(no subject)

[jfb]

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.

I'd like to see a connection made with Sweden's investment in education. I don't have any empirical basis for this, but it seems to me that in America, labor resists the elimination of low-status jobs because we as a society train people not to be able to learn new things. In order to accept the fall of the national T-shirt industry, you need not only help to stay on your feet until you find a new job, but confidence that you can succeed in a different kind of job.

It strikes me that what I've written above is probably patronizing and ignorant. I guess what I mean is, I'd like to read more analysis by someone who understands the subject. I know something about education, but what do I know about working for a living? Not much.

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.

Comments

Arkansas

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

Only barely related... there's a woman in my accounting class who went to Arkansas to teach high school math for a few years. She said the kids came in at 9th grade brilliant and energetic and eager to "get out of there and make it" and by 12th grade had already lost hope, stopped going to class, showing up pregnant, etc.

It made me think about when people stop believing they can do new things, and the skills to be able to do them pass them by...

Also, she pointed out (rightly) that in parts of Boston people live worse than the poor in Johannesburg etc; and she saw poverty in Arkansas that people in the US don't know exists here. So much for our first world country.

Re: Arkansas

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's terrible, what high school did to those kids. And yet somehow not surprising.

The hollowness of our first world country, incidentally, is why I support Edwards for president most of the time. He's the only candidate I've heard talking consistently and convincingly about poverty in America and worldwide.