Swedish elections this Sunday
Swedish unions are spending more on campaigns per capita than George Bush..!
Do you wonder why few Swedish politicians dare to suggest deregulation of the labour market to create more jobs?
According to Carl B Hamilton´s calculations, the trade union LO spends around 825 million SEK to get the social democrats elected this year. That is around 91.7 SEK per Swede.
In 2004, Bush´s presidential campaign cost 2.8 billion SEK. That is 9.5 SEK per American.
Per capita, LO´s campaign costs almost ten times more than Bush´s campaign.
And here’s a great article on Sweden from The Economist – Here’s some highlights…
But Sweden is a world champion at massaging its jobless figures, which exclude those in government make-work programmes, those forced into early retirement and students who would prefer to be working. Sweden’s suspiciously large number of workers on long-term sick leave are counted as working, and included in the employment rate (sickness benefits account for 16% of public spending). Absenteeism is common.
Earlier this year the McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank, studied Sweden’s labour market. It found that the rate of employment among working-age people had declined in the past decade. Indeed, Magnus Henrekson of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics says that Sweden has created almost no net private-sector jobs since 1950* (see chart 2). Youth unemployment is among the highest in Europe. The McKinsey boffins conclude that the “true†unemployment rate is around 15-17%, which puts Sweden among the worst job-fillers in the EU. It translates into more than 1m people without work.
[...]But the biggest problem for immigrants, as for young Swedes, is work. A study of comparable Somali groups in Sweden and Minnesota found that less than a third of working-age Somalis in Sweden had jobs, half the share in Minnesota.
[...]Only one of Sweden’s 50 biggest companies was founded after 1970; and Sweden has the lowest rate of self-employment in the OECD.
[...]An overweening public sector has stifled growth in jobs in service industries. Sweden’s public sector is, indeed, the economy’s second big failing. Mr Nuder asserts that it is no worse than any other, and he claims that the Social Democrats welcome choice in education and health care. Yet Sweden’s public sector accounts for 30% of total employment, twice the share in Germany. And, although public-sector productivity figures are unreliable, one recent assessment of efficiency of input use puts Sweden at the bottom of all OECD countries.
[...]Given Sweden’s poor employment record and high taxes, why do so many voters stick with the Social Democrats? One answer, says Mr Lindbeck, is that so many are dependent on the state: some 30% work for it, and a bit over 30% receive transfer payments. Another answer is offered by Mr Rojas. Asked why the opposition’s programme is a lot more centrist than it was in 2002, Mr Rojas suggests that a big lesson from the past has been that it is a mistake to attack the government too fiercely, since “all Swedes are to some extent Social Democrats.†An attack on social democracy risks, in other words, being seen as an attack on Sweden itself.
[...]For their part, the Social Democrats’ programme amounts to no change. Far from cutting unemployment benefits, the government promises to raise them. As for liberalisation, Mr Nuder says baldly, “We have done enough deregulation.†Indeed, he sees little need for any further economic reforms. To Swedes who have full-time jobs, especially in the public sector, this promise of continuity may seem appealing. To the jobless young and immigrants, it will be less so.
