So the news came today. SAAB is filing for bankruptcy. Personally I am a bit sad but not surprised. I never really saw how a company that only have two models in their range can compete these days especially when you consider that the competition they have chosen are the likes of VW, BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volvo.

Over the years SAAB has fallen way behind their competitors who have a diverse range of cars going from entry level cars like the VW Lupo, executive saloons like the BMW 5 series to exclusive performance cars such as the McLaren Mercedes. Having only two models that are replaced once a decade at best just won't cut it. Not even manufacturers like Ferrari, Porsche or Aston Martin have only two models in their range.

At the same time I am very sad that SAAB is going out of business. I am a bit of a petrol head and even if I prefer my cars with some italian flavor (especially Alfa Romeo and Lancia) I always appreciated the ingenuity the people at SAAB had. A SAAB could feel like no other car with its futuristic and aerodynamic design, sporty handling and clever solutions. It was one of those cars that felt unique and its easy to understand why SAAB have such a cult following. Even I, living in Göteborg prefer SAAB to Volvo which is a preference that can be seen as a form of treason by some people in the city.

I feel very bad for the truly talented people who worked at SAAB and I don't blame them for what has happened. Instead I wonder what I have wondered ever since I became interested in cars. Why was SAAB never been owned by someone who could turn all of these great ideas into cars? SAAB has always struggled for profit regardless of its owner and I have always felt that the only ones that cared where the people who actually designed and built the cars. Its such a terrible waste.

I find myself thinking about something Top Gears presenter Jeremy Clarkson (a man I find entertaining even if I don't agree with him on everything) said regarding the state of the british car industry "Its not that we don't make cars anymore, we don't make anything". Yet Germany still have a thriving car industry, as does Italy of all countries.

I feel a bit sad but not surprised yet concerned about the future.

My condolances. The collapse of car industry is the first step towards post-industrialization and the economic death spiral that will come with an extensive welfare state without any manufacturing. Why didnt the swedes help Saab, is the first question I would ask. The same with Volvo, why did you allow it to become a china-brand, when the technology and knowhow that was embedded in the company so obviously is about to he stripped off and sent to a brutal asian dictatorship, instead of securing your childrens economic future? Sweden has such soaring high unemployment rates among its young that you cant spit in Oslo, where I live, without hitting a serving girl, or male waiter from Sweden. You recently had an election in Sweden, and you ask yourself what excactly the government is doing about the current predicament and struggling swedish manufacturing business?

I can kinda understand that the government didn't back SAAB to a point. SAAB has been in bad shape for years (decades even) and had an outdated business model. As I mentioned earlier I don't think the kind of car company that SAAB was can survive with only two models. To fix that you need an owner with pockets deep enough to take the losses of both poor sales and the investments required to update the current models whilst developing new models in new segments. That would cost billions of kronor and I can't see how the government could justify such a cost. I know that France have backed their car industry in many ways but the french car companies didn't have the same outdated model program that SAAB had and as such required less long term help.



We didn't, Ford did. Sweden is not a communist country where everything is owned by the government. Volvo was owned by private citizens who sold the company to Ford who in their turn sold it to China.

Personally I don't care that much about the nationality of the owners as long as they are responsible owners, nor do I wish to keep keep every form of production or industry in Sweden just to protect jobs (again, its communism). I do however wish to preserve and invest in areas where education and skills are required and the car industry in many ways seem to make that fit.

As far as Volvo and China goes I have no problems with Volvo being owned by the chinese as such. Neither do I think that the chinese owners of Volvo wish to strip down the company and move it to China. The chinese owners seem to understand that in order for Volvo to be viable they must keep the centre of it in Sweden and use its resources as a base to expand in China (at least for now). But I really, really wish that Volvo where owned by the truly democratic republic of China instead of the current communist/capitalist regime (even if they are only minority owners).



If I had an answer to that I wouldn't be sitting here. Jobs are created by ideas that lead to companies who generate jobs and hire people, money is earned that are then taxed and spent on public services that generate more jobs (so easy yet so complicated). Sweden could use more ideas (I guess?) even if we are darned good at it since studies show that we have a very strong and competitive economy, so I don't really know.

I am going to sound really smug now and its not intended as such but I have to say that it won't take much before the roles are reversed and there are norwegians working as waiters in Sweden. I am only saying that since I hope Norway invests that oil money wisely because once the oil runs out or is replaced Norway won't have much to fall back on (you don't have that many natural resources). Again, no offense but a tip from your closest (and perhaps most caring) neighbor.



Don't ask me. I voted for Miljöpartiet and they are in the opposition (the only party in proper opposition at the moment).

Well at least SAAB AB is still flying...

It is a common misconception that the Norwegian economy and wealth is dependendt on oil and gas. Even our hasjishenjoying prime minister stated so in his new years speech (or sketch as I like to call it) last year, though he was heavily schooled by historians after the gaffe. Norway has far better access than sweden with twice its inhabitants to resources; fish, agriculture, aluminium, water-electroproduction, the future nuclear energy of thorium (which many theorise will replace the oil as our major energy export, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, titanium, pyrites, nickel, and timber. There is also gold on the FInnmark plateu, though i doubt it would ever be mined. Quarrying of gravel and marble accounts for 8% of my home county's economy as well. On long term, our mineral resources alone will give export-related income comparable to those of oil http://www.mef.no/ikbViewer/page/mef/start...cument_id=74351.

The oil has actually dropped in production by almost 40% since 2000, we dont need that income anymore to maintain our level of living actually, and most of it is invested in a stock fund that will most likely dissappear in the next financial crisis anyway.

The difference here is taht Norway would not stand by and watch idly while our wealth was stripped by foreign interests who care about nothing apart from their own profit. If you think state ownership is bad, why is the Steel in Kiruna, long a source of swedish wealth, mined by a 100% state owned company, LKAB? Norway made good on its oil adventure because of high levels of state ownership in Statoil. We subsidized SAS in scandinavia for many years, did we not benefit from that? Why not subsidize your biggest industries during the hardest times? The lack of state subsidiez to help with liquidity was the main reason for the death of british ship building in the United Kingdom under Thatcher, guess who profited? We Norwegians who took over the marked with our ship building industry (Now we are being out competed by spanish warfts who receive illegal subsidies from their state, while the EU hold a stranglehold on our companies)

What is a much bigger problem for the future of the Norwegian job marked, however is the foreign labourers that get the right to stay and live in norway after working here for a measly 3 years, our crafstmen has no chance to compete with the best of the polish labour stock (a country with 38 million inhabitants) and that is just one country in europe. How could a 40 year old construction worker, who plans to keep his health throughout his life, compete in the same job marked as a million 25-year olds from Poland, who has no other plans but to make 5 times his polish salary by ruining his back breaking every safety rule in order to get the dosh he needs for his villa in Gdansk. No, we need to get out of Schengen, and stop the flood of migrant workers which does nothing to benefit the norwegian employees and job-seekers. Not the swedes though, they are welcome to come here during time of labour shortages.

Give it a few years, and our idiot right-wing government is bound to sell out LKAB and the other remaining state-owned companies as well. They're like religious zealots in this aspect - everything, everything and everything needs to be privatized. Privatization is a holy mantra to them, which goes hand in hand with our führer's desire to destroy the welfare state. And unfortunately these zealous neo-liberals managed to convince (and even infiltrate) the social democrats of the same thing, which has resulted in 20 years continuous dismantling of Swedish wealth.

I would cheer them on, if only our norwegian politicians would be smart enough to use our oil money to buy up what the swedish government is selling out

State ownership of natural resources is always a benefit Same goes for partial ownership of large industrial complexes such as heavy industry. It always makes a profit, even with numbers in the low red, considering that you tax the product that is sold as well, the salary of those working and so forth.

All I did was write a short eulogy...

A few short points, but first the longer one.

I don't think all state ownership is bad but I do think that the state owning car companies can be bad. My favorite car company Alfa Romeo was taken over by the state during WW2 and was kept under state ownership once the war was over. During the 50s and 60s things went well. The company grew and it was seen as the golden age of Alfa where the company filled the same role as BMW does today by building trendy, sporty and technically advanced cars.

During the 70s the problems between the rich northern Italy and the much poorer south became acute and the government decided to use Alfa as a way to create jobs in the south. They opened a factory in the south and began production on the Alfasud models of cars. The cars sold well but the numbers of people given employment meant that the factory produced more cars than they could sell and ended up loosing money. To cut expenses the italian government (both directly and indirectly) began buying cheaper steel that corroded much faster and cut back on quality control.

The result was a company that used to be seen as something reliable ended up with a very bad reputation, a reputation that remains to present date despite that Alfas are well made these days. By 1985 the government had driven Alfa to the brink of bankruptcy and what remained was bought by FIAT. My point is that government ownership isn't always good (or bad) but the nature of the car industry makes state ownership a bad idea. And don't claim that it went that way just because they are italians, they are humans before they are italians and have the same flaws and weaknesses as the rest of us.

I guess I could write something about polish workers and how it won't matter in the long run since Poland has one hell of a growth spur at the moment and their labour costs will match Scandinavia's over time (as could the rest of Europe) but I am almost afraid to go into it in detail. Instead I will say, with the friendliest tone possible, that everything Ravage wrote sounds like something we said in Sweden 20 years ago. So again, invest that oil money wisely.

One more thing though...

Dude, we been over this. I agree with you on everything you said (more and more each day in fact) but don't compare Mr Thatcher to Hitler (or Dönitz).

Dont get defensive, we are just discussing your interesting topic. You might be right about Norway being in Swedens position in 20 year, especially with our amount of foreign workforce flooding a market with decreasing need for labour as well as a high amount of refugees with little capacity to contribute economically but a high need for welfare services. Sweden with its one and a half million foreign born nationals and the gruelling example of Malmö is a display window that high cost welfare countries with dwindling demographic increase should be selective of which immigrants it allows.

Concerning your example of Alfa, you might be right. But on the other hand, I think you should not compare Swedes to south italians. The swedes are reliable, technical, hard-working, precise, accurate and highly educated with a tradition for industry. South Italians at the turn of the 1970's were an agricultural society with enourmous corruption problems. It is my opinion that Saab could have made a profit. If not I think norway should have bought it, and stripped it of technology and patents, like the chinese did with volvo, before selling the factory parts to Skoda or some other second hand producers (not that skoda is bad,I think their great succes with the current golf template is great).

And will continues to as well, since it is the last generation affordable fighter planes. It is a big shame Norway did not opt to get these wonderfully priced well performing fighter planes when we phase out our F-16's in the coming decade. A big shame.

Has it been decided which replacement the norwegians F-16 will get ? Eurofighter Typhoon or F/A-18E Super Hornet ?
Danish politicians should have decided our F-16 MLU replacements back in 2007 but has continued to postpone it. EuroFighter Typhoon is sadly out of the question since the Manufacturers wouldn't accept not getting yes or no ?.
Originally the competition was EuroFighter Typhoon, F-35 Lightning II, JAS-39 Gripen DK-edition. Now the Typhoon has been replaced with the choice of F/A-18E Super Hornet... as if Denmark has any carriers and need of tailhooks, folding wings and increased maintenance costs.

We're skipping the F-18 you mention and jump straight to the F-35 Joint Strike FIghter. As if Norway has need for a fighterbomber, when what we truly need is a decent interceptor to defend our coastlines. The price tag is staggering, the amount of orders for the production from norwegian companies dubious, and the delivery date out in the blue. What the heck are the clowns in the parliament thinking.

Yeah, what they should buy is a tried and tested fighter plane, not some next-generation money pit that is still largely untested and definitely not battle-ready. Is the small print so water-tight the nations can't back out of their contracts and choose a plane that has proven itself time and again, like the aforementioned Super Hornet?

General Motors took SAAB and f**ked it up plain and simple. Sure, SAAB wouldn't probably have survived through 2000, if GM hadn't came along but GM just couldn't adopt the Scandinavian way of thinking and vice versa. GM tried to make SAAB a premium brand but you can't do it with outdated technology and components that just aren't premium. SAAB fought a good fight but as they were still dependent of GM and GM had the final say to outside funding, there was really no choice than to file bankruptcy.

Still, I hope that SAAB will return eventually. Just can't think it any other way.

And by the way, it's 1947 - 2011.

[/quote]
Yeah, what they should buy is a tried and tested fighter plane, not some next-generation money pit that is still largely untested and definitely not battle-ready. Is the small print so water-tight the nations can't back out of their contracts and choose a plane that has proven itself time and again, like the aforementioned Super Hornet?
[/quote]

They cant back out now, although when the project started the name of the plane was future affordable ligthweight fighter or something to that effect. note that the f-35 had "affordable" in its name. Now it seems to spiral out of control. SAAB fighters would have landed us more contracts in Norway as well.

Depends on from when you count.
If the Swedish Wikipedia article is to be believed, 1947 was the year when the first prototype was developed, but the serial production of the cars didn't start until 1949.

Ya the F-35 is a money pit. And the B model is now even on a 2 year probation with the possibility of cancellation. The costs of the F-35 now are astronomically. It's double the price of 1x F-16.
Denmark I wouldn't be surprised decided to get the F-35 instead of opting for JAS 39C Gripen DK-edition for the fraction of the costs. The RCS signature of the F-35 is still so compromised now (went from very low observable to low observable), that stealth is really of secondary importance IMO... the plane is still plagued by 13 bugs !

SAAB has always celebrated its decennial anniversaries based on 1947. Trust me, I know. ;)

A few points.



Thats a very simple and deceptive way to view a society. Despite Italy's current problems the country is still the eighth largest economy in the world. You don't become the eight largest economy in the world on corruption alone. I takes a fair bit of reliable, technical, hard- working, precise, accurate and highly educated people with a tradition for industry to achieve that (regardless of north and south).




That is just a bizarre claim to make. The chinese haven't stripped Volvo. The company and its factories are still here. I drove past them today. Volvo is one of the fastest growing car companies in the world (up 15% in Europe of all places). The chinese owners would have to be insane to strip and move the company, especially since the actual tech grows old quickly. Its the people that develop and manufacture the tech that matters which was evidenced by the fact that several companies threw themselves at the recently unemployed engineers at SAAB.




I don't know that much about the situation in Norway but at its heart I suspect it may be the same as in Sweden. Depending on what you mean by "qualified workers" at least 68% of the immigrants in Sweden have a degree matching a swedish education at gymnasiet or higher. Sweden's problem isn't poorly educated immigrants but a conservative, prejudiced and somewhat racist way in viewing new people. Thats why you have the surgeon working as a janitor, the engineer working as a taxi driver or the programmer not working at all. For a society that prides itself in its frugality and reluctance to waste things it baffles and angers me how we waste people and their resources in this country. The fact that most other european countries are worse offers no relief either.

When it comes to Malmö and Rosengård I know the problems well. I work as a teacher and spent six years working in an area just like Rosengård here in Göteborg. The problems have very little to do with immigration itself, instead the problems are the result of the conservative, prejudiced and somewhat racist views I mentioned earlier.

Take the surgeon who works as a janitor and hypothesize that he has a son who is not doing very well in school. He lacks focus, can't concentrate, rarely does his assignments, comes to class when he feels like it and spend his time there behaving as he was in a party. When his teacher (such as I) talk to this young man and tells him about the importance about an education for his future why would he believe me? After all his father who trained as a surgeon have to work as a janitor, a lot of good education did him. If anything his behavior is the expected result considering the life he lives.

At the same time you can take a blond, blue- eyed boy with the most swedish name you can think of who has a parent who is unemployed, poorly educated, sick, disabled or have/had an addiction of sorts and you get the exact same result. Two different groups of people who end up in the same place with the same sense of futility and despair that only worsens over time and generations.

As of this autumn I began working in a new school in an other part of town. A part where people had chosen to live. A place where people belonged, had a purpose with life and saw possibilities. Their children (regardless of skin color) are (mostly) hard working, ambitious and confident since they are raised by parents who see a meaning in life and live in a part of Göteborg where possibilities are everywhere and the norm. Sweden has become a country where its either easy to fail or succeed depending on circumstances you have little control over and the failure or success is then inherited by your offspring who in their turn build on it. Thats how you end up with an area like Rosengård (or Biskopsgården/ Hjällbo in my city).

One more thing. Sweden doesn't have one and a half million immigrants. I haven't checked the most recent numbers but I think the number of immigrants is around 600 000 the rest are swedes (unless you judge who is swedish based in skin color or culture and some do). Viewing children of immigrants (who where born in Sweden) as immigrants isn't fair either since we are all descendants of immigrants one time or another. Its not like Homo Sapiens evolved in Scandinavia.

I'm going off-topic here, but I want to thank you for posting this bit. For many years now I have talked about how important your surroundings/environment and your family background is for your chances of doing well in school (children to parents with higher education have a head start over children to parents with less education, and so on), but the effect that poor utilization of immigrants with higher education can have on those immigrants' children is one aspect that hadn't occured to me before. I will assimilate this observation into my own reasoning, and use it when I debate this topic from now on.

You are more than welcome. With the risk of sounding like Professor Hans Rosling but its not as if the "third world" (which no longer really exists) consists of unwashed savages who can't eat with a knife and fork. Most countries have made great improvements (quickly as well) and have an educational system not far (and in some cases even superior) from the ones in the "west" (which is also a fading term). A majority of the political refugees (a refugee is not the same as an immigrant) are refugees because they where educated enough to speak out against their old governments.

It doesn't have to be people with a university degree either. I don't know how many trained lorry drivers I met who can't get a job as a lorry or bus driver despite that there is a huge demand for it here in Göteborg. The reason is that in order to be a certified lorry driver by swedish law they must have a swedish education (with a "C- kort"). An education they must pay for themselves and since said education cost well over 30 000 kr its hard to finance if you are unemployed or working part- time. At the very least it should be possible to finance it through student loans, but no. Such a waste.

In our booming norwegian economy qualified people with decent references will always be in high demand, with our systematic under-education of doctors I have yet to have had a Norwegian doctor during the last 15 years. So forgive me for assuming that there usually is more to the story than first meets the eye when you read about the janitor surgeons, or bus driving civil engineers, which you frequently read in Norways newspapers as well.

Want to remind you that surgeons qualifications often come together with the GP lisence in many of the third world countries whose populations are migrating to Scandinavia. They are thus surgeons in their own countries, but not in western europe where a 2 year extra education is needed in order to achieve this qualification.
It is not only a swedish phenomen. These hinders disallows norwegian educated nurses to work as such in the United states for instance, just as my pedagogical education is disqualified as well in north america, for no other reason that north american authorities having no clue as to what constitutes a pedagogical exam in Norway.

Being married to a foreigner, and meeting many of her foreigner majority workplace collegues, it seems to me that noneuropean immigrants seem to have a hard time accepting that extra exams are needed to be taken, in order for their native educations to be approved, blaming the "system" for being suspicious of their universities diplomas and so forth. They also often come from large cities and are just to their narrow niche of specialization being in demand right where they live. Moving from Stockholm to Norrland or Oslo to Finnmark in order to get a job is out of the question for way to many immigrants that I know. Adjusting to the scandinavian work place seems to be another challenge for quite a few african and asian males, who seem to think that native norwegians just show up at job interviews and gets the job after a little chat, while they, being entitled to interviews in the public sector in Norway seems to think serial failure in the job marked is everyone elses fault than their own.

If I had a dime every time I've been to a job interview and truly and utterly prostituted my opinions, attitude and professional integrity just in order to kow-tow for the narrow minded swines om the hiring board I would be a millionaire. The first generation immigrants like my wife seems to belive the leftist hype that "the employer need to accept you as you are", which is basically instructing someone trying to get a job in how to accelerate into a cultural collision that is sure not to land you any job offers.

Education is not the greatest advantage in Norway if you want to make money either. I know this does not neccecarily translate straight into swedish terms. But with a 6 year master+pedagogics education for instance, or for landing a Ph.D you will barely break 400k before taxes, while carpenters (which requires less education than just qualifying for the university) pays at least 450k, and usually more. Dont get me started on what plumbers, demolitionists (bergsprengere), electricians or sailors make. It is our own societies that doesnt reward education. Foreigners are not as easily fooled as scandinavians. Why should a computer engineer from Ghana bother to work as systemansvarlig at a school for 350 a year, when he can make the same doing much easier jobs?

On the other hand, children of well-educated foreigners usually end up taking high educations as well, especially girls. Even outcompeting and outperforming the native populations, to whom free education is taken for granted and thus have less value. It is the children of the lowly educated immigrants which seem to suffer the most from these horrid examples of sensational journalism where highly specialized foreigners work in other jobs (sometimes better paid than their original education) are held out as examples of the futility for immigrants to take educations. Parents education is the number one determining factor of what a child does, so this surgeons son will be ok, it is the children who need the motivation from elsewhere than their parents, that grow disillusioned by this victimization of their own best and brightest.

A few points.

QUOTE
But on the other hand, I think you should not compare Swedes to south italians. The swedes are reliable, technical, hard-working, precise, accurate and highly educated with a tradition for industry. South Italians at the turn of the 1970's were an agricultural society with enourmous corruption problems.


Thats a very simple and deceptive way to view a society. Despite Italy's current problems the country is still the eighth largest economy in the world. You don't become the eight largest economy in the world on corruption alone. I takes a fair bit of reliable, technical, hard- working, precise, accurate and highly educated people with a tradition for industry to achieve that (regardless of north and south).

No, the deceptive and simple way is to view the italian economy as a whole while speaking of regional failures. The north italian economy constitutes the eigth largest in the world. The south of italy has always been agricultural. It is as silly as comparing silicon valley in USA with the midwestern praire states. Your claim that south Italy has the employee infrastructure that the north has, is prescisely the same reason that this car company failed in the first place. Business attracts business, and industry attracts industry. It is not as simple as just establishing industry in an agricultural region and expect it to flourish. If that was the case, Africa could easily be industrialised for instance.




QUOTE
If not I think norway should have bought it, and stripped it of technology and patents, like the chinese did with volvo


That is just a bizarre claim to make. The chinese haven't stripped Volvo. The company and its factories are still here. I drove past them today. Volvo is one of the fastest growing car companies in the world (up 15% in Europe of all places). The chinese owners would have to be insane to strip and move the company, especially since the actual tech grows old quickly. Its the people that develop and manufacture the tech that matters which was evidenced by the fact that several companies threw themselves at the recently unemployed engineers at SAAB.

Read what I wrote again. Stripped of its technology and patents.
Do you think China bought an ailing struggling and soon to be deficit car manufacturer for the lousy potential it has for future production in a high cost country? They bought Volvo to get its patents, know-how and technology, which of course was underpriced as it were. Applying Volvo tech to their increasing portfolio of technology that they themself didnt have to develop or pay R&D for is of course the motivation for the purchase. The chinese was open about that. Its just you who didnt catch on to it. The swedish government was the only in Europe that didnt think it would be a good idea to save the nations silver during the financial crisis following the credit crunch of 2007.

QUOTE
especially with our amount of foreign workforce flooding a market with decreasing need for labour as well as a high amount of refugees with little capacity to contribute economically but a high need for welfare services. Sweden with its one and a half million foreign born nationals and the gruelling example of Malmö is a display window that high cost welfare countries with dwindling demographic increase should be selective of which immigrants it allows.


I don't know that much about the situation in Norway but at its heart I suspect it may be the same as in Sweden. Depending on what you mean by "qualified workers" at least 68% of the immigrants in Sweden have a degree matching a swedish education at gymnasiet or higher. Sweden's problem isn't poorly educated immigrants but a conservative, prejudiced and somewhat racist way in viewing new people. Thats why you have the surgeon working as a janitor, the engineer working as a taxi driver or the programmer not working at all. For a society that prides itself in its frugality and reluctance to waste things it baffles and angers me how we waste people and their resources in this country. The fact that most other european countries are worse offers no relief either.

When it comes to Malmö and Rosengård I know the problems well. I work as a teacher and spent six years working in an area just like Rosengård here in Göteborg. The problems have very little to do with immigration itself, instead the problems are the result of the conservative, prejudiced and somewhat racist views I mentioned earlier.

There arent even jobs enough for the swedes. As evidenced by the thousands of swedes flooding Oslo wait at our tables and build our houses. Why do you assume that rascism is the reason immigrants are unemployed, and not just an incompetent fiscal policy of your useless government?

Is there thousands of jobs that is vacant, because the employers dont want to hire africans and asians?

Take the surgeon who works as a janitor and hypothesize that he has a son who is not doing very well in school. He lacks focus, can't concentrate, rarely does his assignments, comes to class when he feels like it and spend his time there behaving as he was in a party. When his teacher (such as I) talk to this young man and tells him about the importance about an education for his future why would he believe me? After all his father who trained as a surgeon have to work as a janitor, a lot of good education did him. If anything his behavior is the expected result considering the life he lives.

At the same time you can take a blond, blue- eyed boy with the most swedish name you can think of who has a parent who is unemployed, poorly educated, sick, disabled or have/had an addiction of sorts and you get the exact same result. Two different groups of people who end up in the same place with the same sense of futility and despair that only worsens over time and generations.

While I agree that educational level is inherited from the parents, I disagree on the claim that this only worsens over time and generations. Social mobility is quite large in the scandinavian countries, among the worlds highest actually. While some children are caught in a downward spiral, the trend is far from as bleak and depressing as you put it. Where does our highly educated populations come from? The baby boomers for instance mostly have high educations now, and they mostly had parents without education at all.

As of this autumn I began working in a new school in an other part of town. A part where people had chosen to live. A place where people belonged, had a purpose with life and saw possibilities. Their children (regardless of skin color) are (mostly) hard working, ambitious and confident since they are raised by parents who see a meaning in life and live in a part of Göteborg where possibilities are everywhere and the norm. Sweden has become a country where its either easy to fail or succeed depending on circumstances you have little control over and the failure or success is then inherited by your offspring who in their turn build on it. Thats how you end up with an area like Rosengård (or Biskopsgården/ Hjällbo in my city).

I notice you mention skin color. Would it not be more relevant to look at social subcultures, language barriers, status of education, immigrant contra refugee origins, religious upbringing, levels of patriarchalism, number of children supported by the parents and a host of other defining issues, rather than skin color? I just bring up the idea, because my experience with the swedish educators is that they are so upset about making something not being about race and colour, that they actually manage to make it about those two things.

One more thing. Sweden doesn't have one and a half million immigrants. I haven't checked the most recent numbers but I think the number of immigrants is around 600 000 the rest are swedes (unless you judge who is swedish based in skin color or culture and some do). Viewing children of immigrants (who where born in Sweden) as immigrants isn't fair either since we are all descendants of immigrants one time or another. Its not like Homo Sapiens evolved in Scandinavia.

Ha ha. How cute you swedes are when you sing this tune. You all seem to lack fundamental knowledge about your own country's demographics... Forgive me for having to educate you about your own country.

According to Eurostat, in 2010, there were 1.33 million foreign-born residents in Sweden, corresponding to 14.3% of the total population. Of these, 859 000 (9.2%) were born outside the EU and 477 000 (5.1%) were born in another EU Member State.

I think one should be very much aware that most political refugees are actually not educated, and did not speak out against their government. Education in oppressive states are reserved for the privileged supporters. Most refugess in Norway come from the horn of Africa, and it is enough to demonstrate that you are somalian or eritrean and you will get to stay in the country, as somalians are persecuted by definition; as they are persecuting each other. A large part of them are analphabets who can not read or write. The largest group of refugees in Sweden are christian assyrians numbering about 120 000, were not political dissidents, but normal people who fled the murderous brutality unleashed upon them by the Iraqi sunnis, kurds and shias in the aftermath of Saddam Husseins Defeat.


If you plan to boost your countries economy with war-traumatized refugees, you need to look elsewhere. One should rather be aware just how much resources these poor people need instead of how much they can contribute with.

The educational system of the third world that you so much praise is unfortunately only reserved for the rich, even in communist states like China. If they come we deprieve their native countries of their brains. Norway and Sweden are postindustrialized countries. We should be exporting brainpower, not importing it. This would create wealth where it is needed most, instead of accumulating it where it is flaunted senselessly already.



On this you are dead on right. It always infuriates me to see refugee asylums being filled to the brim with people who await their reply for years, without being allowed to neither work nor educate themselves. Why not give them truck certificates, lorry-drivers certification and other types of qualification that is sure to land them a job once they get out? Even being a cleaner today demands a certification, how on earth would a central asian refugee be able to establish himself in the job marked unless he submits to the vultures in the hotel business or some other sector known for its fraudulent maltreatment of the work stock?

As it is they get the opposite of a head start in the asylum, being unemployed for years before they finally have to compete with people who has been building CVs since gymnasium times.

Your idea about student loans is a good one as well. I am even sure it would be possible to make arrangements with companies who would hire these people on the reccomendation of the driving instructor, having arrangements ready to repay the loan straight from their future salary (or the blue one will cry that they are given unfair subsidies like they always do).

According to the UN more than 74% of people in "the third world" are educated enough to at least meet the demands of a the swedish gymnasiet. In many countries such as Iran, Egypt, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Turkey those numbers are even higher. And you don't think there are political reasons behind the persecution of these assyrians just as any organized persecution or genocide in modern times take a political form before the violence begins? As far as somali refugees goes I thinks its damned weak to claim they cost too much when Sweden takes in 850 somali refugees this year but Ethiopia has taken well over 100 000 refugees. Less then 20% of the worlds refugees enter the "west" the rest are stuck in poorer and/or emerging economies.

T
A few areas where there is a shortage of workers in Sweden. Lorry and bus drivers, engineers, technicians, teachers (believe me I know), administrative staff and chefs. At the same way I know perfectly well that there are people in Sweden who can do these jobs but somehow the employer and employee never seems to meet due to how rigid the system seems to be. Which brings me to the next quote...


Its much harder to get those extra exams you need in Sweden or validate your former education against whats required. As far as people becoming angry at that after a while (despite their best efforts) well, wouldn't you be? This also applies to people who already have a swedish education but need to re- educate themselves to meet the demands of the job market. The system is to rigid.


By that reasoning the US isn't the worlds largest economy either since since the midwest generate less wealth than California does. Besides, that was never my main point. My main point was that it was bad for Alfa Romeo when Italy's federal government used the company to employ the people in the south. The southerners didn't do a bad job in making cars, the problem was that the government hired more people so they could produce more cars then there was a demand for. You ended up with more cars then you could sell and began bleeding money. Africa is industrialized, at least if you mean nations like Ghana, Botswana or South Africa. My point is that Africa is a continent and not a nation. There are huge differences between different nations. Its pointless to lump them together like that.


Perhaps you didn't read what I wrote (or I was unclear). Volvos tech (that includes patents) ages quickly and it won't benefit the chinese owners to acquire tech that is out of date in a few years. If that was what they wanted they could wait until Volvo updates its range of cars and buy the old tech for even less money. They need educated people in order to develop new tech and as well as updating the old. That is the value of Volvo. Volvo wasn't a struggling, soon to be deficit brand. It was doing very well for itself and recovered from the crash of 2008 in a year. Volvo is one of the fastest growing brands in the industry and only had one problem, namely Ford.


And some 600 000 are refugees or immigrants. The rest either have permanent residentship or full citizenship, or swedes as I call them.

1. Do you have a link that documents your claim that 3 quarters of the third world holds a degree equalling 13 years of schooling? Would be an astounding gap since the remaining quarter could not read or write in 2007 according to the UN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiteracy

2. Turkey and Yugoslavia are not third world countries. They are first world and second world countries respectively.

3. No I dont think there are political reasons for the persecution of the assyrian christians in Iraq. I think there are religious reasons.

4. I dont think the somalians costs too much. I am just fed up by politicians claiming these wartorn refugees from a sectarian country, where only the elite knows how to read or write, shall be fuel for our economy. And then blame it on systematic racism, when they fail to perform as a group in the job marked. Obviously refugees from the third world are not a group that will outperform native populations in the most stable, highly educated and efficient parts of the world.

4. 850 somalians a year has given you a minority numbering tens of thousands of somalians in Sweden. For every refugee there will also be family reunion of one or more persons from that country, as evident from the tactics of the men to arrive first in order to secure residency before applying for residency for remaining of his family. The number of somalians in Sweden are in fact almost as large as the numbers of norwegians in Sweden, with numbers being respectively 31 000 and 40 500. With the number of norwegians falling and the numbers of somalians growing.

5. Your comparison between Ethiopia, a neighbouring country of 80 million people, with an already existing somali population of 4,5 millions and Sweden, a country on the other side of the world, with no connection to the horn of africa apart from maybe your annually arms export, fails to consider the entire amount of refugees that Sweden has received compared to Ethipia. Take a look at the numbers in percentages of how many refugees Sweden has compared to third world countries of your choice and I think you will both be suprised and find the numbers quite different than the 850/100 000 ratio you choose to describe. Even if dumbed down to an amount of displaced persons living in a country, we are in the west still pulling a far larger share than the third world does in relation to refugees.

In fact, added to the amount of foreign relief, humanitarian and human rights work, the west are the foremost contributor to stem refugee suffering in third world countries, as well as receiving a far higher number of refugees in comparison to our populations, and it honestly pisses me off that you claim otherwise based on either ignorance, anti-western narrow mindedness or pure sheer agenda.



Sounds like there should be a high demand for people with these qualifications. With the salary increase that will come from the increased demand, I am sure these jobs will be filled fast enough, eh? I simply do not believe that there is a shortage of chefs and teachers in Sweden, its just that the working conditions are so lousy that the people who should be doing these jobs are prefering to do other tasks instead. Same in Norway, where every other teacher leaves for the private sector sooner or later. This is a governmental fault for not taking care of the human resources they have and compensating them properly, while rewarding other educations with ridiculous overpay such as the doctors, while nurses are being educated in numbers equalling 1,5 for each position available, rendering them at the bottom of the wage hierarchy. If the need for labour is real, however, I doubt racism and conservatism is the reason for those jobs not being filled. Not with the laughable amounts of unemployment that Sweden is suffering now. You have 29% unemployment rate among young, and your prime minister states openly the number will not go down.

http://www.norden.org/sv/aktuellt/nyheter/...aaste-samordnas

The obsession for finding holistic, ideological or sociological reasons for unemployment comes from the fact that most of our scandinavian "elitê de opinion" are educated within the social sciences themselves. Even the finance ministers of the nordic countries often lack a degree in economics. Their obsession to explain failed fiscal policy with the mindsets of people, comes from their own skewed world view and lack of willingness to look beyond their own pre-formulated arguments that if only everyone had the right "mentality", it would all just work out, putting the blame on their ideological opponents.

I think looking for the cause (and solution) among the mindset of people, dogmatic ideology and a general blame, it on racism attitude, is not what Sweden should do. Your solution lies within the fields of economics, not humaniora.



Nokut, the norwegian "approval organ" for foreign educations are notoriously hard and strict to relate to, taking months, if not a year to certify foreign educations. But there is a reason for this. Our own mass murderer Breivik funded his own delusional world with selling false diplomas online. Even the norwegian chief of the statens autorisasjonskontor for helsetjenester, who worked with this very thing, were discovered and fired for having false diplomas from non-existing CV's in 2008.

To answer your question, no; I would not be angry. I simply accept that what constitutes a pedagogical exam in Norway, is not equal to what the americans have decided constitutes a pedagogical exam. It is the same with my politics and history degrees; just because the norwegian department of education qualifies me as a history teacher, does not mean the americans approve of the corriculum we have here (I do not either for that matter). Do you honestly believe that what qualifies as an engineering education in China equal an engineering education in Sweden? Do you think employers who have responsibility to build buildings according to your over regulated legislation share that view?

Yearly several doctors from the third world are fired for having false diplomas, often after endangering lives with their frauds. If certification really is the problem, I assume the foreign work force you are speaking of would readily accept the need for strict control, if informed of the causes.

What one have to realize is that Sweden has the power to attract people, which is a big test of whether a country is more succesfull in its utilization of work force than others. If it is so hard to get jobs matching the ones they want, why do all this brain power; the surgeon janitor and the engineer taxi-driver prefer Sweden over other countries, especially their own?



No, that would not be the consequence of my example. But yes, California is the worlds 8th biggest economy alone. Failure of the southern states economy doest not neccecarily say something about the national economy as a whole. Just because parts of the country is succesfull does not mean all of it is.

Overproduction is only a problem if you control all of the marked, what Alfa failed to do was to capture a larger share of the marked with its abundance of cars.



Of course it benefits China to purchase current technology; they will apply it unauthorized to their domestic car marked. Volvo is the fastest growing brand because the Chinese are building a factory in China to build 300 000 volvos a year. They will of course not be of european quality and thus the whole brand will go from being a western status vehicle to being an asian middle class vehicle. I'll post you a few links where current commentaries document the expressed concern that Geelys goal is to pirate the volvo patents, among them swedish trade unions.

If Volvo was profitable enough, the previous owner would not sell it of course. If China wanted to build cars, they could just do it at home, where they are the worlds largest car manufacturer, producing more than Japan and USA together. So why Volvo? Because they get the technology and patents without having to develop it themself.

http://e24.no/bil/volvo-blir-kinesisk/3584624

http://www.economist.com/node/17463473

http://www.thelocal.se/24494/20100120/



If you claim a foreign born person living in Sweden is not an immigrant, your definition is opposite to everyone elses, including wikipedia, the oxford dictionary, eurostat, the EU and the UN. Good luck defining your own, personal, reality.

I never said that 74% hold a degree to match 13 years of education. I said that they held the requirements to match starting swedish gymnasiet (but I admit that I could have been unclear). Anyway, some links.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/

Don't always care for Wikipedia but this one has a nice map.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

In both cases I refer to the increasing rates of education in the world. Good news indeed.

The next one should be a PDF file.

http://www.undp.se/assets/Ovriga-publikati...ldenbaettre.pdf

For more info in the level of education regarding Sweden I recommend SCB.

http://www.scb.se/Pages/List____250612.aspx



Read this report. Bare in mind it should lead to a PDF file.

http://www.unhcr.org/4a375c426.html


Don't know about the working conditions of chefs but the working conditions of a teacher can be a bit horrid (good thing I have my calling). Even if the working conditions are bad that won't change the fact that there is a shortage of labour in some areas. I will leave a link to a short article on the matter. The link deals with one of the reports done by Svenskt Näringsliv and I wish I could find the complete report but I think it may cost money. The city of Göteborg had a few but maybe they payed for them. Anyway, the link.

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?...artikel=4427331


No, what the italian government failed to do was to understand the size and demand of the marketplace. You don't produce more than there is a demand for. Unsold products cost money.



The previous owner which was Ford didn't sell Volvo because the company wasn't profitable (it was). Ford sold Volvo since it was a requirement to receive money (9 billion dollars I think) from the US government following the collapse of the american finance sector.


If you are an immigrant with citizenship you are swedish. I don't care where someone was born instead I am more interested in you as a person.

Aha, starting gymnasium. Well, it is good you supplied the links, because I would have disputed that as well. Good news indeed.



Give me a few days to read it, I'm going from Tromsø to Oslo tomorrow, with influenza to boot and a MIA wedding ring that I have to explain when I get there



Well, a good product could raise demand. McNamaras analysis of the american buyers marked in postwar USA is an example, of how a shrewd analysis of the customer segment enabled Ford to produce cars that more people would buy. In economic darwinism Saab had no chance to find their niche nor outcompete another car supplier due to, as you yourself supplied, just having 2 models. Had Alfa been more agile, perhaps they could have sold this over abundance of products?



Which is prescicely why Norway should have bought Volvo, and had some of the finest manufacturing plants, as well as underpriced know-how and patents good for many years to come. Instead we have traded our oil for numbers on a computer screen which will dwindle dramatically during the next financial crisis.



I didnt consider the fact that most chefs are publicly employed. I just imagined all these fancy resturants without chefs In norway it is hard to find chefs for prisons and retirement homes as well. Lack of willingness, from our so called socialist and sosial democratic government parties, to pay people for doing this hard labour is the reason.



Dogmatic nonsense, and too typical for the swedish mentality if I may presume to say so. In your effort to treat people right, you lump them all together. You ignore the multifaceted issues and challenges that first and second generations of immigrants from africa and asia face in your society. By refusing correct terminology as tools in handling such issues, as teacher or whatever, one deprives both oneself and the subject in question many opportunities by such blantant and ideological rethoric.

I had a silly, robe-wearing, leftist, arts teacher collegue, who always claimed the same as you; the children of Muhammad was "as norwegian as her". How then could she take height for the fact that Muammads children are not allowed to go to birthdays, go to christmas service in church, faces pressure from home not to take swimming lessons together with boys, has sons who calls blonde girls for whores and daughters who are shipped off to africa for circumcission, and a host of other sosial and religious issues?

The worst consequences comes of course when this eagerness to treat immigrants as equal to natives is taken to the state level and applied throughout the public system. No one benefits from that, apart from a handful of upper class political strategists in the center-left political movement, who gets to feel better for having brute forced trough a symbolic policy, that does far more harm than gain for everyone.

Immigrants do not benefit from being called swedish or norwegian at all. The staggering amount of social issues, problems, conflicts, anti-social behaviour, lack of social trust, social engangement, respect for the society as a whole, intolerance and criminality that plagues immigrant communities in the nordic countries is a testament to the need to apply special attention and understanding to these groups in different ways than to the native population.


In other words, if you dont care, or take into account, where a person was born, how can you relate to the persons experience of sweden?