(no subject)

I've been meaning to get my hands on Daniel Brook's book The Trap, but in the meantime I just read his 2004 article on "How Sweden Tweaked the Washington Consensus". I was struck by this passage:

In the United States, it is often labor unions that call for tariffs and subsidies to protect unionized industries. Not so in Sweden. "We don't want to sell T-shirts made in Sweden because people can't live on those wages. It's good that those industries have moved away," explained Social Democratic Parliament member Mikael Damberg, sounding very unlike an American congressmember of either party.

Brook makes the connection between this far-sighted view and "equitable distribution of corporate profits"--basically, if the T-shirt factory shuts down, workers can trust that the system will support them until they find work doing something else.

( More about economics.... )

Just barely related: I found out yesterday that the company that made my Nord Electro 2 keyboard--which I really, really like--is only about 20 people, and they make all their gear at their own factory in Sweden. I guess I'm used to thinking of electronic equipment makers as giant conglomerates like Sony, because that took me by surprise.