Meet a bunch of sociologists, featured in a recent legacy media piece, talking™ wealth inequality in Nordic countries--it's almost as bad as in the US, which raises serious questions about our future
Thank you for this! Excellent perspective - sorely missed in the current atmosphere where everything seems to be reduced into a fight between good and evil - or a football game. I do not know if I will ever be able to get over the ease and enthusiasm that people have over being turned into willing propaganda consumers. Regardless of social status or education, or consequences of the "current thing"(insert that clever trademark symbol) - even to themselves. The age of reason seems to be fast receding in the rearview mirror, and collective psychosis is ascending. Of course, consuming lies instead of truth drives people mad, but nobody (important) seems to notice that it is a problem.
I like the depth of your research. Thank you for the information.
I wonder though whether the problem isn’t that research in depth has replaced our anger at an egregious level of greed and self satisfaction/ contempt for us. A level of greed and self satisfaction supported by governments bought and paid for by the self satisfied and contemptuous.
At the end of all it is a numbers game, not the numbers of the balance sheet, but the numbers of us who have had enough of them. And express our level of disgust and contempt for them in effective ways.
It's a bit like the quote about voting attributed to Stalin, isn't it?
'Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.'
Now, I don't think there's not enough in-depth research 'out there'; problem is that the big scam--the state and/or corporations paying for the research™ of their liking--is very much alive and kicking.
And, of course, most academics are sycophants (guilty as charged), with multiple dependencies, hence their cowardice.
It’s an enigma. There is a possibility that the gentleman amateur could produce a more honest view than the professional working for a patron with deep pockets.
But where did the funding for the gentleman amateur come from? How corrupt is the family fortune? And how smart is the gentleman anyway? Maybe all he has is more leisure than most to be a crackpot. Or is a useful idiot to someone who holds the cheque book.
Perhaps patronage itself is the problem. The moment we compromise our thought with the requirement for filthy lucre we may be done.
Suggests that we might be best served by thinking for ourselves. And oddly it seems that the less academic we are the more instinctive our responses.
Well, show me the incentive, and I'll explain the outcome.
For academics (my own profession), it's grant money, citations, and reputation, not necessarily in that order.
But all of it presupposes being 'liked' and 'appreciated' by one's peers. And that means, in practice, swimming with the flow, never rocking the boat, and shunning all those who are perceived to be 'outsiders' to whatever mainstream opinion is available.
Reading the out-takes from your sources made me want to hit myself in the face with a brick, repeatedly. It is cute when a child invent the wheel; it is less cute when credentialed career academics reinvent knowledge that was commonplace in the 1800s.
The issue has never been - except for ideologues of any flavour - income/asset inequilty. The issue is poverty-traps, welfare-traps, clean water, sufficient housing and clothing, food and waste handling, and basic care for injuries/diseases.
Those are the problems that are best solved collectively, because doing so maxmises the utility from the amount of resources allocated. But for that to happen, the angle of approach must be pragmatic: solve the actual problem. It cannot ever be ideological, that the problem must be solved according to dogma XYZ (not even that adopting dogma XYZ will solve the problem, that's the same trap).
Norway is in a nation-wide Riche Nouveau-trap of their own making, I'm afraid. They simply don't know how to handle wealth as a culture. Their Nordic Protestant morality-core clashes with wealth and affluence and opulence. At the same time, they are shackled by Janteloven, and have a complex about putting one over on their neighbours, both Swedes and Danes, carrying a "country bumpkin with a chip on his shoulder"-mentality to greater or lesser degree. (The Swedish eq. is being smug in moral superiority and having always been the biggest throughout history.)
The real reasons for the "equity disparity" is never mentioned, I take it?
1) Massive import of unemployable people for decades, creating a race-based Lumpenproletariat
2) Real unemployment levels. I don't know the figures from Norway, but in Sweden, youth unemployment (and uni-students aren't included despite not being self-supporting) is above 25% (18-25). Official unemployment is above 10% (real is between 15%-18%, at least).
But for Sweden and Norway, those two issues may not be spoken of or debated in any kind of practical how-to-fix-manner. Hence, the problem festers and grows until the problem becomes the normal state of being (which the people you quote ought to be aware of - is paradigm theory no longer being taught?).
Grrr.
If you ever have the time, look up Ernst Wigforss, a Swedish economist contemporary and preceding Keynes, and the founder of the Wigforss school of though in economy; i.e. let the state handle the stuff that's not profitable, money-wise, in such a way it becomes easier to run for-profit businesses; the old Nordic third way between capitalist and Marxist economic policy/theory.
I suspect Wigforss--who worked closely with Per Albin Hansson (who had quite many fans among Austria's Social Democrats)--was quite closely followed outside Sweden.
As to these ideas, well, they're in fact a variety of Friedrich List's Nationalökonomie (political economy), also practiced by the 19th-century US. The best scholarly account (personal opinion) is by Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press, 2002).
The big problem in my view is what you also regularly decry: ideology so often trumps reality, at least in the short run. In the long run, we're not merely all dead but typically proven wrong by reality.
Epimetheus, danke, für diese Analyse. Und bitte: Auf keinen Fall von Deinen Schnippereien und bissigen Bemerkungen abweichen. Sie sind (leider) so entsetzlich notwendig! Und: ich mag sie sehr.
It sounds like an interesting paper, and I don't understand why you had to insert all the snark. It just made the post harder to read. It may be that historians are used to thinking about inequality in these terms, but contemporary social scientists generally focus on income inequality, and so a correction is quite useful.
I'd heard that Sweden had low income inequality, but high wealth inequality. I didn't know that about Norway, but it's not particularly surprising. Supposedly, the Czech Republic is similar in this regard, although we're much poorer overall, obviously.
One thing that happens when you have low income inequality, but high wealth inequality (for example, in the form of very expensive housing, which some people own and others do not) is that it's actually quite difficult to improve your lot by working hard. If you have no inherited wealth, then you simply never get to own property (real estate), because it's too expensive to buy even with a "good" salary. Interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that only a small fraction of house/apartment buyers in the Czech Republic (something like 20-25%) managed to buy without "help" from family and friends (i.e. inherited wealth).
About the state subsidizing housing for the poor: what happens in practice is a transfer of wealth from the tax-paying middle classes to the landlords, who get to make large profits by renting out their property. It's a pretty stupid way of keeping your population housed. Social housing owned by the state make a lot more sense from the taxpayers' point of view. And making housing absurdly expensive even for the middle classes is its own problem.
'One thing that happens when you have low income inequality, but high wealth inequality (for example, in the form of very expensive housing, which some people own and others do not) is that it's actually quite difficult to improve your lot by working hard. If you have no inherited wealth, then you simply never get to own property (real estate), because it's too expensive to buy even with a "good" salary. Interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that only a small fraction of house/apartment buyers in the Czech Republic (something like 20-25%) managed to buy without "help" from family and friends (i.e. inherited wealth).
About the state subsidizing housing for the poor: what happens in practice is a transfer of wealth from the tax-paying middle classes to the landlords, who get to make large profits by renting out their property. It's a pretty stupid way of keeping your population housed. Social housing owned by the state make a lot more sense from the taxpayers' point of view. And making housing absurdly expensive even for the middle classes is its own problem.'
That's, in a nutshell, the main issue here. For reasons unknown to me, the middle class is often quite content (as in: 'what can I do?') to pay ever-higher taxes as long as they're marginally better off than the rabble. They often don't care that these taxes go elsewhere…
Thank you for this! Excellent perspective - sorely missed in the current atmosphere where everything seems to be reduced into a fight between good and evil - or a football game. I do not know if I will ever be able to get over the ease and enthusiasm that people have over being turned into willing propaganda consumers. Regardless of social status or education, or consequences of the "current thing"(insert that clever trademark symbol) - even to themselves. The age of reason seems to be fast receding in the rearview mirror, and collective psychosis is ascending. Of course, consuming lies instead of truth drives people mad, but nobody (important) seems to notice that it is a problem.
Thank you for your kind words.
As to the age of reason receding, well, I suppose the CIA's playbook--'flood the zone'--is at-play here.
Truth will come forth, though, for it always does (as it doesn't require a cloak of lies).
I like the depth of your research. Thank you for the information.
I wonder though whether the problem isn’t that research in depth has replaced our anger at an egregious level of greed and self satisfaction/ contempt for us. A level of greed and self satisfaction supported by governments bought and paid for by the self satisfied and contemptuous.
At the end of all it is a numbers game, not the numbers of the balance sheet, but the numbers of us who have had enough of them. And express our level of disgust and contempt for them in effective ways.
It's a bit like the quote about voting attributed to Stalin, isn't it?
'Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.'
Now, I don't think there's not enough in-depth research 'out there'; problem is that the big scam--the state and/or corporations paying for the research™ of their liking--is very much alive and kicking.
And, of course, most academics are sycophants (guilty as charged), with multiple dependencies, hence their cowardice.
It’s an enigma. There is a possibility that the gentleman amateur could produce a more honest view than the professional working for a patron with deep pockets.
But where did the funding for the gentleman amateur come from? How corrupt is the family fortune? And how smart is the gentleman anyway? Maybe all he has is more leisure than most to be a crackpot. Or is a useful idiot to someone who holds the cheque book.
Perhaps patronage itself is the problem. The moment we compromise our thought with the requirement for filthy lucre we may be done.
Suggests that we might be best served by thinking for ourselves. And oddly it seems that the less academic we are the more instinctive our responses.
Well, show me the incentive, and I'll explain the outcome.
For academics (my own profession), it's grant money, citations, and reputation, not necessarily in that order.
But all of it presupposes being 'liked' and 'appreciated' by one's peers. And that means, in practice, swimming with the flow, never rocking the boat, and shunning all those who are perceived to be 'outsiders' to whatever mainstream opinion is available.
Reading the out-takes from your sources made me want to hit myself in the face with a brick, repeatedly. It is cute when a child invent the wheel; it is less cute when credentialed career academics reinvent knowledge that was commonplace in the 1800s.
The issue has never been - except for ideologues of any flavour - income/asset inequilty. The issue is poverty-traps, welfare-traps, clean water, sufficient housing and clothing, food and waste handling, and basic care for injuries/diseases.
Those are the problems that are best solved collectively, because doing so maxmises the utility from the amount of resources allocated. But for that to happen, the angle of approach must be pragmatic: solve the actual problem. It cannot ever be ideological, that the problem must be solved according to dogma XYZ (not even that adopting dogma XYZ will solve the problem, that's the same trap).
Norway is in a nation-wide Riche Nouveau-trap of their own making, I'm afraid. They simply don't know how to handle wealth as a culture. Their Nordic Protestant morality-core clashes with wealth and affluence and opulence. At the same time, they are shackled by Janteloven, and have a complex about putting one over on their neighbours, both Swedes and Danes, carrying a "country bumpkin with a chip on his shoulder"-mentality to greater or lesser degree. (The Swedish eq. is being smug in moral superiority and having always been the biggest throughout history.)
The real reasons for the "equity disparity" is never mentioned, I take it?
1) Massive import of unemployable people for decades, creating a race-based Lumpenproletariat
2) Real unemployment levels. I don't know the figures from Norway, but in Sweden, youth unemployment (and uni-students aren't included despite not being self-supporting) is above 25% (18-25). Official unemployment is above 10% (real is between 15%-18%, at least).
But for Sweden and Norway, those two issues may not be spoken of or debated in any kind of practical how-to-fix-manner. Hence, the problem festers and grows until the problem becomes the normal state of being (which the people you quote ought to be aware of - is paradigm theory no longer being taught?).
Grrr.
If you ever have the time, look up Ernst Wigforss, a Swedish economist contemporary and preceding Keynes, and the founder of the Wigforss school of though in economy; i.e. let the state handle the stuff that's not profitable, money-wise, in such a way it becomes easier to run for-profit businesses; the old Nordic third way between capitalist and Marxist economic policy/theory.
I suspect Wigforss--who worked closely with Per Albin Hansson (who had quite many fans among Austria's Social Democrats)--was quite closely followed outside Sweden.
As to these ideas, well, they're in fact a variety of Friedrich List's Nationalökonomie (political economy), also practiced by the 19th-century US. The best scholarly account (personal opinion) is by Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press, 2002).
The big problem in my view is what you also regularly decry: ideology so often trumps reality, at least in the short run. In the long run, we're not merely all dead but typically proven wrong by reality.
Epimetheus, danke, für diese Analyse. Und bitte: Auf keinen Fall von Deinen Schnippereien und bissigen Bemerkungen abweichen. Sie sind (leider) so entsetzlich notwendig! Und: ich mag sie sehr.
Hihi, vielen Dank für die Blumen--ich habe nicht vor, dies zu ändern, außer vielleicht wenn diese Texte besser werden…
It sounds like an interesting paper, and I don't understand why you had to insert all the snark. It just made the post harder to read. It may be that historians are used to thinking about inequality in these terms, but contemporary social scientists generally focus on income inequality, and so a correction is quite useful.
I'd heard that Sweden had low income inequality, but high wealth inequality. I didn't know that about Norway, but it's not particularly surprising. Supposedly, the Czech Republic is similar in this regard, although we're much poorer overall, obviously.
One thing that happens when you have low income inequality, but high wealth inequality (for example, in the form of very expensive housing, which some people own and others do not) is that it's actually quite difficult to improve your lot by working hard. If you have no inherited wealth, then you simply never get to own property (real estate), because it's too expensive to buy even with a "good" salary. Interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that only a small fraction of house/apartment buyers in the Czech Republic (something like 20-25%) managed to buy without "help" from family and friends (i.e. inherited wealth).
About the state subsidizing housing for the poor: what happens in practice is a transfer of wealth from the tax-paying middle classes to the landlords, who get to make large profits by renting out their property. It's a pretty stupid way of keeping your population housed. Social housing owned by the state make a lot more sense from the taxpayers' point of view. And making housing absurdly expensive even for the middle classes is its own problem.
You write:
'One thing that happens when you have low income inequality, but high wealth inequality (for example, in the form of very expensive housing, which some people own and others do not) is that it's actually quite difficult to improve your lot by working hard. If you have no inherited wealth, then you simply never get to own property (real estate), because it's too expensive to buy even with a "good" salary. Interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that only a small fraction of house/apartment buyers in the Czech Republic (something like 20-25%) managed to buy without "help" from family and friends (i.e. inherited wealth).
About the state subsidizing housing for the poor: what happens in practice is a transfer of wealth from the tax-paying middle classes to the landlords, who get to make large profits by renting out their property. It's a pretty stupid way of keeping your population housed. Social housing owned by the state make a lot more sense from the taxpayers' point of view. And making housing absurdly expensive even for the middle classes is its own problem.'
That's, in a nutshell, the main issue here. For reasons unknown to me, the middle class is often quite content (as in: 'what can I do?') to pay ever-higher taxes as long as they're marginally better off than the rabble. They often don't care that these taxes go elsewhere…