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Overqualified: What's Wrong With European Labor Markets

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Awesomelyglorious
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16 Apr 2011, 6:34 pm

cdfox7 wrote:
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Caplan [is] the stupidest man alive

That's what Brad DeLong says of everybody who ever disagrees with him. It doesn't say anything.



AceOfSpades
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16 Apr 2011, 6:39 pm

jamieboy wrote:
Also learning shouldn't necessarily be linked to the job market. Maybe Swedes believe that as many people as possible should have access to a university education as a right? Knowledge advances the live's of these people. That is why they have a higher standard of living.
What are standards of living measured by and do those countries have the same influx of immigrants? Another thing to consider is that Scandinavian welfare states are usually 1/3 the size of the US.



ruveyn
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16 Apr 2011, 6:46 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
jamieboy wrote:
Also learning shouldn't necessarily be linked to the job market. Maybe Swedes believe that as many people as possible should have access to a university education as a right? Knowledge advances the live's of these people. That is why they have a higher standard of living.
What are standards of living measured by and do those countries have the same influx of immigrants? Another thing to consider is that Scandinavian welfare states are usually 1/3 the size of the US.


And the culture is much less diverse in the Norther European countries. Basically white bread Nordic Christian.

ruveyn



AceOfSpades
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16 Apr 2011, 6:54 pm

ruveyn wrote:
AceOfSpades wrote:
jamieboy wrote:
Also learning shouldn't necessarily be linked to the job market. Maybe Swedes believe that as many people as possible should have access to a university education as a right? Knowledge advances the live's of these people. That is why they have a higher standard of living.
What are standards of living measured by and do those countries have the same influx of immigrants? Another thing to consider is that Scandinavian welfare states are usually 1/3 the size of the US.


And the culture is much less diverse in the Norther European countries. Basically white bread Nordic Christian.

ruveyn
That's another good point. There are so many different cultures and subcultures within North America (Canada and the states).



pandabear
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16 Apr 2011, 7:00 pm

ruveyn wrote:
AceOfSpades wrote:
jamieboy wrote:
Also learning shouldn't necessarily be linked to the job market. Maybe Swedes believe that as many people as possible should have access to a university education as a right? Knowledge advances the live's of these people. That is why they have a higher standard of living.
What are standards of living measured by and do those countries have the same influx of immigrants? Another thing to consider is that Scandinavian welfare states are usually 1/3 the size of the US.


And the culture is much less diverse in the Norther European countries. Basically white bread Nordic Christian.

ruveyn


Sweden does have quite a lot of non-Nordic immigrants.

It sounds similar to the Philippines--not the social welfare part (very little of that), but the education requirements for jobs. To become an ordinary bank teller, you pretty much need an accounting degree. Bank tellers in the USA do not have accounting degrees.



Tequila
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16 Apr 2011, 7:19 pm

pandabear wrote:
Sweden does have quite a lot of non-Nordic immigrants.


Looking on places like The Local (which is a Swedish website that supplies English news and forums) it seems that a lot of people tend to avoid Skåne if they can due to the Muslim immigrants, the problems they've brought with them and the decline in the cities there. When I went to Malmö I thought it looked grey and rough and couldn't want to be back over the Øresund.



psychohist
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16 Apr 2011, 8:45 pm

jamieboy wrote:
Also learning shouldn't necessarily be linked to the job market. Maybe Swedes believe that as many people as possible should have access to a university education as a right? Knowledge advances the live's of these people. That is why they have a higher standard of living.

They used to have a higher standard of living compared to the rest of the world. In fact, there's a correlation between the periods when Sweden was more of a free market country and periods when their standard of living was improving relative to the rest of the world:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENDE8ve35f0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]