Greenham
04-01-2006, 14:47
Employment Nightmare
The differences between the United States and Sweden may be best illustrated by the employment picture.
Even in the current "jobless recovery," 70% of US jobs are generated from small and medium-sized businesses. The American dream of owning your business and expanding remains alive and well.
The US economy is dependent on small businesses to create private-sector jobs that contribute money to government through taxes rather than take money from government as public-sector jobs do.
Like I stated in my earlier post in Sweden, 75% of small businesses have no employees. Moreover, Swedish employers are faced with several key long-term liabilities, which explains anemic job-creation figures.
These problems include an employment system that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to terminate employees or lay them off. An employer must obtain government permission in almost all cases to fire or lay off a worker because of the power of the Swedish Union Association to protect all workers.
It can take months or years for granted layoffs to take effect. In the interim, the worker remains on the payroll, even if he is in jail, and is due termination pay of a year or more if eventually laid off.
Ironically, exceptions are made for big companies, such as phone-maker Ericsson, but small companies are stuck with the full package of employer restraints.
The nation's wealthiest individuals are sometimes given personal-tax breaks by the Swedish Parliament.
Alcoholic Disability
The state not only encourages disability for alcoholics but makes it easier than working for a living. In fact, there is almost no financial advantage to working a low-wage job in Sweden compared with collecting welfare or disability benefits. The state pays people to stay home and remain drunk. Treatment is optional. Doctor visits are often symbolic.
People can and do remain on "disability" for their illness indefinitely. The program is intended to provide the registered alcoholic with enough money to pay for basic needs and enough spending money to cover the drinking habit.
The official number of alcoholics is clouded by the fact that people can be "retired early" for alcoholism and not be registered as an alcoholic but as an early retiree.
This works well for people older than 50; younger people are listed and given "disability" status. Laws that make it difficult to fire employees allow firms to place workers on "disability" if their performance is below expectations.
In effect, this means the nation's economic statistics are rigged, because the jobless rate does not count such people.
There are 470,000 people collecting permanent pre-retirement pensions, of which 28% qualify because they are alcoholics or are too "stressed out" to work. This is in a nation of 9 million people, half of whom are in the work force.
Drugs are still technically illegal in Sweden, though one can obtain a disability for drug addiction. However, doing so requires one to undergo a lax rehabilitation with little financial incentive to return to the work force.
Hard liquor must be purchased from a state-run monopoly, whose chief executive officer is Anita Steen, the wife of Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson.
Because the tax on hard liquor is 87% of the retail cost, registered alcoholics who use their welfare funds to purchase booze are in effect largely reimbursing the government with their purchases.
Because of the competition from neighboring Denmark and Finland with lower liquor prices, pressure may soon be applied to make it more difficult to receive an alcohol pension.
Yet, because requiring more medical treatment will also cost enormous amounts of money, many argue it is simply cheaper to keep someone continually on alcohol rather than pay for an expensive treatment session numerous times.
These days, it remains possible for someone younger than 30 to become a registered alcoholic for many years, if not his or her entire life. That person can conveniently be seen as "disabled" and no longer of concern for employers, labor economists or unions.
Although the country has an official unemployment rate of 6%, 12% of the work force is on disability. Another 4% is paid by the government for jobs that require no work.
In effect, this creates a society in which 22% of the potential work force is not productive.
Answers?
An alternative solution is immigration, but this would deluge the country with a flurry of people unfamiliar with the culture, language and climate of Sweden. In a country that had nearly no immigrants 40 years ago, about 1 in 8 is an immigrant.
Sweden's fertility rate --- the number of births per woman --- is 1.5 and has been below the replacement level of 2.1 for 30 years.
The Swedish government has attempted numerous policies to encourage fertility. Since 1949, Stockholm has directly subsidized women with children by providing direct monthly child support.
Child support paid by the state directly to women has shown a small, long-term increase in fertility, but not enough.
The differences between the United States and Sweden may be best illustrated by the employment picture.
Even in the current "jobless recovery," 70% of US jobs are generated from small and medium-sized businesses. The American dream of owning your business and expanding remains alive and well.
The US economy is dependent on small businesses to create private-sector jobs that contribute money to government through taxes rather than take money from government as public-sector jobs do.
Like I stated in my earlier post in Sweden, 75% of small businesses have no employees. Moreover, Swedish employers are faced with several key long-term liabilities, which explains anemic job-creation figures.
These problems include an employment system that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to terminate employees or lay them off. An employer must obtain government permission in almost all cases to fire or lay off a worker because of the power of the Swedish Union Association to protect all workers.
It can take months or years for granted layoffs to take effect. In the interim, the worker remains on the payroll, even if he is in jail, and is due termination pay of a year or more if eventually laid off.
Ironically, exceptions are made for big companies, such as phone-maker Ericsson, but small companies are stuck with the full package of employer restraints.
The nation's wealthiest individuals are sometimes given personal-tax breaks by the Swedish Parliament.
Alcoholic Disability
The state not only encourages disability for alcoholics but makes it easier than working for a living. In fact, there is almost no financial advantage to working a low-wage job in Sweden compared with collecting welfare or disability benefits. The state pays people to stay home and remain drunk. Treatment is optional. Doctor visits are often symbolic.
People can and do remain on "disability" for their illness indefinitely. The program is intended to provide the registered alcoholic with enough money to pay for basic needs and enough spending money to cover the drinking habit.
The official number of alcoholics is clouded by the fact that people can be "retired early" for alcoholism and not be registered as an alcoholic but as an early retiree.
This works well for people older than 50; younger people are listed and given "disability" status. Laws that make it difficult to fire employees allow firms to place workers on "disability" if their performance is below expectations.
In effect, this means the nation's economic statistics are rigged, because the jobless rate does not count such people.
There are 470,000 people collecting permanent pre-retirement pensions, of which 28% qualify because they are alcoholics or are too "stressed out" to work. This is in a nation of 9 million people, half of whom are in the work force.
Drugs are still technically illegal in Sweden, though one can obtain a disability for drug addiction. However, doing so requires one to undergo a lax rehabilitation with little financial incentive to return to the work force.
Hard liquor must be purchased from a state-run monopoly, whose chief executive officer is Anita Steen, the wife of Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson.
Because the tax on hard liquor is 87% of the retail cost, registered alcoholics who use their welfare funds to purchase booze are in effect largely reimbursing the government with their purchases.
Because of the competition from neighboring Denmark and Finland with lower liquor prices, pressure may soon be applied to make it more difficult to receive an alcohol pension.
Yet, because requiring more medical treatment will also cost enormous amounts of money, many argue it is simply cheaper to keep someone continually on alcohol rather than pay for an expensive treatment session numerous times.
These days, it remains possible for someone younger than 30 to become a registered alcoholic for many years, if not his or her entire life. That person can conveniently be seen as "disabled" and no longer of concern for employers, labor economists or unions.
Although the country has an official unemployment rate of 6%, 12% of the work force is on disability. Another 4% is paid by the government for jobs that require no work.
In effect, this creates a society in which 22% of the potential work force is not productive.
Answers?
An alternative solution is immigration, but this would deluge the country with a flurry of people unfamiliar with the culture, language and climate of Sweden. In a country that had nearly no immigrants 40 years ago, about 1 in 8 is an immigrant.
Sweden's fertility rate --- the number of births per woman --- is 1.5 and has been below the replacement level of 2.1 for 30 years.
The Swedish government has attempted numerous policies to encourage fertility. Since 1949, Stockholm has directly subsidized women with children by providing direct monthly child support.
Child support paid by the state directly to women has shown a small, long-term increase in fertility, but not enough.