Scuba]

32. I hear the super-yacht manufacturers are doing quite well.

[Diclotican]

25. midnight

midnight

The nordic model works - even though the conservatives want to destroy it - bit for bit - all the time, like they have been doing it in UK and US for the last 30 or so odd years - and if they are not fight nail and toes - all the time they will do it - destroying enough of the nordic model to do devastating damage to our system - they claim it cost to much - even if they have some tax-brakes for the rich who they want to get true the parliament - on the back of the sick - the infirm - and others who live on disablity...

What they really want - is to go back to pre 1814, where we had a small class of rich - and nobility - and the rest who if they was not able to work, either had to cared for by their families - or was left to starve to death - and be buried in graves who's was marked for poor - with no gravestone - to tell where they ended...

Or as Allan Gryson so eluquent put it - Get sick when poor - die sortly...

Diclotican

[midnight]

27. I love that the goal of the Nordic model is to provide freedom…

[swilton]

30. Moreover

life expectancy in all of the Nordic countries (over 80) is increasing.

http://nowbase.org/~/media/Projekt%20sites/Nowbase/Publikationer/Helse/Health%20Statistics%202013.ashx

[midnight]

33. I just took a look at this extensive body of work. What stand out to me is access to dentistry.