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I'm looking forward to Jake's take on this, but meanwhile would be happy if you'd send me a copy... :-)

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Apr 11th, 2008 at 06:51:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The parts where he sticks to the facts are pretty good. I can at least recognise the society and social model he is describing, even if I think he has a few facts wrong here and there and even if I find his use of soundbyte statistics and reliance on neoliberal economists wearying.

Where he falls flat is in his enthusiasm for the changes over the last fifteen to twenty years, which have been more in the vein of "reform" than improvement, and have been shaped more by the advice of anglo-centric economists than genuine support for the Danish social model. With predictable results.

He also lacks even the first clue about the parliamentary and political situation. When he starts doing parliamentary tea-leaf-reading, your eyes should glaze over, because he can't even get all the party platforms right, much less the dynamics underpinning the current parliamentary constellations.

But keeping those caveats in mind, he provides a pretty good overview of what Danes talk about when they talk about the Danish Model.

As an aside, it should be noted that he commits a sin of omission in that he fails to mention that the other Nordic countries have very similar social models - a detailed analysis of similarities and differences is beyond both my knowledge and the scope of the article in question, but suffice is to say that there are more similarities than differences.

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Apr 13th, 2008 at 12:37:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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