According to the government’s own stats, 1.5 million Swedes are currently defined as “outsiders” in a labour market context.
How you define “outsiders” is of course a bone of political and economic contention, but the term has now been broadly adopted across the parties nonetheless. It is used to describe those that need either a stick, a carrot, or both, to move from a life of dependency on the social welfare systems and into work and supporting themselves.
The next election will surely be a fight between the “insiders” for the hearts and minds (well votes) of the “outsiders.”
In a column in Dagens Nyheter on Tuesday, Niklas Ekdal writes of “the fight against work”. A large part of the article addresses marginal taxes and their (negative) impact on incentives to work, and work more. But in the second part of his piece he talks about recent media criticism of the work loads taken on by LO union head Wanja Lundby Wedin and Social Democrat Thomas Bodström.
These are not people who need a stick to get to work, the breadth of their commitments indicate the opposite. The main thrust of the criticism levelled against the pair has concerned how much they work, and the incomes they earn, Ekdal writes, calling the situation “sick”.
Is it, as Ekdal writes, still considered slightly “sick” to work extra and display initiative in Sweden?
Should we, as Ekdal writes, regard the high taxes on income, and higher taxes on higher incomes, as a “penalty tax” on labour designed in the same way as taxes on, for example, alcohol, and with a similar effect – to reduce consumption?
A regular defence of high taxes is Sweden is that we receive a lot back – for the average income earner (certainly those with pre-school children) taxes are primarily a give and take exercise. For those on the outside looking in they can be a major barrier to taking a step over the threshold.
It is simplistic to argue that lower taxes alone will make a dent in the 1.5 million Swedes of a working age sitting outside the system, but an open debate along the lines of what Ekdal proposes would be a step in the right direction.
As a self-employed person, I feel like I probably pay more taxes than the average Swedish employee but I have to say that for all my tax payments I get NADA back. Swedes talk about free medical healthcare but I haven’t experienced this. The doctor costs SEK 200 for an appointment and any time I have tried to book one, they tell me I have to come in and sit waiting in line for 3 hours or else I can have an appointment next week. Medicine is not subsidised like in other countries like Germany where taxes are also high. Dentists cost a lot. I don’t have kids but I can understand that subsidised kindergarten is a bonus.
I can take a client out to dinner for just SEK 90 per person plus 25% VAT but it’s perfectly ok to put an expensive Nespresso coffee machine for SEK 6,000 on my tax receipts as the fika apparently is more important than wooing a client to get more business. A language course to help me with my job and relationship with clients is not allowed on my receipts. But fruit supplies and the odd massage is ok.
It’s a very weird business environment I have to say!
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My forefather left many years ago to come to the USA. I am sincerely grateful–has Swedes become lotus eaters?
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@An American Pihl: Has you learnt to speak proper English yet?
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Look up the concept of inflation in economics. What happens when unemployment goes down? Inflation goes up, which is something the government wants to avoid at all costs (in fact, that’s the very purpose of Riksbanken).
Obviously, our current society “needs” unemployment, so claiming that unemployment is caused by sleazebags who simply don’t want to work is both arrogant and ignorant. The only proper solution is to make full employment—not the combating of inflation—the primary goal of our economic policies. Anything else is hypocrisy.
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If you have people who are recieving money from the government because they are unemployed (even though they may be illegaly working for cash off the books) the government must get the money from some where, either by taxing those who work legally on the books and file tax returns, or by creating money out of thin air, thus unbalancing the money to goods and services ratio, causing price increases we call inflation.
To make an economy boom, cut taxes.
Pay bounty hunters to prove that people recieving government money are cheating the government.
(Say you prove a person recieving disability pension is faking, you get paid equal to what he would get for one month.)
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Don’t confuse apples and oranges. Wedin and Bodstrom were neglecting their primary duties in order to pick up extra cash. Wedin for example quite clearly took advantage of her position to obtain more seats on boards of directors than she could possibly handle. If you are going to take the pay, you should be willing to shoulder the responsibility and not just drop by to pick up your pay envelope and rubber stamp management at the expense of the good of the business and its employees. And as for medical care, try paying the equivalent of 1000 SEK for the privilege of sitting in a US doctor’s office for 3 hours after having had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment.
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I have lived in USA for over 20 years ,me and my husband pay about $600 every week for healtinsurance and my co pay are $45 for doctors visit .so what are you complaining about ?.service are so much better here but you pay for it ,
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It’s funny how “liberals” always start every discussion about unemployment with saying that the people who aren’t working stay out of work just because they’d rather “cheat the government.” I thought liberals had an optimistic view of human nature.
“Bounty hunters” belong in science fiction movies and adventure novels, not in a democratic society. The liberal attitude toward privacy would shock the liberal philosophers of old.
More to the point, claiming that current unemployment is caused by greed and sloth among the unemployed is naive. The corporate world doesn’t want full employment, because then they could no longer offer bad working conditions at low wages to people who would do anything to get out of unemployment.
In fact, the only circumstance under which businesses would accept full employment is if wages and working conditions were already poor for everybody. I’d like to think we are past that stage of human history, so why don’t we try a serious attempt at making things right instead of using the convenient conservative excuse of “People are just lazy”?
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Unemployment in Sweden.
Sure there are many people outside the workforce here. Sweden had the advantage of retaining it’s industrial capacity after World War II. The next 15 years of rebuilding Europe fueled that industrial ability to amazing heights. That competitive advantage no longer exists and the rest of the world has caught up. Now, Sweden like many other Western industrial countries has massive infrastructure costs that have nothing to do with increasing competitive advantage and have everything to do layers of fat built up year after year…look at the cost of raising a child in Sweden, the UK or the USA and the productivity levels expected from that child over their lifetime…China and India can produce those same equally productive children for a fraction of the cost and back those kids up by less productive but quite inexpensive children to do the back breaking work.
I was unemployed in Sweden for a time. I found the unemployment office here to be utterly useless at helping me to find a job. This is not really a criticism against unemployment offices in Sweden or anywhere else. Later on as experience as an employer I found out right away that the worst candidates were always those who were sent my way from government run employment agencies. If I as a small employer realized that then obviously larger companies must have the same reservations about hiring from unemployment agencies.
Sweden lacks so many jobs that are elsewhere to the labor system. In America the middle class and up have people to cut their lawns, clean their houses, the same attorney or other professional here in Sweden who is spending their weekends in the basement adding a bathroom would just call in someone to do it for them in the US.
Now. From the exterior someone may ask..why do we want these types of jobs in Sweden? They are low paying positions requiring hard work. Well, whats the alternative here? Jobs within a bureaucracy that really serve no other purpose than to create more bureaucracy? I find its often these simple manual labor jobs that help drive economies…you have people who are influenced by market forces..small business owners striving to make a better life for themselves…those that are in that line of work who end up there over the long haul have reached their station in life..and to anyone else with the drive and motivation will quickly find better work either via education or simple drive.
Often…in Sweden I wish I had some Mexican laborers to hire. Very high quality labor in general. I would not have had tile in my bathroom, a roof on my head, or a lined swimming pool without them and all for 4 dollars an hour and a 6 pack of Corona. And those workers were the lucky ones, the ones who traveled across deserts, made it through the coyotes, and even through all the motivation and exploration managed to produce great work at a low price. People need that sort of incentive sometimes to bring out the best in them..the carrot only goes so far.
Health care
From having experienced first hand the health care systems of Norway, Sweden and the USA I would take the USA any day of the week. It’s the best health care system in the world but the worst one to pay for!
Practically, getting in to see a doctor in the US is very easy compared to Sweden or Norway. I ALWAYS feel in Norway or Sweden when I visit a doctor or a hospital the attitude is “you are just not sick enough for us to care”.
The overall customer service in the US at the health care provider is higher. People seem friendlier and easier to deal with….but I have to take it all with a grain of salt…I just saw Mad Men and Don Draper’s wife was accused of being “Perpetually Sad” and she simply answered “No..no I am not..my people are Nordic”. Perhaps the writers of Mad Men have summed it up?
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Stephen: It’s hardly lack of work that causes unemployment. Have you ever heard a politican say, “There simply isn’t enough that needs doing, so people will have to accept unemployment”?
Your point about private housekeeping and other jobs that are “better than nothing” does coincide with what I wrote in my previous comment, however: If entire sectors of labor are filled with low-paying jobs, unemployment can indeed go down. A quick glance at statistics doesn’t suggest a radical difference in unemployment between the U.S. and Sweden, but even if it were lower in the U.S. than in Sweden for this reason, that wouldn’t say anything about the level of welfare.
About healthcare: Obviously, if doctors only have to treat the people with enough money for treatment, the people with money will consider it a lot easier to get medical help.
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