16.M. Ljunge, “Yngre generationers högre sjukskrivningstal – ett mått på hur snabbt välfärdsstaten förändrar normer,” Ekonomisk Debatt 5 (2013): 56–61. Translated from Swedish.
17.Carl Hunnerup Dahl, “Velfæerdsstat og Arbejdsmoral,” (Welfare and Work Ethic), YouTube video, 42:06, from the event “Welfare and Work Ethic,” recorded in CEPOS’ tent under Folkemødet on Bornholm, posted by CEPOSdk, June 21, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YnVZzWYKmw&noredirect=1. Translated from Danish. See also Suzanne Daly, “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault,” New York Times, April 20, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html.
18.Amalie Kestler, “Corydon: Konkurrencestat er Ny Velfærdsstat” (Corydon: Competition State’s new welfare), Politiken, August 23, 2013. Own translation from Danish.
19.Økonomi og indenrigsministeriet (Economy and Ministry of Interior), Økonomisk redegørelse (Economic Survey), August 2013, http://www.fm.dk/publikationer/2013/oekonomisk-redegoerelse-august-2013.
20.See more in Nima Sanandaji, “The Dutch Rethink the Welfare State,” New Geography, November 2, 2013, http://www.newgeography.com/content/004028-the-dutch-rethink-welfare-state.
21.In the 2015 election the British conservatives, which during their previous term in government had limited welfare programs extensively, won reelection. To the surprise of the world, the conservatives increased their seats so that they were able to form a majority government, instead of the coalition government that they had previously formed together with the centrist Liberal Democrats.
22.Richard Milne, “Norway: Cruise Control,” Financial Times, February 6, 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/abe0f6f6-8f0c-11e3-9cb0-00144feab7de.html#axzz46pwtGZrg.
23.“Svensk arbetsmoral utklassar norrmännens,” Dagens Möjligheter, November 14, 2012.
24.Vegard Skjervheim, “En «trygdesnylters» bekjennelser” (“The Confessions of a ‘Welfare Freeloader’”), Dagbladet, 2012, http://www.dagbladet.no/2012/03/31/kultur/debatt/nav/trygdesnylter/20924592/.
25.Gordon B. Dahl, Andreas Ravndal Kostøl, and Magne Mogstad, “Family Welfare Cultures,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (2014): 1711–52.
26.Ibid.
27.Robert W. Fogel, “Catching Up with the Economy,” American Economic Review 89, no. 1 (March 1999): 13, http://www.die-gdi.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/messner/Fogel_Catching_up_with_the_economy.pdf.
28.Reagan, Radio Address to the Nation on Welfare Reform.
CHAPTER 9: WHERE DOES THE AMERICAN DREAM COME TRUE?
1.Blake Fleetwood, “If You Want the American Dream, Go to Finland,” HuffPost Politics: The Blog, December 14, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blake-fleetwood/finland-2_b_4373187.html.
2.Raymond Freeman, “Nordic Reality vs. American Dream,” VC Reporter, June 12, 2014, http://www.vcreporter.com/cms/story/detail/nordic_reality_vs_american_dream/12033/.
3.Ann Jones, “Op-Ed: The American Way over the Nordic Model? Are We Crazy?” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-0111-jones-expat-american-20150111-story.html.
4.“Real American Dream More Possible in Norway,” Nordic Page, September 24, 2013, http://www.tnp.no/norway/politics/3987-real-american-dream-more-possible-in-norway.
5.Nick Haekkerup and William Milberg, “The American Dream Comes to Life in Denmark,” Public Seminar, October 22, 2013, http://www.publicseminar.org/2013/10/the-american-dream-comes-to-life-in-denmark/.
6.Tove Lifvendahl, “Världens Mest Attraktiva Invandrarland Är Inte Sverige” (The World’s Most Attractive Immigration Country Is Sweden) Svenska Dagbladet, February 29, 2016, http://www.svd.se/varldens-mest-attraktiva-invandrarland-ar-inte-sverige, translated from Swedish.
7.James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, 2nd ed. (Greenwood Press, 1931), 404.
8.Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, new ed. (New York: Tarcher, 2004), 38.
9.See for example Anders Björklund et al., “Brother correlations in earnings in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden compared to the United States,” Journal of Population Economics 15, no. 4 (November 2002): 757–72; and Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg, and Stephen Machin, “Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America: A Report Supported by the Sutton Trust,” Centre for Economic Performance, April 2005, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf.
10.Markus Jäntti et al., “American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States,” IZA Discussion Paper no. 1938, January 2006, p. 2, http://ftp. iza.org/dp1938.pdf.
11.Tom Hertz, “A Group-Specific Measure of Intergenerational Persistence,” Economics Letters 100, no 3 (2008): 415–17.
12.Deborah Roseveare and Martin Jorgensen, “Migration and Integration of Immigrants in Denmark,” OECD Economics Department Working Papers, no. 386, 2004, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/284832633602; Emma Carmel, Alfio Cerami, and Theodoros Papadopoulos, Migration and Welfare in the New Europe: Social Protection and the Challenges of Integration (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2011); and Laird, “Unemployment among Mexican Immigrant Men in the United States, 2003-2012,” Social Science Research 49. (2014): 202–16.
13.Benny Carlsson, Karin Magnusson, and Sofia Rönnqvist, Somalier på arbetsmarknaden – har Sverige något att lära? (Swedish Government, 2012), http://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/55f58b2bc8fd4f66842e37f54c38fc51/somalier-pa-arbetsmarknaden---har-sverige-nagot-att-lara.
14.Silje Vatne Pettersen and Lars Østby, “Immigrants in Norway, Sweden and Denmark: Scandinavian Comparative Statistics on Integration,” Statistics Norway, 2014, https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_attachment/204333?_ts=1497ab86428.
15.Kristian Rose Tronstad, “Integration and Experienced Discrimination of NonWestern Immigrants in the Norwegian Labor Market,” paper presented at QMSS2 Seminar on “Measuring Integration and Discrimination,” Paris, July 5–6, 2010.
16.Svein Blom and Kristen Henriksen, Living Conditions among Immigrants in Norway 2005/2006, (Statistics Norway, 2009), http://www.ssb.no/a/english/publikasjoner/pdf/rapp_200902_en/rapp_200902_en.pdf.
17.Swedish Government, Egenförsörjning eller Bidragsförsörjning? – Invandrarna, Arbetsmarknaden och Välfärdsstaten (Own Supplies or Grants Livelihood? Immigrants, Labor Market and Welfare State) (Stockholm, SOU, 2004:21), http://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/2900e981c8e84a8cae98d6f35c4641dd/egenforsorjning-eller-bidragsforsorjning-invandrarna-arbetsmarknaden-och-valfardsstaten.
18.SCB and Arbetslivsinstitutet, “Integration till svensk välfärd? Om invandrarnas välfärd på 90-talet” (Integration towards Swedish Living Standards? Living Conditions of Immigrants to Sweden in the 1990s), Levnadsförhållanden no. 96 (2002), http://www.scb.se/statistik/LE/LE0101/2000I02/LE96S%C3%850201.pdf.
19.United States Census Bureau, “Census 2000 Foreign Born Profiles,” accessed April 25, 2016, https://www.census.gov/population/foreign/data/stp-159-2000.html.
20.Vahid Garousi, “Iranians in Canada: A Statistical Analysis” (PhD Thesis, Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, 2005), http://iranian.com/News/2005/June/IraniansCanada.pdf.
21.Statistics Canada. Calculations based on the 2006 survey.
22.Dan-Olof Rooth, “Refugee Immigrants in Sweden: Educational Investment and Labor Market Integration,” Lund Economic Studies no. 84. (1999), http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/39980.
23.Assaf Razin and Jackline Wahba, “Free vs. Controlled Migration: Bilateral Country Study,” NBER Working Paper no. 16831, February 2011, p. 2, http://www.nber.org/papers/w16831.pdf. See also Alon Cohen and Assaf Razin, “The Skill Composition of Immigrants and the Generosity of the Welfare State: Free vs. Policy-Controlled Migration,” NBER Working Paper no. 14459, October 2008,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14459.pdf.
24.This has been shown for international sports stars, among others. States and countries with low taxes are more appealing to these athletes, which explains why their teams tend to be more successful. See, for example, Peter Egger and Doina Maria Radulescu, “The Influence of Labour Taxes on the Migration of Skilled Workers,” World Economy 32, no. 9 (August 2009): 1365–79; Edda Claus and Iris Claus, “The Effects of Taxation on Migration: Some Evidence for the ASEAN and APEC Economies,” Asian Development Review 28, no. 1 (2010): 22–50; and Kopkin, “Tax Avoidance: How Income Tax Rates Affect the Labor Migration Decisions of NBA Free Agents,” Journal of Sports Economics 13, no. 6 (2012): 571–602.
25.World Value Survey 2010–2014.
26.Andreas Bergh, “Labour-Market Integration of Immigrants in OECD-Countries: What Explanations Fit the Data?” ECIPE Occasional Paper, no. 4/2013, available online at http://ecipe.org/publications/labour-market-integration-immigrants-oecd-countries-what-explanation-fit-data/.
27.Peter Nannestad, “Immigration as a Challenge to the Danish Welfare State?” European Journal of Political Economy 20 (2004): 755–67. http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/ec/seminar/data/immig.pdf.
28.OECD, OECD Economic Surveys Denmark (Paris: OECD, 2003). http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/economics/oecd-economic-surveys-denmark-2003_eco_surveys-dnk-2003-en#page1.
29.Tronstad, “Integration and Experienced Discrimination of NonWestern Immigrants in the Norwegian Labor Market.”
30.Bjørgulf Claussen, Lisbeth Smeby, and Dag Bruusgaard, “Disability Pension Rates among Immigrants in Norway,” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 14, no. 2 (2012): 259–63.
31.My calculations were based on subtracting the share reported to be in good health from 100 percent (data for 2009).
32.See, for example, Michal Molcho et al. “Health and Well-Being among Child Immigrants in Europe,” Eurohealth 16, no. 1 (2010): 20–23, http://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEHealthAndSocialCare/pdf/eurohealth/VOL16No1/Molcho.pdf; and Björn Albin et al., “County Differences in Mortality among Foreign-Born Compared to Native Swedes 1970–1999,” Nursing Research and Practice (2012).
33.Data on “indicators of integration of immigrants and their children” accessed February 20, 2016, from http://www.oecd.org/migration/integrationindicators, for the years 2009–2010, for fifteen-to sixty-four-year-olds.
34.See, for example, Pettersen and Østby, “Immigrants in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.”
35.Gordon B. Dahl, Andreas Ravndal Kostol, and Magne Mostad, “Family Welfare Cultures,” NBER Working Paper no. 19237, July 2013.
CHAPTER 10: SWEDEN’S SELF-INFLICTED IMMIGRATION CRISIS
1.Benjamin J. Tetelbaum, “Sweden’s Self-Inflicted Nightmare,” Opinion Pages, New York Times, November 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/opinion/swedens-self-inflicted-nightmare.html?mwrsm=Facebook.
2.Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola, “Even Europe’s Humanitarian Superpower Is Turning Its Back on Refugees,” Washington Post, December 30, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/even-sweden-is-turning-its-back-on-refugees/2015/12/30/6d7e8454-a405-11e5-8318-bd8caed8c588_story.html.
3.Kristoffer Orstadius, “Tio År Senare Har Varannan Mindre Än 13000 i månaden” (Ten years later, every second less than 13,000 a month), Dagens Nyheter, March 4, 2015, http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/tio-ar-senare-har-varannan-mindre-an-13-000-i-manaden-1/.
4.“Sweden: Something Souring in Utopia,” Time, July 19, 1976, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,914329-3,00.html.
5.The word “liberal” doesn’t have quite the same meaning in Swedish politics as in American.
6.Tino Sanandaji, Utanförskapets karta – en uppföljning av Folkpartiets rapportserie (New report: “Level of social exclusion map – a follow-up of the Liberal Party’s report series”) (Stockholm: New Welfare Foundation, 2014), http://www.dnv.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Utanf%C3%B6rskapets-karta-en-uppf%C3%B6ljning-.pdf.
7.Ibid. Mauricio Rojas, a Chilean-Swedish intellectual, who had developed the first version of the report for the Liberal Party, explained in the foreword that the Liberal Party had stopped mapping the development of socially marginalized city parts because they knew, or at least could guess, that the development had not stopped.
8.“Polisens Larm: ‘Vi Går På Knäna Nu’” (“Police Alarm: ‘We Go on Our Knees Now’”), SVT Nyheter, January 25, 2016, translated from Swedish, http://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/polisens-larm-vi-gar-pa-knana-nu.
9.“Extrem situation jämfört med grannländerna” (”Extreme situation in comparison with neighboring countries”), SVT Nyheter Väst, November 6 2015, http://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/extrem-situation-jamfort-med-grannlanderna.
10.Kellan Howell, “‘60 Minutes’ Australia Crew Attacked by Masked Men While Reporting on Refugee Crisis,” Washington Times, March 1, 2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/1/60-minutes-australia-crew-attacked-masked-men-whil/.
11.“Länsstyrelser varnar för krisläge om flyktingvågen fortsätter” (“The county Administrative Board Warns of Crisis If the Refugee Wave Continues” Dagens Nyheter, October 10, 2015, http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/lansstyrelser-varnar-for-krislage-om-flyktingvagen-fortsatter/.
12.Starta Bildspel, “Madrasserna slut i hela skåne” (”The Mattresses out in Skåne”), Aftonbladet, October 8, 2015, http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/paflykt/article21550808.ab.
13.Toppnyheter, “Flyktingpojke misstänks vara 45 år gammal – åtalas för våldtäkt på 12-åring” (“Refugee boy suspected to be 45 years old – to be prosecuted for rape of 12-year-old”), Växjö Nyheter, February 18, 2016, http://vaxjonyheter.se/flyktingpojke-misstanks-vara-45-ar-gammal-atalas-for-valdtakt-pa-12-aring/.
14.“Stöd till ensamkommande ökar kraftigt,” TV4 News, March 30, 2016. http://www.tv4.se/nyheterna/klipp/st%C3%B6d-till-ensamkommande-%C3%B6kar-kraftigt-3321592.
15.Olle Lönnaeus, “Löfven: Svårt att regera utan DÖ” (”Löfven: Hard to reign without DYING”), Sydsvenskan, April 29, 2015, http://www.sydsvenskan.se/skane/lofven-svart-att-regera-utan-do/.
16.Romson resigned in May 2016, following a scandal in which leading members of the Environmental Party were accused of having Islamist sympathies. During this scandal she referred to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the “September 11th accidents,” since they had caused anti-Muslim sentiments.
17.David Crouch, “Sweden Slams Shut Its Open-Door Policy towards Refugees,” Guardian, November 24, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/sweden-asylum-seekers-refugees-policy-reversal.
18.Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, “Invandringen och Sveriges Resultatfall i Pisa” (“Immigration and Sweden’s Earnings Drop in Pisa”), Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Policy Paper no. 71 (July 2015).
19.Ibid.
20.OECD (2015).
21.“Tillsyn i Ross Tensta Gymnasium,” Swedish School Inspection, 2016, translated from Swedish.
CHAPTER 11: WHERE ARE NORDIC SOCIETIES HEADING?
1.“Danish PM in US: Denmark is not socialist,” the Local, November 1, 2015, http://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-not-socialist.
2.OECD, Benefits and Wages: Statistics. Over a five-year period following unemployment, 2001–2013. Re-trieved February 26, 2016.
3.To repeat a fact stated previously in this book: the average person in Sweden is paying a total tax rate of 52 percent. But when Swedes are asked, on average they estimate the tax burden to be around 34 percent. Nima Sanandaji, “Underskattade Skatter – en Undersökning av vad Svenska Folket Tror om Skatternas Omfattning” (Understated Taxes – an Examination of What the Swedish People Think about Taxes Extent), Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, August 2015, http://www.svensktnaringsliv.se/material/rapporter/underskattade-skatter-en-undersokning-av-vad-svenska-folket-tror_624361.html. Keep in mind that the tax level on the average individual tends to be higher than the tax l
evel as a share of GDP. The simple reason is that all economic activity is not taxed as heavily as work is. For example, capital is typically taxed based on a lower rate, and with more deductions, than work.
4.Martin Pengelly, “Bernie Sanders Calls for ‘Political Revolution’ against Billionaire Class,” Guardian, May 3, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/03/bernie-sanders-political-revolution-billionaire-democratic-2016-race.
5.OECD Stat Extract. Top statutory personal income tax rate and top marginal tax rates for employees. Re-trieved February 26, 2016.
6.2016 Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation website, http://www.heritage.org/index/, retrieved February 26, 2016.
Index
Note: The letter T following a page number denotes a table. The letter g following a page number denotes a graph.
A
absolute poverty rates (Nordics and United States, compared), 66
Adams, James Truslow, 147
affirmative action, 119, 120, 121
Afghanistan, 177
Ahern, Kenneth, 119
Ahlfors, Lars Valerian, 61
Alestalo, Matti, 115–16
American Dream, 3, 146–48, 150, 152, 155, 159, 165–66 (see in general chapter 9)
American exceptionalism, 149
American Left, 2, 18, 21, 23–24, 29, 67, 136, 198n18
Americans
GDP per capita of, 63t
high school graduation rate (age 25+) among, 64t
number reporting Nordic/Scandinavian origins, 62
unemployment rate among, 65t
Aristotle, 50
Arnold, Daniel, 201n22
Associated Press, 31
Atkinson, Anthony Barnes, 39
Atlantic, 47
Australia, 25t, 29, 33, 34t, 37
Austria, 37, 40t
Axelsson, Sten, 91
B
Back to Work (B. Clinton), 19
Barton, Arnold, 59
Beddy, James, 84–85
Belgium, 37n, 40t, 46t
Debunking Utopia Page 18