The World’s Most Innovative Economies | Hacker News Reader

The World’s Most Innovative Economies

bloomberg.com

121 pointspbhowmic114 comments

>The Swedes themselves promote an atmosphere of great personal ambition — unlike some European neighbors that emphasize the collective — and that’s a boon to innovation, he said.

>“In the culture, people are super individualistic — this means that people have ideas and are very interested in pursuing them in this way in order to become wealthy,” said Henrekson.

This is very true, and a thing which is often misunderstood about the Swedish mindset. The sterotype of Swedes is frequently that we're a bunch of socialists who all believe that everyone should work for the collective good. That's totally wrong.

Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic countries in the world: we value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances of their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it is a substitute for family and community and other more traditional support systems.

Yes!

If the government can provide effective healthcare that should at least in theory be a great boon to social mobility and entrepreneurship as that means people can much more easily move to a new job. Tying healthcare to employers is antithetical to that.

I suspect the real issue doing that in the US is simply because it's so varied. You've got several individual demographics within America that are bigger than Sweden's entire population - all with different cultures and even histories. Having a more homogeneous culture is advantageous in that respect. Maybe it's not surprising that SK has seen similar results.

Today, Sweden is much more diverse that most people from other countries imagine (the percentage of the population that is born in foreign countries is higher in Sweden than the US, for instance). A walk down any street in Stockholm would disabuse you of the notion that there is no diversity here.

However, it is fair to say that when the system was "designed", (largely in the early and mid 20th century), Sweden was much more ethnically homogeneous than it is today. There might be something to the notion that people are much more willing to accept a generous welfare state if they know the beneficiaries are from the same ethnic group. It's shameful, but that's humanity for you.

Diversity is no excuse for America's failures. Your nation is not as much an outlier in diversity as you would like to believe, and in the domain of health care you need only look north to Canada to see that this argument is nonsense.

In all honesty, when I hear people say that some social program can't work in America because it's "too diverse," I can't help but hear "it can't work because of all the blacks and Mexicans".

It's disappointing and quite upsetting to me... It's clear that they are using a (slightly) more socially acceptable form of racism. After all, are they saying, for eg, education can't work because of all the Irish or German or Asians? Is it because of all the Canadians living off the US government?

Who exactly are these diverse types that are ensuring that particular failure?

> Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic country in the world: we value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances of their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it is a substitute for family and community and other more traditional support systems.

I think this has its costs; humans are social and they need the social context. The state certainly can't deliver a social context on a limited budget care & support machine. (Example: Your grandmother will meet 100 different caregivers for home care in a year, if she has that. That's 100 strangers instead of having a personal relation.

That can be solved either with a more expensive consistent employment regime in elderly care, or care from family.)

Oh, yes, I totally agree! There's a very steep cost to this model of "Swedish-style individualism", and it's exactly the one you describe. Swedes have much weaker bonds to their extended family, their community, their religious institutions (etc.) and it's clearly not a good thing. Humans are social animals.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Sweden is a model society and all other countries should adopt our ways. What I'm arguing against is the idea (fairly common, at least in the US) that higher taxes and a more generous welfare state is always antithetical to individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit. It can be, certainly, but it is not necessarily so.

Read somewhere that the chance of having higher intelligence is reflected in how self-sufficient you are. People with higher intelligence tend to manage just fine with a small social group with weak connections. The more social you are the more likely that you have lower intelligence.

Sort of suggests that following the collective, being an ant in a colony may have negative effects on intelligence over a few generations. Natures law: "What you don't use you lose." You don't need higher intelligence because so many are chipping in to compensate.

Then again, balance is a fickle thing.

That would have no effect over just a few generations.

It's figure of speech.

That sounds unlikely to me, or at least something hard to measure that could easily be spun in different ways depending on your favored interpretation. Do you remember where you read it?

A couple of immediate objections come to mind. First, "intelligence" is difficult to define or measure. Things like standardized IQ tests tend to come with an implicit agenda. Second, thinking instead about "innovation", history surely shows that most innovation happens when humans group together (in farming communities, cities etc).

It's true though that in recent history, cities are more associated with social atomization. Overall it seems like a very fuzzy and complicated issue.

I'd rather see the connection between happiness and self-sufficiency, because ultimately, isn't happiness what we all want? Whether through intelligence, social connections or religion, achieving that elusive sense of peace and happiness is what drives people's ambitions.

Except its because the collective has given smart people these entitlements. "Hey this guys pretty smart, lets give him tenure." Did you personally pay the taxes to run that university? Did you make those policies? How much of an island do you think 'smart' people really are?

Or "Hey this guy is pretty good at business, lets give him low taxes to reward him and keep him happy."

I think its difficult for successful people to see how much they're lifted up by everyday people in society doing their best to incentivize meritocracy and creating an even playing field where the smart people can succeed.

Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the inquisition.

Also when we look at many of the enlightenment thinkers and supporters, we see a slew of milquetoast intellects and ordinary people fighting against the old order of theocracies, monarchs, and dictators. Why did the smart need them to build the society they needed to succeed in? Newton wasn't writing about the freedom of man, instead he was obsessed over his place in the kingdom of heaven and went a bit mad about non-violent coin counterfeiters, advocating for their death, and often delivering it using the power of his position in the mint.

I think there's an Ayn Rand sized fallacy hole that you're falling into here.

>Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the inquisition.

In most historical human societies, the way to "succeed" was to threaten to kill other people unless they gave you what you wanted.

Is there a way to measure the strength of those bonds?

We in America are very individualistic (eg "I got mine, screw you!" because Freedom Markets™). Our elder care is terrible. Our nursing homes are bleak.

(A buddy worked as the CFO for a nursing home corporation. Told me the biggest thing he learned: Don't end up in a nursing home.)

Little tip: "nursing homes" and "assisted living facilities" are different things. For one, nursing homes are regulated at the federal level, while assisted living is at the state level. I don't know enough to recommend for or against either, but it was complete news to me when I learned they were different, so anyone looking into them might benefit from that knowledge too.

"Swedes have much weaker bonds ... to their religious institutions"

Most nordic people would call this progress.

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall.

Perhaps its a little arrogant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate. Are we certain science has solved all major mysteries and our cosmology is pretty much close to perfect? How do we know we're not Newton, unable to see Einstein coming, for example? Maybe we can't ever know.

I'm not exactly sure where religion or spirituality fits in with the modern lifestyle, but I suspect it has a place still. As much as I like visiting nordic regions, the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially as the son of European immigrants from a 'family' centered society and a liberal US citizen who certainly sees value in the collective, even if the electorate does not. I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, etc and expect us to be satisfied with the end result (everyone in therapy and on pills for mood issues and complaining about lonliness and lack of meaning constantly).

From a personal perspective, adding a touch of meditation and some lightweight Buddhism and Eastern thought has really upped the quality of my life. Perhaps I'm engaging in an evangelical folly here but the facts do remain that the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability. Maybe this is an issue that'll solve itself somehow, but I do wonder if we ran too hard towards atheism/materialism, when we should have jogged more towards more liberal and 'lighter' religion, personal spiritual practice, or just plain-jane agnosticism.

I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate.

That's certainly not an accurate description of secular viewpoints.

"Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall."

Correlation does not mean causality.

Saying atheism leads to anti-depressant use is like saying eating ice cream makes people drown. (Yes, I borrowed that from the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...).

"I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate."

Secularism has nothing to do with nihilism or meaninglessness. Nor lack of spirituality. Atheism does not mean anti-spirituality. It just means non-belief in any of the established deities.

I think you mean - people need spirituality. I have no objections to that.

" the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially "

Now you are making judgements based on perceptions on different culture. I fail to see how that connects with anything else you said, except that you don't like unsmiling people. Yes, nordic people actually seem cold and distant to some due to the fact of manners being different. Two pairs of sisters meet - one is nordic, the other of a culture with more vivid body language. The nordic people say hi and stand apart, the other hug, kiss and coo. That does not mean the love between the nordic people is any less strong.

To exaggerate only a little bit, a typical french way of welcoming another person with hugs and kisses can be interpreted in the nordic countries as a sexual assault.

One of the facets of nordic culture is that I'm not really alone anywhere - not in the brutal survivalist sense anyway. If I actually need help, I'm 100% sure I will get it, no matter where in nordic countries I am and to whom I'm talking. This is perhaps one of the reasons the ties with the social safety net do not appear as exaggerated as else where - we don't need to assure each others that when we need help, someone will be there. It's expected as a basic custom and facet of nordic societies.

"I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, et"

Um, where did that come from. We were discussing how nordic people are unfriendly secularists and now you are confusing it with lots of other things by way of associating it with the earlier comments. Yes, religion is conflated with communal activities is several places. Being atheist does not mean being anti-community or anti anything else, except that 1. you don't want to believe thousand year old fairy tales no more 2. you don't want to hand off political authority to third party wankers just because they've progressed in the power structure enabled by the said fairy tales.

I totally fail to see how current religions can provide us with any tenable long term solutions - we are in a dire need of better spiritual frameworks. I agree, Buddhism has many attractive aspects - but, also lots of dogma. The deeper western people actually dip into it the more obvious it becomes.

Meditation is cool. Also, it needs no metaphysical framework to function, just posture and breathing.

" the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability"

I would really like the references to that claim.

If we take the hypothetical claim as a fact that the more secular societies are more unhappy, that also correlates with the generic economic and educational status of the said society, as well as the relative increase of urban population versus rural. If we take blunt correlates then we might as well claim that increased wealthy urbanization causes unhappiness and atheism. But the problem is - without any sound theory to explain our findings we are no less the silly. Hunting for correlates in any statistics is one of the cargo cult methods of science and not very effective method of discovery.

Religions have intertwined themselves with all sorts of positive things like knitting societies and whatnot (as a crude example). Now, to denounce the deity of the religion and the old texts does not mean denouncing the knitting society. It just strips the old texts of their false eminence and cuts down the political authority of the priesthood if it's based purely on doctrinal concepts.

I can agree on one thing with you - if people meditated more the world would probably be a happier place.

And to add to this, Swedish people score among the highest for happiness. I'd like to see the other commenter explain that...

Uh, did you miss the part of Sweden being one of the largest consumers of anti-depressants? Remove those drugs and retake the survey and see how well Sweden does. Of course, that's not practical, but dismissing the effects of these drugs is being disingenuous here.

It's hardly the largest

http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepress...

Also, as the article states "It's difficult to say exactly what the data tell us.

Antidepressant use is not an accurate window into rates of depression. Instead, the popularity of antidepressants in a given country is the result of a complicated mix of depression rates, stigma, wealth, health coverage, and availability of treatment."

US seems to be leading the pack and from cross referencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligio...

if we do bad statistics, we can conclude that since sweden has lower antidepressant use and higher secularity than US, religion actually causes psychiatric illness.

But what the data actually tells us is that it's pretty damn hard to pull any causality between secularism and antidepressant use.

We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.

Should we ever be afraid of admitting that science has a limited scope and things like spirituality could be outside its scope? That seems to be an acceptable fear right now.

Spirituality does indeed seem to be outside the scope of science, because it's not real. If it were real, it ought to be amenable to scientific investigation. The notion that it's real but can't be scientifically investigated makes no sense to me.

Spirituality is not outside of science. We can study humans in the psychological states raised by practices in the spiritual traditions http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama....

The challenge from scientific point of view with human traditions is that they are a mishmash of established techniques affecting measurable outcomes and superstition, and sometimes it's quite hard to tell from the point of view of an outsider which is which.

To the extent that spirituality encompasses aspects of psychology then clearly it can be studied, but it hardly seems useful to call it "spirituality" then.

Spirituality and myths are different things. Spirituality is about psychological states, thus has a basis in the physical reality.

Spirituality seems to have many different meanings. The one you propose may be valid but it's one that's entirely compatible with atheism and materialism, so I don't think that's what the other commenter was thinking of.

Well, meditation was one of the spiritual traditions raised there and an offshoot of its zen buddhist form is used as a therapy form as mindfullness - this originated at MIT. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use

Anti-depressant use is also very high in Utah, a very religious US state. So religion or a lack thereof is not an obvious solution.

"Example: Your grandmother will meet 100 different caregivers for home care in a year"

French here. My grand pa is old and has caregivers (paid by his public health care + the local county) coming to his home every day, they're always the same 4-5 people.

It's not hard giving people a steady job instead of using disposable contractors.

Well, Sweden definitely is not hitting that mark.

This probably says a lot more about the lack of upward mobility in the struggling french economy than anything else. Youth unemployment at a staggering 26% and almost no economic growth in the past few quarters.

In more vibrant economies these jobs are seen as largely unattractive and often as a stepping stone to becoming a nurse's aid, nurse, doctor, etc.

One of the major imported jobs in even closed societies like Japan is senior caregivers. Its hard and ugly work, and often thankless (how can a senior with dementia appreciate you?). Migrating to different jobs or eventual burn out is a real issue in this industry.

Counterexample: Switzerland, where it is also the same few people (my mother has daily caregivers), and the economy is doing fine.

I know a disabled man in a kommun with excellent economy where the kommun employ companions to sitdown and chat with him daily. These are mostly retired or near-retired people who are doing their bit for the community and getting a small income at the same time. The system works very very well.

I live in one of the kommuns with the very worst economy and the schools barely function. So the 100 carers thing is not because of the swedish psyche but because of the way healthcare is funded.

I think you are applying your own values to the population as a whole. Depending on ones ethnicity, social class, and other variables, one may, as a Swede, value family or community over the individual.

There is certainly variation, but a lot of the broad social policies betray a bias toward individualism. For instance one of the goals of the "million programme" to build enough homes so that you didn't have man generations living under the same roof.

I live in Japan now, and while it's seen as a collective society, it's clear so much more of left to families to deal with themselves rather than society as a whole.

Sweden has broader social programs and is more individualistic, and Japan has weaker social programs and is more communal. It shows how the US one dimensional view of left/right isnt all there is to it.

What you say is a truism, of course. But more specifically, the overt stance towards values across different cultures is one of the best researched topics in the social sciences. For example, you can download data from http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ and http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/, and http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org and these are just the top links from Google when you look for value surveys. This kind of data is based on surveys with all the caveats these come with. (People do not necessarily report what they really think in surveys.) I believe Ronald Inglehart was one of the first to start with extensive empirical surveys of this sort. Nowadays they are conducted world-wide by vast number of organizations and there are also yearly summary publications in book format.

I was admittedly too lazy to check the values in Sweden vs elsewhere, just wanted to add to your comment that what values people endorse (or at least overtly report to endorse) in various countries and regions of the world is not unknown at all and it is not hard to look up data from reputable sources. How people act upon the values they report (if at all), is a different matter, of course.

I'm speaking in aggregates, certainly, different people will have different values. But the idea is generally true, and it is backed by studies measuring values.

In addition, this was an explicitly stated goal in the creation of the Swedish welfare state. The Social Democratic "philosophy" underlying it goes by the name of "Folkhemmet"[1], "the people's home". The idea is that in order to progress to a more modern economy, the state should take over the more traditional support systems previously provided by family/community/religion/etc. when it comes to things like healthcare, education and taking care of the poor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkhemmet

I guess my problem is with your use of terms like "the Swedish mindset", or "we [Swedes] believe". You are generalizing a lot.

Folkhemmet has German roots (Volksgemeinschaft) and can be traced back to the ideas of Bismarck[1]. It was a social reform. One can compare it to FDRs "New Deal". It is in this context it makes sense. It does not make sense to explain what "we [Swedes] believe" or "the Swedish mindset". You're basically equating social democratic policy from 1930-1970(ish) with being Swedish. There are a lot of people living in Sweden who do not subscribe to these ideas (myself included).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Social_legis...

While I agree with your overall point I unfortunately don't think your characterization of Sweden is true anymore.

Your education prospects now depend on which school you go to, especially with blatant grade inflation. My friends are putting their kids in queue for elite elementary school the day after they are born. Even if you can make it to college the traditional route you'll have trouble finding an apartment and keeping your student benefits.

Healthcare is a complicated system of public funded private institutions that regularly and willingly violate the law on things like time before you get to see a specialist. I always used to like the Swedish healthcare system until I realized I've always visited the same doctors that I knew.

Unemployment benefits doesn't apply (or atleast appeal) to former students or short contract workers these days. You have to go the welfare office and even they have no problem denying you means. You'll probably won't have much job security anyways since you'll be hired as a contractor.

Housing, especially in Stockholm, is a mess that won't be solved anytime soon. It makes the effects of everything worse. Commute time, work-life balance, even the weather.

I honestly think Sweden is one of the best countries in the world, but it's not a good deal anymore. If you got established ten years ago and could go to school before rampant youth unemployment, got an apartment before housing prices skyrocketed, know which doctors to go to, get a stable job where it makes sense to join the union etc. then it's great. You can study at university for seven years, some of them abroad, work for a few years, go on paternity leave for the better part of a year, move abroad for some time, then come back to your stable job again, leave your employer and get hired back as a consultant and if you don't find work go on unemployment. All this while you make a workers salary in housing appreciation, take vacations three times a year and get to use your parent country house in the summers.

Bottom line is that increasingly only the rich can afford to take advantage of the social safety net these days and I think it's starting to show even with things like startups. It was apparent very early that companies like Spotify, Klarna, Mojang etc. would be successful. I don't see many of these types of early successes anymore (but that might be my own ignorance of course).

There's increasingly nothing special about Sweden.

As always rapidly increasing population decreases quality of life for all except those already established at the top of the pyramid.

That's feels like an odd statement considering many mature first-world economies actually seem to be dealing with the economic effects of transitioning to a flat to slightly negative population growth rate.

Sweden has very high population growth.

As an American who lived in Scandinavia for a few years and spent a fair amount of time in Sweden, I will say that Jantelagen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

takes some getting used to and has an affect on the business environment. At this point, I do believe that someone can be just as effective in business in Scandinavia as other places like the U.S., but my first two years were difficult until I understood how to navigate these social norms. Mostly, this is to say that, even beyond immigration and paperwork, I don't think it's exactly simple for someone outside to move to Sweden to take advantage of these opportunities. I think opportunity is there, but it takes some adapting to things like Jante's Law.

Can you elaborate on the getting used to Jantelagen?

There's a lot that goes into it and I can't claim that everything I believe can be strictly related to Jantelagen. That said, I believe that it takes longer to introduce and have accepted new ideas in a Scandinavian workplace. Further, I believe that how new ideas are introduced tends to be more indirect than in an American workplace. This runs ostensibly contrary to the idea that Sweden is innovative. From my American point of view, if they're so innovative, then why won't they listen to a good idea?

Now, the reality is much more subtle. It's absolutely possible to introduce new ideas in these workplaces and have them valued, but I do find the process takes longer. Certain activities like eating together for lunch, having afternoon coffee together, or small talk before a meeting tend to go a long way in helping this, much farther than in an American workplace. I also find that there's a difference in directness that's hard to explain. When I say that the process for introducing ideas is more indirect, I don't mean that everyone there wants flowery language. However, I do end up speaking differently with my Scandinavian clients.

Anyway, these are just my opinions, so I don't want to make this appear as absolute. For me, it took about two years of living there before I felt comfortable navigating the environment and, certainly, I'm still not perfect.

I am currently in your same situation, and I have to agree that this change in behaviour was needed in order to integrate with the scandinavian mindset.

I'm confused. I thought Jantelagen (mentioned in a sibling comment) was all about not promoting oneself above the collective. Maybe someone explained it completely wrong to me?

Also, I though the idea of Lagom was that one should not pursue material wealth and success above what is "good enough".

> Fresh ideas tend to pay off big in Sweden, even as the current government is less business-friendly and has imposed labor taxes that could crimp business investment

Maybe it is that high taxes and citizen friendly social system the responsible for the success of the country. I moved to Sweden to work in the tech sector because I like how socially advanced is the country.

Taxes are used to invest in society, and that's how you get a competitive environment. If you don't invest in your citizens how do you expect to grow? I really proud of paying taxes in Sweden and help society with my fair share of the cost. :)

I think it's very much a cultural thing.

Much of the social system in the US is informal. For example in the American South, things like the Salvation Army are huge and lots of small churches have homeless programs, food drives, and facilities that push for employment skills. Of course that ties a lot of dogma into social help, but it's there.

Sweden, having a much smaller government with fewer conflicting factions is able to have more efficient government. The average American who supports these other social systems doesn't trust that the government can do an effective job of providing them (and maybe for good reason).

I very much agree with you, but that informal/formal distinction is important.

> Sweden, having a much smaller government with fewer conflicting factions

Lol. In contrast to the US, Sweden has a somewhat functioning democracy with more than 2 mainstream parties.

But I think Sweden, and the rest of Scandinavia (I'm Norwegian) has a less adversarial political system. We're used to coalitions, so most political parties are careful not to burn bridges totally. We also often have broad negotiated compromises where the US is more likely to have bitterly fought battles leading to a small majority where the losers ends up trying hard to reverse the decision afterwards (witness the Affordable Care Act debacle).

E.g. when the immigration crisis hit all the parties in parliament in Norway other than the Progress Party (furthest right wing populists in parliament) negotiated a joint agreement, rather than wrangling until someone managed to get just a 5x% majority for their plan.

As a result a lot of decisions end up being a lot less controversial than one might think, and remain more stable, as few substantial decisions rest on a minor parliamentary majority.

Insightful. I also think the 2-party system in the us tends to polarize all discussion. Everything has to fit on the same left/right scale, and there is no middle ground.

It hasn't always been the case, though. During a period from roughly 1930 to late 1970s, political polarization in this country was rather modest. (http://www.voteview.com/pdf/The_Polarization_of_Modern_US_Po...) Only recently has political polarization approached the levels last seen in the late 19th century.

And even with current heavy polarization, it's not completely binary. I can easily see, say, four party possibilities out of our current two.

> It hasn't always been the case, though. During a period from roughly 1930 to late 1970s, political polarization in this country was rather modest.

That's because the country was undergoing a partisan realignment (well, at least two that overlapped, one economic tied to the new deal coalition and one racial and tied to civil rights), where the emerging new axes of political differentiation did not align well with the divide between the major parties (but where the two were progressively moving into alignment.)

I think the same contrast applies between most northern European countries on one side and Us plus UK on the other as far as adversarial politics is concerned.

But I think it is not just politics, everyday life is less adversarial too here in Norway. I've been living here for over thirty years now and all the interactions that I have with the state are less complicated than they were when I was the UK (where I come from). I generally feel that people in the civil service, health system, etc. are genuinely trying to be helpful and not obstructive. Systems seem to be designed to work for the individual and not just for the treasury. For instance when you pay for medicine or treatment there is a cap and when that is exceeded you are refunded automatically in your next year's tax settlement.

Of course it's not perfect but it seems that there is a stronger sense of solidarity here than in the English speaking countries.

I think by social system he includes the health services.

A similar notion about Norway singled out the public health services as an enabler for someone to come up with an idea and start their own business without worrying about things like health insurance.

Thus the business could grow more organically than the pump and dump VC circus seen in USA.

Health services in Sweden is going down hill fast, I've heard. Money issues. They are trying to save money wherever they can. The recent sudden influx of foreigners didn't help. They say Sweden couldn't really afford taking in any foreigners but did it anyway. Sweden shooting itself in the foot. It sounds like.

Perhaps someone can give a recent update on this?

I suspect that is scaremongering from the suits that wants to let in American style for profit medical services.

Same shits been going on in Norway for decades.

And the UK

These informal systems are nice and all, but one problem in charity in general is the judgment involved. A welfare state has the ability to provide for the unpleasant people as well, whereas charity often requires you to match the expectations as a person in need.

Think about people with substance abuse or other psychological problems - these kind of people might have hard time getting help from a charity. It doesn't feel charitable to help drunken, angry or otherwise distasteful people, yet they deserve help.

Assuming that they're implicitly comparing Sweden to the US, I would like clarification on how Sweden is less business-friendly. From my quick search, it seems like their corporate tax is around 17% lower than that of the US. Perhaps they have other taxes that make up for the difference?

http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings

Virtually a tie. 82.45 vs 82.13 using the distance to Frontier measure.

I think Americans tend to over-estimate the tax rate in Europe.

California's top marginal rate (including state and payroll taxes) comes out to about 47%. It looks like Sweden tops out at 56%. But for that extra 9%, you get lots of services (health care, education, etc). I'd guess most Americans would take the tax hike to not worry about insurance, school loans, etc.

Marginal tax rates mean nothing unless you know what the actual income brackets are.

The US's hughest tax brackets kick in at almost $400K. If Sweden's kicks in at $100K, the tax burden is MuCH higher.

Looks like top tax bracket in Sweden is $90k -- at $90k, CA marginal is 42%. So a delta of 14% -- still probably worth it, especially at lower incomes where student loans and health care a higher percentage of earnings.

The question for me is if our government doesn't provide any of those services why aren't we paying half that number?

Well, you can look at the numbers here: http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/...

    Medicare, Medicaid, etc: 25%
    Social Security: 24%
    Military: 16%
    Safety Net Programs: 10%
    Federal / Veteran Benefits: 8%

Looks like some people get services, just not everyone.

At the state level, California: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin...

    Health Care 35%
    Pensions 18%
    Education 16%
    Welfare 9%
    Protection (?) 7%

The US does not seem to get a great return on healthcare spending.

Also, US military spending is truly enormous. There is a big return on that (obviously opinions differ as to whether it's worthwhile...)

(Edit for fact-checking: hmm, while the USA's military budget is by far the largest in the world, as a fraction of GDP it's not that extreme. Wikipedia says it's 3.3% of GDP, high compared to the world average of 2.3%, but way behind the likes of Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia.)

So then the question is are our elected officials corrupt or incompetent?

The biggest problem is that the electorate doesn't trust the elected officials in this matter. To bring down healthcare costs you need to be able to reject treatments that are much more expensive but only provide slight benefits. Organizations like the NHS in Britain are very good at this. But whenever someone gestures in that direction in the US you have people up in arms about "death panels" and the idea is quickly dropped.

I don't know though. Maybe if politicians just came out and said "This proposal will produce 10 extra deaths per year but we'll be saving $50bn so we think it's worth it" then people would be willing to embrace that.

I don't even think you are talking about more net deaths. Every percentage point you raise taxes or healthcare costs pushes a group of people underwater. A certain percent of people who have bankruptcies will commit suicide/beat their wife to death/yell at their children until they develop mental issues etc. Economic policies have consciences that are diffcult to measure.

Because you have the vital job as an American taxpayer of subsidizing oil companies, drug companies, military contractors, investment banks, and land speculators.

I'm guessing you hit the top tax faster in Sweden, the people I know with an degree will get above 50% fast, just anecdotal evidence though.

There is so much more to taxes too then just income tax.

Sales tax, vehicle tax, fuel tax, etc.

Most if not all of these are unavoidable. Sales tax alone adds nearly 10% anywhere you shop.

I'm actually agreeing with you here: in some ways we have the wool pulled over eyes. We pay a ton in taxes and receive little social benefits because most people just don't know to demand them.

Better comparison is tax burden/spending as % of GDP:

                        Tax %   Gov. spending %
    United States       25.1    41.6
    Sweden              44.5    51.2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

It's got China wedged between Canada and Poland. On the one hand, on average this is probably correct: there are vast swathes of inland China that are undoubtedly quite stultifying and wouldn't rank highly on any "innovation" metric. On the hand, if you're interested in this kind of innovation, then what does rural China have to do with anything? The innovations happening in Shanghai and Beijing and Shenzhen and Chengdu are very innovative indeed, and ought to rank near the top of any global list. Certainly much higher than anything you could find in Poland or Canada (meaning no disrespect).

I'd suggest that it's problematic for a ranking like this to even be based on countries. Countries, per se, don't produce innovation: urban economies do. A ranking of innovative cities would be a much more interesting and realistic metric.

> I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

To drive mouse clicks by stoking nationalist sentiment and feelings of superiority.

> A ranking of innovative cities would be a much more interesting and realistic metric.

I agree. The chauvinism would still be present and is inevitable when making comparisons between locales, but at least the locales would make sense as economic units.

This makes 0 sense to my heavily biased brain. As a Swede that is keeping a close eye on the domestic market, I can't find that many "innovations" taking place in most commercial sectors. R&D means quack-all if you cant translate that research into good and services that the citizens of said country can take advantage of.

Please note that you seeing the usefulness and it not being useful are two different things.

Thats thinking in the SV VC fueled startup way, where everything has to be Facebook, Twitter, Netflix or something else directly aimed at the hindbrain of the masses.

Everything is relative. How many other countries had systems like BankID, Swish, doing their taxes online as well as with Skatteverket, etc etc when those came out? how many of those countries have populations smaller than Sweden? How much innovation comes out of Ohio which has a larger population?

It was not recent but a century ago Ohio came up with chewing gum, light bulbs, the first gas powered auto, flight, the, the first vacuum, and founded the first coed and interracial college.

A little more innovate than online banking stuff.

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/technological-innovation...

I didn't mean to start some kind of innovational penis-waving contest. Just trying to show that it's easy to be blind to local innovation when it's around you. I'm not saying that no innovation is coming out of Ohio. I'm saying that the parent poster "as a Swede" probably doesn't see any innovation that comes out of Ohio. Just like an American doesn't see any innovation coming out of Sweden. Hence the "everyday" kind of examples.

Norge? :-)

Density in a country-wide scale means little in terms of technology. LIke how much more farmland and wildlife does USA have over Korea? Quite a huge amount. The comparison should really come at a similar scale. SF vs Seoul would be a better comparison.

Could the ranking of a country like Switzerland be heavily impacted by Pharmaceutical companies registered there and filling patents there?

How many of those innovations are actually tangible in each of those countries and how many are just technicalities?

Not to discredit the ranking, I'm actually curious about the balance.

And as happens all too often with these lists, they left out one of the top economies and one that would have made its top bracket—Taiwan.

Interesting, the global competitiveness report of the WEF lists South Korea as rank 20 for innovation.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGl... [PDF] page 50

The good thing about rankings is that you have many to choose from.

Yes, there is always at least one where each city/country can claim the first place, so that local newspapers can make an article about how that piece of land is better than others and local political leaders can show that they achieved something.

Why to i get the impression that this has less to do with out and out innovation and more to do with the startup circus?

I wonder how they measure patent activity given the vastly different patent systems. Software patents being the most obvious example. Is a country penalized for being "less active" if there are no software patents in that country (the explanation in the footnotes has me believe the answer would be yes)?

I'm also skeptical of the weights that were used (equal weights). My instinct (as a non-US citizen) would be that the #1 spot in high tech of the US is worth a lot more than other categories (and the gap to #2 is probably also substantial). I'm fairly surprised that the U.S. is only #10 in R&D intensity.

I'd like to see some correlation to some education rankings (+imported workers) as well, could be interesting.

> South Korea remained the big winner, topping the international charts in R&D intensity, value-added manufacturing and patent activity and with top-five rankings in high-tech density, higher education and researcher concentration

None of these are really all that relevant to true innovation. As a European, it's clear to me that no country comes even close to the US in terms of innovation. Almost all really new technologies come out of the US.

I think the key words are "density" and "concentration".

While I agree with you on the flawed metrics, I think that on a per-capita basis some of the Nordics are on par (and maybe have even surpassed) the US when it comes to tech innovation.

I wonder if that picture is somewhat distorted by the overwhelming dominance of reporting on every little thing that a couple of large US tech conglomerates do.

That said, I tend to be skeptical of such rankings as well.

> Almost all really new technologies come out of the US.

I would add: Almost all really new technologies in the market come out of the US.

US is the best at transforming research in $.

This seems like the true approach.

And arguably, the more valuable one. Bringing something to the masses

a) which used to be expensive but is now cheap or

b) which is new but affordable for most

is what changes people's lives.

Only if you're looking at consumer-facing business. Not every startup tries to create a brand and get articles written in TechCrunch and NYT: many are just developing revolutionary tech that is later bought and used by others.

I think this is a bias because we only read American media and are flooded by American influence. Countries like Sweden, Switzerland have innovative universities highly ranked. A huge density of startups close to them. High technologies and services available to citizens (for example bank system, rail system, fiber to the home...). And of course a social and retirement system that gives the whole population a really high power of consumption. They are small countries that are easier to manage. But they definitely deserve their rank in my own humble opinion.

A lot more big picture/consumer-facing innovation comes out of the US, because that's bolstered by cultural influence, but South Korea's manufacturing innovation is insane. iPhones may be designed in America, but the components they need to function come from a series of brilliant Korean inventions.

Looking at the ranking, I am flabbergasted South Korea is picked #1. South Korea getting picked even in top 20 would've been shocking. But #1?

Let's consider some of the odds that were in the way.

1. no modern education or social institutions were in South Korea until early 1900s. The Korean peninsula of 1900 was little different from 500 years ago, when the Chosun Dynasty was formed.

2. What little gain made during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) was razed during the Korean War.

3. the country faced a massive refugee crisis during the Korean War. Granted Syrian and other current refugee crises are tragic, but the Korean refugee crisis was just as bad, if not worse. Cold winter than can freeze you to death. No overland escape route for South Koreans.

4. no natural resources like oil to sell

5. massive military expenditure commitment, including 2-3 year military service every young male has to go through.

And yet they kept at it and moved up the list.

The article says Russia was 26th this year, down from 12th last.

I am very surprised it was so high before. There is a ton of innovation going on in recent years, like renewable energy, AI, nanotechnology, and so on, but almost none of it seems to be coming out of Russia. Certainly not what you would expect from a large industrialized nation with an educated public.

French Guiana is colored around 15th place in the map, but isn't listed at all in the top 50 list.

I wonder what happened there.

It's part of France and so it would make sense to give it the same color as the rest of France. But on the other hand the don't color Greenland as part of Denmark, so who knows.

South Korea just steals and takes credit for everything Japan makes.

They're like China, but they get away with it better.

meh, that is a pretty naive thing to say

Any specific examples?

Japan is also infamous or famous for stealing ideas from the West and then put their spin on it and improve upon it.

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