Viking Economics (28 page)

The Gallup poll taken in the same year found that a majority of Democrats said they felt positive about socialism, and a third of the entire population was favorable.
²⁴³

The Pew Center resurveyed this question in 2011 and found that “among voters under the age of thirty, forty-nine percent had a positive view of socialism. (Only forty-six percent had a positive view of capitalism.)”
²⁴⁴

In a May 2015 poll, Yougov found Democrats evenly divided in their favorable views of socialism and capitalism: 43–43. Five
months later, the same source found 49 percent of Democrats viewed socialism favorably, while capitalism fell to 37 percent.
²⁴⁵

Mass media pundits routinely called Senator Bernie Sanders’s candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination the entry of a socialist in the race, with no noticeable shudders in the mainstream.

Now the door has opened in the United States for consideration of alternatives.

In the 1920s and ’30s, we Americans were similar to the Nordic peoples in that we honored the process of envisioning a new society. The Nordics continued to cherish their visionaries, although I did interview some who believe that the visionary muscle has lately been losing its strength. Americans, however, let go of that thread decades ago, and by the 1990s, a U.S. president got away with referring dismissively to “the vision thing.”

In the Bible, we find the observation that “without a vision, the people perish.”

The next step for readers of this book might be to support the progressive social movements emerging around us and to embrace the value of design, to project the contours of what a political economy could look like that would support their cause.

Change requires hard work: social movements need many skills, many talents. Movements need organizers, communicators, advocates, funders, nurturers, researchers, trainers, musicians and artists, nonviolent warriors, and “foot soldiers,” as well as visionary
designers. All those were present in the Nordic movements that challenged a thousand years of poverty and oppression, took the offensive, and built democracy.

I’m an American. I know that at our best moments we have changed our society significantly for the better. I believe that, given the new circumstances and forces at work, plus applying the new knowledge about making change, we can go much farther than we have before. We can take up the struggle on a larger scale, this time decisively changing our country’s direction toward freedom and equality.

I have been greatly helped by interviews with:

Eirikur Bergmann, Director of the Centre for European Studies at Bifrost University in Iceland.

Kristin Clemet, businesswoman, board chair of investment firm Norfund, formerly Conservative Party minister of education.

Jon Ivar Elstad, sociologist, Senior Researcher at Norwegian Social Research.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, anthropology professor at University of Oslo.

Thorvaldur Gylfason, economics professor at University of Iceland.

Håken Haugli, Norwegian LGBT leader and deputy representative from city of Oslo to Parliament.

Knut Heidar, political science professor at University of Oslo.

Arne Jon Isachsen, economics professor at BI Norwegian Business School.

Jørgen Jørgensen, peace studies author and lecturer in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

Knut Kjeldstadli, history professor at University of Oslo, author of eight books on Norwegian history and specialist in the Labor Party.

Theo Koritzinsky, professor of education and international studies, Oslo Teachers College.

Mari Linløkken, former director of Norway’s Anti-Racism Center.

Kirsten Larsen Mhoja, social anthropologist, longtime resident in Christiana, Denmark.

Lars Mjøset, professor of sociology and human geography at University of Oslo.

Hanna Ragnarsdottir, education professor, University of Iceland.

Dag Seierstad, a college lecturer and a leader in the Socialist Left Party.

Timothy Szlachetko, political scientist, Directorate of Minorities and Inclusion in the Norwegian government.

Hørdur Torfason, actor, leader of the Icelandic “Pots and Pans revolution.”

Asbjørn Wahl, elected officer of the International Transport Workers’ Federation and advisor to the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees.

Kristian Weise, director, Cevea, an independent center-left think tank, Denmark.

Bo Wirmark, author, active in the Swedish Peace Council and World Council of Churches.

The book couldn’t have happened without a strong support team: Berit M. Lakey and Liv Ingrid Lakey. Swarthmore College, particularly Director Joy Charlton and other colleagues at the Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, research assistants M. Schlotterbeck and Elowyn Corby, and Professor Lee Smithey; Nathan Schneider and my agent, Krista Ingebretson; and friends, Johnny Lapham, Viki Laura List, Antje Mattheus, and Daniel Hunter.

Chapter 1: Vikings as Iconic Adventurers, Then and Now

1.
Global Age Watch Index rates Norway as the best place to grow old, after studying quality of later life in ninety-six countries. Sweden is close behind at number two. www.bbc.com/news/world-29426 (accessed October 16, 2014). Published on the UN International Day of Older Persons. Measures four areas: income security, healthy, personal capability, and whether the person lives in an “enabling environment” (quote from BBC story). See also, “How Sweden cares for its elderly population,” August 5, 2014,
BBC Health News
,
www.bbc.com/news/health-28654739
(accessed October 16, 2014).

2.
worldhappiness.report
(accessed August 25, 2015). The index, compiled by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is based on measures like healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, and social support. The rank of the United States is 15, and the UK, 21. The rankings in 2015 are very similar to those published in 2013.

3.
The OECD’s Better Life Index rated the United Kingdom eighteenth and the United States fourteenth.
www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction/
.
Switzerland, whose methodology is explained on its website, came in first for this index.

Chapter 2: Making Their Way in a Globalized World

4.
The U.S. census data in 2015 reports a home-ownership rate in the United States of 63 percent, erasing nearly all the increase from the previous two decades. The drop happened in the eight years since the Great Recession began. Alan J. Heavens, “Fewer Own Homes; It’s a Most Telling Sign.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, July 19, 2015, p. J8. According to
Bloomberg News
, home-ownership has fallen to the lowest reading since 1967.
Philadelphia Inquirer
, July 29, 2015, p. A12.

5.
The 2014 summary of Norway’s asylum resettlement program can be found in the online report from the International Organization for Migration, which states that refugees will come chiefly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Congo. www.iom.int/cms/en/sites/iom/home/where-we-work/europa/european-economic-area/norway.html (accessed August 8, 2014).

6.
The 2015 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), created by the Center for Global Development.
www.cgdev.org/cdi-2015/country/NOR
(accessed January 6, 2015).

7.
The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks twenty-seven of the world’s richest countries based on their dedication to policies that benefit poor nations: aid, trade, finance, migration, environment, security, and technology. The United Kingdom rated sixth, and the United States, twenty-first. The index is created by the Center for Global Development.
www.cgdev.org/cdi-2015
(accessed January 6, 2015).

8.
Asbjørn Wahl,
The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State
(London: Pluto Press, 2011), chapters 6 and 7.

Chapter 3: Vikings Get Lost, Bankers Go Wild

9.
Richard Orange, “Tough on Finance, Tough on Migrants: How Stefan Løfven Brought Sweden’s Left In from the Cold.”
The Observer
, July 13, 2013.

10.
Claire Ellicott and David Wilkes, “Thatcher’s Plan to Use Army in Miners’ Strike: Previously Secret Files Reveal How Former PM Planned to Mobilize Troops.”
Mail Online
, January 2, 2014.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2532995/Thatchers-plan-use-army-miners-strike-previously-secret-files-reveal-former-PM-planned-mobilise-troops.html
.

11.
www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Denmark.aspx
.

12.
“Workers Protest as Danish Government Tries to Settle Labor Conflict.”
Associated Press
, March 29, 1985.

13.
www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/Workers-Protest-as-Danish-Government-Tries-to-Settle-Labor-Conflict/id-037882bce-5569de93d252d1b35848fbf (accessed July 29, 2014). Another source, although not directly referring to the 1985–86 Danish struggle, acknowledges that the minority center-right government was not able to implement a number of the changes that it wanted to make. See Johannes Kananen,
The Nordic Welfare State in Three Eras: From Emancipation to Discipline
(Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014), p. 119.

14.
As late as 2015, the claims for a U.S. recovery were padded by misleading statistics. In February 2015, for example, the U.S. Labor Department claimed an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent. That claim did not take into account the 6.6 million people working part-time who wanted full-time work, nor the part-timers who
needed more hours (short of full time) to be able to pay their bills. The statistic also leaves out people who have become so discouraged that they have given up seeking work. An authentic report would also acknowledge how many jobs replacing the jobs lost in the Great Recession are now low-waged. Jane M. Von Bergen, “Unemployment Rate Falls to Seven-Year Low” (
Philadelphia Inquirer
, March 7, 2015). Iceland’s economy crashed in the same year that the United States faced its financial crisis, but Iceland experienced one of the worst collapses in history. Rejecting the neoliberal austerity approach taken by much of Europe and by the United States, Iceland rebounded quickly. By early 2015, its unemployment rate, measured in the same way as that of the United States, declined to 4.6 percent. The next chapter tells the Icelandic story.
www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/unemployment-rate
(accessed August 24, 2015).

Chapter 4: Iceland Creates the Biggest Crash, then Rebounds

15.
Thorvaldur Torfason wrote an amusing article comparing Icelandic bankers to the American Savings and Loan scandal and the Mel Brooks play
The Producers
.
economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/08/mel-brooks-and-the-bankers.html
.

16.
H. H. Gissurarson, “Miracle on Iceland,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 29, 2004. Cited by Stuckler, David and Basu, Sanjay,
The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills
(New York: Basic Books, 2013), p. 172.

17.
In an article in the Reykjavik newspaper
Morgunbladid
, November 17, 2007, cited by Stuckler, David and Basu, Sanjay,
The Body Economic
, p. 60.

18.
Bergmann, Eirkur,
Iceland and the International Financial Crisis: Boom, Bust and Recovery
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 52.

19.
Bergmann,
Iceland and the International Financial Crisis
.

20.
Inside Job
, 2010, directed by Charles Ferguson, written by Charles Ferguson and Chad Beck.

21.
Bergmann,
Iceland and the International Financial Crisis
, p. 8.

22.
Iceland previously had broken ground when it came to gender, thanks to a mass women’s movement in the 1970s. In 1980, Iceland’s Vigdis Finnbogadøttir was the first woman democratically elected president in the world, and she remained in office for sixteen years. At one point, three of Iceland’s top four office-holders were women: Supreme Court Chief Justice, President of the Althing, and President of the country. At that time, the prime minister (the most powerful of the four) was a man, so the 2009 election of a woman to prime minister was still a breakthrough.

23.
Stuckler, David and Basu, Sanjay,
The Body Economic
, pp. 64–65.

24.
Stuckler, op. cit., p. 63.

25.
Bergmann, op. cit., describes a number of specific policies that protected people, including handling the mortgage problem, to prevent poverty, pp. 159–62. An additional policy was to avoid laying off people by reducing hours for individuals while retaining them.
transform-network.net/blog/archive-2013/news/detail/Blog/the-other-way-of-iceland-analysing-a-case-of-no-bail-out.html
(accessed April 15, 2014).

26.
www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/unemployment-rate
(accessed August 24, 2015).

27.
Omar R. Valdimarsson, “Let Banks Fail Is Iceland Mantra as 2 percent Joblessness in Sight,”
Bloomberg News
, January 27,
2014.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/let-banks-fail-becomes-iceland-mantra-as-2-joblessness-in-sight.html
(accessed July 21, 2014).

28.
This is described by Eirikur Bergmann in the last chapter of his book. Thorvaldur Gylfason was elected one of the writers of the new draft constitution, and describes his experiences on the online magazine
Opendemocracy.net
.

Chapter 5: How Norwegians Empowered Themselves to Adopt the Nordic Model

29.
I chose to write the story of the Norwegians’ (and, to a smaller extent, the Swedes’) struggle without footnotes, since scholarly accounts exist elsewhere. In gratitude, however, I want to acknowledge the following sources: Gøsta Esping-Andersen,
The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Penny Gill Martin, “Strategic Opportunities and Limitations: The Norwegian Labor Party and the Trade Unions,”
Industrial and Labor Relations Review
, Vol. 28, No. 1, October 1974; Jan Fagerbert, Ådne Cappelen, Lars Mjøset, and Rune Skarstein, “The Decline of Social-Democratic State Capitalism in Norway,”
New Left Review
181, May/June 1990; Asbjørn Wahl, “Labour and Development: What Can Be Learned from the Nordic Model?”
Labour, Capital and Society
40: 1 and 2, 2007; Sten Sparre Nilson, “Labor Insurgency in Norway: The Crisis of 1917–1920,”
Social Science History
, Vol. 5, No. 4, Autumn 1981; Lars Mjøset, Ådne Cappelen, Jan Fagerberg, Bent Sofus Tranøy, “Norway: Changing the Model,” Perry Anderson and Patrick Camiller (eds.),
Mapping the West European Left
(London: Verso, 1994). University of Oslo history professor Knut Kjeldstadli, the author of eight books on Norwegian history, kindly gave me two long interviews. My
interpretations and the resulting narrative remain, of course, my own.