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As Eurozone crumbles, Krugman panics.
- Thread starter Grandluxe
- Start date
Quote from Grandluxe:
Johnny Munkhammar, a Swedish member of parliament noted in a piece for The Wall Street Journal in January, Sweden owes its success not to welfare statism but to reforms that have increased economic freedom, including greater competitiveness in the provision of health care and other public services:
"For many years, foreign policy-makers have pointed to Sweden as a positive model to follow, making Swedes like me proud. Too often, though, foreigners have drawn the wrong lessons from Sweden's success. For instance, whenever I give a lecture, anywhere in Europe, about economic reform, I always get the following response: "But you come from Sweden, which is socialist and successfulâwhy should we launch free-market policies?"
"The simple truth is that Sweden is not socialist."
According to the World Values Survey and other similar studies, Sweden combines one of the highest degrees of individualism in the world, solid trust in well-functioning institutions, and a high degree of social cohesion."
"Even smarting from the financial crisis, Swedes turned the leftists down.. Stockholm has also cut property taxes and abolished the wealth tax, and instituted a new system of income-tax credits that lets working people with average incomes keep what amounts to an extra month of wages, after taxes, per year."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704698004576104023432243468.html
This is kinda of crazy, the "right wing" in sweden is left of Obama. the Swedish government currently taxes 53% of the GDP, by far the highest among any first world government. (According to the world fact book posted by Nitro)
5yr
Quote from Grandluxe:
Norway has tonnes of North Sea oil for a small population. As a country,It produces per capita the most oil after the Middle East.
That being said, I do think that economic/social systems cannot be viewed in isolation, culture and social history makes a very big difference.
Participation in the Euro aside, All these countries mentioned that have been least affected by the euro debacle(Nordic countries and Germany, Netherlands,etc) share a common heritage and ancestry. They have similarities in culture, in language and in social attitudes.
Norwegian/Danish and Swedish are all north Germanic languages. Dutch is a West Germanic language. In cultures like these, there are very strong inclinations towards self-reliance, discipline, an obsession with perfection and great attention to detail. This kind of cultural attitude is not readily found in the rest of Europe. The other country that I can think of is Japan. It might have something to do with evolving to live in the cold environment.
Finland is the Nordic one in the eurozone.
Sweden is in the EU but not in the euro. And, they're not having any kind of crisis. Can't imagine why.
Norway is in neither.
The Finns are either related to the Hungarians, the Turks, or both. No one is really sure.
So, the Netherlands and Germany are distantly related. The Finns aren't.
So much for this Germanic crap.
Do some research before you post half-baked shit.
Quote from trefoil:
Finland is the Nordic one in the eurozone.
Sweden is in the EU but not in the euro. And, they're not having any kind of crisis. Can't imagine why.
Norway is in neither.
The Finns are either related to the Hungarians, the Turks, or both. No one is really sure.
So, the Netherlands and Germany are distantly related. The Finns aren't.
So much for this Germanic crap.
Do some research before you post half-baked shit.
I never mentioned Finland at all in my post. You should learn to read. Do you perchance have cataracts?
And neither did I say Sweden and Norway is in the Eurozone, I am well aware of that, which I why I said "participation in the eurozone aside."
Your comment shows me you have no clue on the ethnogenesis of the Dutch people. Start with the Franks, and if by then you still do not understand how these languages derives from Common Germanic then I am sorry for you.
Seriously. Reading isn't TOO hard.
To recap:
You started out with a post claiming that welfare states were causing the euro crisis.
When confronted with evidence to the contrary, you switched from economics to ethnography and linguistics.
When confronted with the FACT that out of the Nordic countries mentioned as having a common Germanic heritage, none are in the eurozone, whereas the only one that is in the eurozone isn't even remotely related to anything having to do with this Germanic heritage.
Which was my point.
Yeah, you didn't mention the Finns, for the glaringly obvious reason that it doesn't fit in with your stupid racialist bullshit.
You started out with a post claiming that welfare states were causing the euro crisis.
When confronted with evidence to the contrary, you switched from economics to ethnography and linguistics.
When confronted with the FACT that out of the Nordic countries mentioned as having a common Germanic heritage, none are in the eurozone, whereas the only one that is in the eurozone isn't even remotely related to anything having to do with this Germanic heritage.
Which was my point.
Yeah, you didn't mention the Finns, for the glaringly obvious reason that it doesn't fit in with your stupid racialist bullshit.
Quote from trefoil:
.
The Finns are either related to the Hungarians, the Turks, or both.
Btw,
The Finns are part of the Finno-Ugrian peoples which dominated the baltic and spread into scandinavia
In fact at one point, the whole of scandinavia was Finno-Ugrian. Around 2000 BC or thereabouts, Indo-Europeans, i.e. Germanic tribes invaded up to scandinavia, driving the Finno-Ugrians into NE europe, which is why today only in Finland, parts of Hungary as well as parts of Ukraine speak variants of the Finno-Ugrian language. All the rest of the Scandinavian countries adopted Common Germanic, which is why swedish,danish and norwegian are all mutually intelligible.
Quote from trefoil:
To recap:
You started out with a post claiming that welfare states were causing the euro crisis.
When confronted with evidence to the contrary, you switched from economics to ethnography and linguistics.
When confronted with the FACT that out of the Nordic countries mentioned as having a common Germanic heritage, none are in the eurozone, whereas the only one that is in the eurozone isn't even remotely related to anything having to do with this Germanic heritage.
Which was my point.
Yeah, you didn't mention the Finns, for the glaringly obvious reason that it doesn't fit in with your stupid racialist bullshit.
No, I didn't. I posted the WSJ article about how Sweden owes its success to free market reforms which you conveniently ignored.
I have never diverted from the issue, I merely posited that a welfare state cannot be viewed in isolation from it's dominant culture. To say that a German is culturally similar in attitudes to say for example, an Italian is not only ignorant but racist as it seeks to demean their individual heritage.
I concede that the Finns are not of Germanic origin, but to say they are not "even remotely related" is pure garbage. The modern Finns (and Estonians) have many cultural links to Scandinavia. In Finland, Finnish and Swedish are both official languages and have the SAME national status.