The Fascination With The Nordics

Spending a lot of time in airplanes gives a man plenty of time to contemplate and to read. In the Saturday issue of the International Herald there is a feature article about the Nordic countries success in combining growth, fiscal sensibility and social welfare. It is mentioned that the GDP is growing in all countries and that unemployment figures are below the European average. What is not mentioned is that the Nordics went through a steel bath in the end of the 80's where pensions were privatized in a manner that George W Bush now wants to do with social security, salary development in Nordics have also fallen way behind the rest of the EU, unemployment ratings are hidden behind government restructuring programs and disability leaves. A person unemployed for 12 months is moved from unemployed status to early retirement.
The union in Sweden estimates the true unemployment figure to be up to 23%, not anywhere near the 8% open unemployment acknowledged by the government. GDP growth is also hidden by huge public sectors, there are almost no new jobs being created in the private sector and the public sector is constantly growing, fueled by the socialist government that needs to create jobs but don't know how to do it in the private sector.
Health care has been one part where Nordics want to stand out, premium care for everyone, that this is no longer true is proved by the fact that all members of parliament now has private health care insurance and will not go to public health facilities. These very same private institutions used by the socialists are at the same time being forbidden for ordinary citizens to attend. Socialists have passed a stop law forbidding private alternatives in health care. Why? My guess is that private health care would show for all the ineptness of the public health care and thus would in one broad stroke make socialists look very foolish.

School is another sector where Sweden and the Nordics have prided themselves in being better, latest statistics though shows that the Nordic schoolchildren are sinking behind every year, especially in math and sciences. The restructuring of the teachers education (first where politicians restructure education in detail) have proven disastrous. Teachers coming out have no teaching skills since pedagogic have been made electoral and not compulsory, kids are learning less, schools get less funding and th powerful teachers association has been able to ban teachers that don't have formal education from schools, that research has shown that these ineligible teachers generally are better than newly examined teachers they dutifully ignore.
A report coming from the department of education showing private schools to be better than public and also showing that the competition make all schools better was banned by the socialistic minister of education. Why? He claimed the statistical ground was to small, it was skewed and he critisised his own department for the report. It was pulled back but did resurface again just last week where the researchers had looked at the criticism and changed the report. It now showed the same thing, only in more detail. This must pain Ibrahim Baylan, current minister of education.

On all points in the articles it just isn't true when scrutinized, but then how come foreign papers and other people still fall for this picture? How come researchers fall for the fabricated numbers? I believe it is because they want to believe that there is a place where cradle to the grave social welfare can exist in conjunction with a growing private sector, that the GDP numbers are inflated with public sector growth, education and health care falling apart, unions becoming more and more protectionistic and the socialists gamble on a few large companies to fuel growth is failing for every move to China and small enterprises failing due to tax rules and beaurocracy is all a recipe for disaster. Sweden will soon enough fail totally if we don't have another steel bath in which all public sectors are opened up for private enterprises.

Sincerely
Mr. Silence Dogood