Sweden gives employees unpaid time off to be entrepreneurs (2019)
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Amazingly productive days. I must add that you don't get paid for the time off. It's just that you don't lose your employment status.
Then I am surprised to say, there is the same thing in Italy ("aspettativa per avvio attività"), but oddly enough, only for public sector employees, up to 12 months.
I am not sure many people make use of it, I would guess very, very few.
If you indeed are fired, you have first dibs if the company decides to hire someone new for a similar position, so firing someone for BS reasons isn't a productive way forward.
Apart from that you could also be terminated if there is documented evidence that you are failing to perform your job.
The uniquely American idea that you can be fired at any time for any reason is for me utterly terrifying and the primary reason I would never want to work in the US.
This is very, very wrong. What happens is that they bring it in front of an employment judge and they will decide whether or not it is right. Both sides present their argument. If you are not employed at minimum wage you can afford insurance to pay for legal costs, including those incurred in disputes between you and your employer.
As for the practice of handing employees a sack of money to leave (and other, more insidious practices) - that definitely happens, but that isn't at-will employment (which would be turning the dial a few ticks up on the dystopia scale).
Similarly, tech people in the US make much more than European FTEs - you don't get protections, but you get paid so much that it's trivial to save up money to just protect yourself against any periods of unexpected unemployment.
I think healthcare is very related to the standard of living
> Employers hire much more eagerly knowing that, if the tides turn, the extra employees will not be a burden
This doesn't sound great for employees (i.e. the majority of the country).
In practice, just see unemployment numbers - around 3% in US and around 9% in France, with chronic low-intensity rebellion (yellow vests) happening in the country.
Sure, if you're single with no kids, in very good shape, employed as a data engineer and 30 years old , like me, you would gladly take the money instead of all the other stuff. But I like the fact that children who are born into working poor families in Sweden will have a much healthier upbringing than if they were born in the US.
This is the country that saw the invention of the "food desert", that has an absolutely terrifyingly high incidence of opiate addiction and that routinely shuffles entire cities worth of homeless around the country so they're someone else's problem? That US?
This article is about Sweden, remember. My parents have two houses, one outside Gothenburg (big enough that they have converted the floor me and my younger brother lived in into two apartments, one if four bedrooms the other one is two) and a beach house further up north. They're from a completely different generation with different priorities.
As an American nearing the end of a decades-long pretty successful tech career maybe I can offer some useful perspective. Having spent quite a bit of time interacting with international colleagues one difference I've noticed is that American high tech workers are more aware of and connected to their employer's bottom line. This is partly because stock options, RSUs, profit sharing, performance bonuses, and commissions tend to be a more significant portion of our overall compensation here. But a more meta reason is that generally speaking, companies are both started and go out of business faster and more often here. The faster pace of the overall economy leads to less effective firms reaching the natural consequences of poor performance faster.
I haven't looked up the data but I suspect the average length of employment of highly-experienced skilled employees is shorter here. It's not just due to being laid-off from a failing or pivoting firm but also because employees choose to leave for other opportunities more often. I've had international friends assume "perhaps you Americans feel less loyalty to your employer or employees" but it's more that loyalty is earned (and lost) faster.
While different firms and industries vary, I think there's an overall trend from employees of "switch employers faster" which is matched by employers tending to hire and fire faster. In my experience, this also seems true for other job changes like promotions and employees voluntarily applying for open positions within the same organization (against their direct manager's desire to keep them). On those anonymous employee satisfaction surveys run by HR depts, there's often a question asking employees to rank "How likely is it you'll still work at this company in X years". I'm pretty sure in the U.S. those responses average much shorter than in Europe. So, while there's a higher level of medium-term job uncertainty, it's just the necessary 'other side of the coin' of having a higher level of medium-term upward mobility.
For me, none of this feels 'scary'. Frankly, I wouldn't want an employer to be required to keep me around for one minute longer than makes business sense for them. The reason is that for most of my career, my performance stock options and bonuses have consistently increased, often to more than half my total compensation - sometimes much more than half. To be clear, that extra money wasn't a "gift" or granted because the company is "nice" (though nearly all my employers have been very nice). They keep increasing my comp because my market value is increasing and they are justifiably worried I'll leave for a higher paying or more interesting job elsewhere (or to do my own startup). When it comes to highly skilled workers at silicon valley tech companies, managers often don't even have to fire employees who aren't performing well. Once the employee sees the performance part of their compensation falling to match their current value to the firm, the employee will quit to go somewhere that values them more.
My relationship with employers is similar to how I feel about my relationships with romantic partners (and now my spouse). There's a constructive tension that makes it work. I want to continue being in the relationship not because "it's comfortable" or, worse, "this person is about as good as I can expect to do" (ugh!) but rather because I so highly value the other person I'm worried she'll 'come to her senses' and dump me for someone better. I think an ideal relationship is where both parties feel that way equally. I want to be so valuable to my employer that they're worried I'll 'come to my senses' and quit. Conversely, I want the job I'm in to be so well-suited to my skills, challenging, enjoyable and highly-paid that I'm worried they'll 'come to their senses' and replace me with someone better or cheaper. If either party ever stops feeling that way, the relationship is ultimately going to degrade anyway and life's too short to remain in relationships where the value dynamic is unbalanced for any significant period of time.
We three were working for a firm in the UK in various capacities in 1999. The firm decided to FM their IT function to Synstar which became part of HP(E). We formed a company and resold ourselves back through Synstar (they took 17%, we were still cheap and still made a living)
Nowadays, 20 years later, we are still going. We will never set the world on fire and that is the way I like it. We turn over £1.5M at the moment and have 20 employees, we grow gradually as needed. I sleep very well at night.
I'll quite happily stick two fingers up at any fantastically wealthy fuckwit who managed to make themselves wealthy beyond compare who might describe my little company as an underachiever (and have done so.)
I'm not advocating that our approach is the best. It works for us. It wont put you on the cover of a magazine. Be absolutely certain that you are the dog's nadgers when you think you are the dog's nadgers. If you are not the dog's then be prepared for disappointment and worse.
I've seen it happen, people take extended leave of absence on FAANG, to pursue some non profit stuff or simply to prevent burnout.
During those, you're still covered by healthcare plan, but everything else freezes: let's say you take 2 months off. Then your RSU that was supposed to vest next month is now vesting in 3 months. Your vacation days don't accrue during those 2 months, etc. Obviously, since you're not getting any salary, there's no contribution to 401k happening during those 2 months.
As the guy who thought he could do better and has to come crawling back, admitting failure... that sounds awfully uncomfortable.
They weren't even aware of this possibility. I showed them the actual law. They implied they would lawyer up if I fighted them.
I ended up simply resigning instead. In retrospect that was a fantastic idea! In retrospect I saw people getting stuck there, while my career took off like a rocket (well, comparatively speaking)...
If I had been a similar age today, wanting to attempt this, I'd probably be able to find free help online. It's such a different world now, compared to 18 years ago.
With this system you have to stand in line for at least 20 years to get a decent rental apartment in inner-city Stockholm. As you can probably guess, this system doesn't exactly encourage free movement. And it's created a huge black market, plus that it's pushing everyone into buying.
An article on the current situation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/19/why-stockholm-...
I admit that I pulled the 20 years stats out of a hat. I quickly looked for some stats, and this page suggests around 10 years average for the private market, and 13 years for the communal: https://www.stockholmdirekt.se/nyheter/sa-lange-maste-du-koa...
Let's use rent control as an example. The government is setting an upper bound to prices. The limit may not be high enough to justify building more units. Therefore there is a perverse incentive for the government to enact a bad policy because it is shielded from the outcomes but gains public support because visible indicators (like average rent price) look normal again.
There would be a simple way to make this system not horribly broken. When someone wants an apartment and wants to pay the regulated price the government should be responsible for building that regulated unit or subsidizing the difference between the regulated price and the market price. This aligns incentives because now the government is on the hook for actually solving the problem and if it fails to do so it will be financially punished because setting an artificially low market price will cause the government to lose money.
In Germany there are city owned housing associations that are responsible for providing low cost housing. This system works very well but I think cities like Berlin are not utilizing it correctly. They just want a quick political band aid and make the problem worse by avoiding responsibility.
* We have massive tax cuts and subsidies for home owners. You get to make deductions off your interest rate payments, something that was introduced as an emergency measure in the 90s. We also have effectively no real estate tax, meaning there is no incentive to move out when your kids have moved out and the home is more than you need.
* For a long time, there was no need to even pay the principal of your mortgage. Now there is and it's one of the primary reasons the prices have gone sideways in Sweden for the past year.
* The local governments don't want renters and have gradually been given more and more power to get rid of them. They own a lot of the rentals and especially in Stockholm they have aggresively converted them into apartments that are owned (the common, Swedish system of buying a membership into a home owners organization is a bit hard to translate into an appropriate English term, but it's called "bostadsrätt"). The national government is basically powerless to increase the housing stock, if you go back to the 60s when my grandparents were facing a housing crisis the national government had the power to build one million homes mostly in the bigger cities like Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. They have nowhere close to that power anymore and the local governments have no incentive to solve the problems of low income people in a completely different city who would like to switch cities to get a decent living.
There are more than these too, these are just the first ones that popped into my head.
And all of this is unfortunately hard to change because most Swedes live in homes they own and it's a very common retirement plan. People who are in their 30s, like me, also think that falling interest rates well below inflation is the new normal because they've known anything else throughout their adult lives and thus take larger risks than they should.
Also, if you’ve worked in the private sector for 6 cumulative years, you’re entitled to an unpaid sabbatical of up to 11 months, and you get to keep your job when you go back.
Here in the US we go the opposite way: even if you do find some way to take enough time off to accomplish something significant, there's a good chance your employer (legally) owns it.
b) Define "something". If I take a year off to e.g. write a novel, do you really think that gap in my resume isn't going to affect me negatively if/when I start looking for jobs again?
Seriously tho. When I was employed by them their agreements were by far most draconian compared to any other company I've worked for. Ridiculous.
Most companies I've worked did have a route to enable you to contribute to projects outside of work and still retain the rights. Tho the easiest route is to establish something within a domain you want to work and then state that on a "inventions and copyrights" pre-employment agreement. This will outright eliminate you from certain jobs but... That's the US for ya.
So, his opinion is that we should be more productive in 4 days than we are in 5. I do enjoy the 3 day weekends, but I have to admit that I don't like the immense pressure of the shortened week.
That or they were very good at faking it.
People will find ways to get the time and rest they need, hiding and faking is less effective.
On top of that you get loyalty in return for being treated as human beings rather than slaves.
Of course companies that do that are usually startups, and if your startup tries to fuck you, leave. They probably need you more than you need them.
The culture aspect needs to come down from the top. A senior engineering manager at a well-known SV company with "unlimited" vacation claims it works pretty well because, from his perspective, an expectation that you'll take time off and disconnect comes from the top. On the other hand, I've heard others at the same company give a less rosy report, so YMMV depending on teams, etc.
And we're getting more than half of each 24-hour day off too! I guess what more could we want?
When reading the comments, I expected people to dismiss the idea as unrealistic or naive but to agree with the spirit and to share the general goal of reducing worktime.
I was not expecting panic and outrage.
It was a minority (and certainly skewed by the groups of people who post online in the first place), but a notable number of commenters were violently opposed the idea, not out of economical concerns, but because they believed the end goal of having more free time itself was highly problematic - that it would encourage an unhealthy lifestyle, erode morals, would pose a danger to social order, etc etc.
It was a sobering read and a reminder that status-quo bias is still very much a thing.
I get so many people telling me “but people would be miserable, they need work to be happy and have purpose.” UGH YES I agree, but I never said I would ban employment! I just want people to be able to take a year off now and then, or work half time, or volunteer or do non-capitalist work and be fine. People seem to think that if we weren’t desperate for employment we’d just sit around bored all the time. That’s not what wealthy people do! Human beings are far too creative to just sit around and do nothing. Eliminating compulsory work is about increasing freedom. We’re smart enough to find something good to do with that freedom.
You can also see that effect already in schools. Currently there is school vacation and you see lots of groups of bored teenagers hanging around.
There is something very wrong with a "free society", when most of its people don't know what to do with their free time except to kill it. (The very concept of timekilling is disturbing as well)
But yes. I am 100% behind the idea of robotic basic income!
People can learn again, that there is more to live than mindless huzzling and consuming.
It might take a generation for people to adjust, like Clay Shirky describes at the start of his talk “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” from 2008:
I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.
The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing—there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.
And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders—a lot of things we like—didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.
It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.
If we are supporting people that legitimately can’t work, sure. But supporting people that can work, but don’t — that’s where I have a problem because my willingness to work, even in jobs I might not like gets punished through taxes. Why do I have a personal responsibility to support others that are unwilling to support themselves. We are talking about grown adults, if they have nothing to contribute to society, why would we subsidize that? Some layabout watching Judge Judy all day gets a free pass while the guy working on a hot roof all day is supposed to pay for that? Who is going to be a janitor if they don’t have to? Producing something of value to society is part of being a part of a society. People have a responsibility to take care of themselves. They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.
People will take jobs for the similar reasons we take jobs now- we want money, and take higher paying jobs to afford nicer things. In a world where bases are covered, luxuries will definitely be a better carrot than the stick of homelessness.
And since you brought it up, I find your attitude disturbing. “Why should I have to help other people” is kind of a gross question. You don’t want to help other people? Doesn’t that make you selfish? Again I’m not saying I will force you to help, but why are you against the idea of helping others anyway?
I see that you mention government. I didn’t mention government. I said society could provide for everyone. We can do that without the government.
You can also organize among your minority group and protest that your rights are being violated, or hire lawyers to sue.
I’m not concerned with people who don’t want to participate. They don’t have to and we don’t need their support. Such a system can be supported entirely by those who want to support it.
I’m sorry if I come off confrontational but your question seemed to be a “gotcha” that is honestly very simplistic. As an anarchist or “libertarian socialist” I’m quite aware of problems of the state. I will say that in many cases I think local governments may find it beneficial to support these systems, but I like the idea of this being done on a local level so individual cities can decide for themselves. In the same way that some governments operate trains, it is not the case that trains depend on government to be useful.
If the cost of supporting peoples need is driven towards zero, then the cost of supporting your own needs will likewise gets driven towards zero. At that point, the amount of work you will need to put in to meet your needs will go towards zero, and the number of people that can be supported by a minimal amount of additional works will rapidly increase.
The point being that at some point the incremental amount of work needed to support a large number of people choosing not to work will be so low that it's not worth worrying about it relative to the potential benefits of creating a surplus large enough that it effectively becomes a choice for everyone.
While I'm sure a lot of people will choose leisure, a lot of us won't. We might work less. More likely we'll work on different things. If I had full freedom to choose my projects, I'd still work on something because I work on software because I enjoy it.
Liberating a huge number of people to pursue projects that the financial payoff for is extremely uncertain has the potential to be massively transformative.
There are plenty of ways we could reward those choosing to continue to do the minimal necessary work in a future like that, to ensure sufficient people want to.
> They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.
I happen to agree with this part. The Expanse illustrates this potential case well: People on "basic" have their needs met, but are also locked out of work, and getting into the upper echelons where you can get a job and do better is treated as a privilege allotted via random allocations - unless you have friends in high places... People on basic don't dare rise up, because their life depends on not getting in the crosshairs of government.
This is why a lot of the left are concerned about universal basic income, for example - because it is a potential "bread and circus" for capitalism struggling to deal with future fallout of automation.
But that is different from opposing the idea of a system where automation is advanced enough and democratized enough that basic needs are available to be met everywhere, and nobody has the power to stop you from using the time that gives you however you want, including creating your own position to do better.
In a free society, work hours is an agreement between consenting adults. If you want to work part time, that option is widely available. But why force your preferences on the rest of us?
If I stop working, eventually somebody will turn up at my door and throw me out onto the street.
Of course. But the fact that we have biological needs is not coercion.
Libertarian thinking in a nutshell.
I started my first company in 2001 by getting 6 months off from Ericsson. I wanted to during that time, Ericsson would have to allow me to come back and continue as an employee. Quit permamently after three months. Now I'm happily running my fifth startup.
Also did you have any unvested compensation (stock awards, bonuses, etc) and what happened to them when you paused your employment?
No bonus, stocks etc.
The "freedom" you are talking about is the freedom to take or leave work schedules we consider abusive today. If you want to go back to a world where employment means 12/7 or starve, you are free to campaign for the repeal all you like, though. Your senators' aides are standing by, call now. Meanwhile, I will be lobbying them to constrain your freedom a little more.
You learn to make meetings more effective, group menial tasks in to blocks and make time for interesting things, and become better at prioritising.
And damn do I feel productive when working on hard technical problems. Some things just require a fresh mind.
I hope you are not alluding that Sweden has 6 hour work days? That is not true. It has 8 hours, like most other countries.
I work with teams across Europe and they seems to put in hours that aren’t that different from the US.
I assume that voluntary?
It lines up well with the very advantageous student loans (for living costs, university is free) for studying and lets people try their hand at going through higher education wothout throwing their job away.
Essentially, since sick people are more likely to choose such plans the costs are going to be very high. Either that or the restrictions on the plans need to be high to prevent it. Both make such plans unattractive independent of how bad or good the public plans are.
Private insurance is very much a supplement, not a totally parallel system in the UK:
https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/do-you-nee...
From the way you phrase it I assume you actually mean inefficient service, like you'd get at a high end restaurant or hotel, where they have lots of people hanging around doing nothing a lot of the time so no one ever feels they're being treated less than a VIP in busy periods.
that's simply dishonest. there are tons of other variables to consider when pondering private insurance adoption rates.
Maybe they can't afford private insurance?
The public system has serious flaws. I was told by the public system to take antibiotics for 6 months straight while waiting for a tonsil removal operation. Got my operation a few days later through my private insurance.
Ah, that's simply wrong, because you pay for public healthcare anyways (through taxes), hence private one is to be paid twice.
I doubt the system is `that bad`, but even in Russia, where private healthcare is super cheap (and very good) and public healthcare is a total disaster, a few people use the private one (until they are wealthy) due to exact same reason: they've already paid for the public one and feel like paying twice is not an option.
That said, it seems like the really expensive/complicated healthcare needs gets taken care of in a competent way, "for free" (paid for via the taxes).
My then 73 yo mom had a tumor that was growing behind her left eye-ball being removed, two years ago. Zero complaints about that hole produdure, and the 10+ post-prodedure checks.
I spent a few hours googling the doctor that was going to perform this particular surgery on my mom - I was left with the impression that he was on the international fore-front on this particular procudure. He was doing a bunch of international speaking on the the topic. I saw videos of him lecturing hundreds of surgeons on particulars of this kind of procudure. Quite re-insuring.
(And yeah, my mom ended up being okay after the surgery.)
10 or 20 procedures, still 12k.
For the 10%ers/6 figure earners, this is 10% of the before tax income.
For the 90% making 15-19$/hr, I can't even imagine managing this.
The current situation benefits the lower class with voting rights who have access to good healthcare without paying much taxes and the upper class can afford private anyway but if you're hard working middle class you're kinda screwed since you have to go private and pay if you want quality treatment and diagnosis in a timely manner but you're also forced to pay and subsidize the public system, which you don't use anyway, with your very high taxes.
I feel Europe is slowly migrating to a two tier healthcare system, a private and quality but expensive one for the ones who can afford it and a public underfunded one for everyone else.
The private doctor is still cheaper than copays/deductibles in the US. So that seems like a weird argument to make.
Skilled workers in the US also earn way more than their European counterparts.
And bonus if they get sick, they don't have to worry as much about losing their job and spiraling down into crippling debt.
Is this actually true?
Especially because the private doctors need to provide pricing before you go there, there is an actual market with reasonable prices.
Since someone will know before they go to a doctor what it will cost them it makes a huge difference to the US.
Furthermore, the US labor force participation rate never gets measured honestly or discussed because it's crazy.. there are untold millions and millions of men and women who have given up looking work. (Idle, disenfranchised people who don't have a future or families is a recipe for revolution, drug abuse and mass shootings.) Also, with automation, outsourcing and increased net population, there aren't as many good jobs as there were 40 years ago and there too many people for regular, less-skilled jobs.
Only if you look at salary. If you look at total compensation, it’s grown quite a lot in the US, across income levels, adjusting for inflation.
can you give example of private healthcare costs?
As regards blood tests and the like, the cost depends on the type of test, but could be anywhere from £25-£300.
I do agree with the GP about a 2-tier system evolving in the EU, at least from my perspective in the UK and what I hear from colleagues around the EU; if you have something easily diagnosed and treated, the state health service is literally a life saver, even if you have to wait several months to be seen. But don't expect your doctors to be experts - your endocrinologist will likely no nothing other than diabetes etc.
You can usually get 80% back from public healthcare insurance. You can do it all via public healthcare, but wait time is usually several weeks.
Not sure if I'd agree. There are certainly fancy hospitals that look like 5* hotels but they're for routine surgery only. Top specialists are still at big hospitals because that's where the most complicated cases are treated and where the infrastructure is. You might be able to skip waiting time with private insurance but you won't see a better doctor or get better quality medical treatment. In the end, having a nicer meal and single room in your hospital don't matter that much medically.
Private insurance often just gets you past those gates.
It's the same thing they say about France (having a great healthcare system). But doctors [1] are going on strikes because of lack of amenities. Makes you wonder...
A private system where you chose your provider will always be better, imo, because the providers will have to compete. I think the US could do much better if they improve the pricing visibility and get the free market to make the prices go down. (I'm not very well versed in this topic, I'm just reading the news)
1 - https://www.cnews.fr/france/2019-12-14/pourquoi-les-medecins...
But I completely agree with you on the free market. My personal issue with going to the doctor is I have no idea what my bill will be at the end of the day.
One can make the argument that some big share of the affordability issue has been generated by the government in its policies of preventing cost transparency for medical services and drugs.
I'm not saying cost transparency will solve every problem, but this is a government caused problem. I have heard no good reasons for the monopoly pricing granted the medical industry.
Also bear in mind the whole system of government subsidized employer group health insurance was invented by the government to satisfy the labor unions, way back when private sector labor unions had influence.
Now only government employee labor unions have influence, and boy what influence they have. Just remember, public employees are in entirely different social benefit and retirement systems than us mortals.
It's almost just as bad as the collegiate system here as well. Except the college system you can somewhat anticipate costs. Insurance is a total gamble.
You don't need one, all you need is brand and reputation. Customer doesn't know much about products in most markets: electronics, cars, software. It's never a problem when you have lasting brands/companies servicing many people with various level of knowledge.
Because the company uses quite a lot of administrative pressure (patent trolling, vendor's bullying etc etc), hence the market is not competitive.
You are talking about competitive markets here, not information asymmetry. I see no evidence that monopolies are the outcome of asymmetry of knowledge, but rather that they are the outcomes of significant administrative measures like license-bullying or patent-trolling.
The only markets that have the problem of information asymmetry are lemon markets.
> And these are industries where it's reasonably easy to pick and choose compared to trying to switch hospitals or doctors part way through your treatment.
It's way easier to change a doctor than to change a car. There are only few conditions which restrain one from bargaining: heart attacks and other severe conditions, and these should be treated differently.
But in case of the vast majority of diseases from common cold to Epstein-Barr changing the doctor and bargaining is even simpler than in most other markets.
But again, bargaining power has nothing to do with information asymmetry as well.
and you think that won't happen with health care?
It could happen, but it's totally unrelated to the original thesis regarding information asymmetry.
There are some things that work really well in a free market but health care will never be of those.
Why not? So she wanted to go to a specific doctor, and that doctor had a waiting list. How does any other system solve for that? A single doctor can only see so many patients.
I don’t understand why in Asia I have cheaper and better health care than if I lived in Europe or America.
Some of the things I’ve heard just about Hospitals scares me to not get sick when I’m in europe...
When my wife was in hospital for the birth of our daughter I slept over night in the room with my wife. While in France my wife’s friend wasn’t allowed to have her husband stay. The whole experience we had vs them was polar opposite.
I also disagree that healthcare is uniformly cheap here. GP visits are not particularly cheap. You get to spend very little time with the GP and typically are sold a bunch of drugs you don't need (in Europe there's separation of clinics and pharmacies, which introduces some checks & balances).
To give another example, in Europe I used to go for a glaucoma test every year (due to family history) and pay about 20-30 euros. However, in Singapore, doctors look at you funny when you request to be tested for this as preventative health care is not really thing here. I did get tested twice for Glaucoma in Singapore (at the National Eye Center) and ended up with a bill of 250 SGD (~ 175 EUR) each time. The second time around, the doctor afterwards admitted that the bulk of the tests I had been given hadn't really been warranted. (Oh, and I couldn't exactly go in the same day by the way. There was a waiting list, though I don't recall how many days/weeks I had to book in advance.)
Finally, getting cancer has been known to bankrupt people in Singapore.
Nope? I’ve been in hospital 4 times in the past 8 years. And a 5th time if I include when my daughter was born.
The Nurses in the wards were not filipino. But one of the Nurses in A&E were.
> I also disagree that healthcare is uniformly cheap here. GP visits are not particularly cheap. You get to spend very little time with the GP and typically are sold a bunch of drugs you don't need
I can’t compare to Europe. But I can say that seeing a GP and getting drugs is FAR cheaper in Singapore than Australia... by ALOT. The entire cost of a consultation + drugs is cheaper than the consultation fee in Australia.
Not only that having to then go to a pharmacy to pick up drugs is the worst.
Doctors here also don’t just give drugs you don’t need. They do give drugs more often and that’s due to the mentality of Asia where If they see a doctor they often want drugs to fix a non existent problem. But I’ve had Doctors in Singapore ask more questions than in Australia and give me only what I need or want to give me nothing.
> To give another example, in Europe I used to go for a glaucoma test every year (due to family history) and pay about 20-30 euros.
Specialists aren’t cheap compared to Europe or somewhere like Taiwan, but compared to America it’s peanuts.
> getting cancer has been known to bankrupt people in Singapore.
I don’t believe this for a second, because for Citizens, healthcare is subsidised. And company with more than 50 employees has to have health care insurance. Basically it would only bankrupt you if you were a foreigner at a small company and didn’t buy insurance for yourself. Which again is still cheaper than NZ/Aus.
Generally I get same-day care. I call up DKV, report my symptoms, they find a specialist in my area, and I pay nothing. (I mention the symptoms bit to contrast with the system where you have to see a general practitioner who then refers you to a specialist - that does not happen here AFAIK). I've used this for allergies, asthma, ear problems. I also had a knee injury where I got an x-ray (same day I think?) followed by weekly sessions of physio.
My partner recently gave birth in the public system. I think the delivery was free, but the 4-night stay cost us around 4000 SEK (400 USD) total.
I also had a remote doctor's appointment using the KRY app. I don't actually know how that was billed - public I'd guess.
From https://bbstockholm.se/content/practical-information:
> Each new 24 hour period cost 100 SEK from the time you arrive at the clinic. Your partner/labour support person is charged 600 SEK/24 hours from the time the baby is born. Food, towels, sheets, sanitary products and diapers are all included free of charge during your stay.
It's true that it varies by employer.
Here are average numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm
For myself I’d much, much rather live in a society where a cancer diagnosis doesn’t financially ruin you and your family for you life, and where everyone no matter their income receives quality care when it’s needed. Even if that means that I have to wait weeks/months to get something non-critical seen.
Private insurance blows cause we're all basically required to have it but it's worse than a tax because we barely ever know how much we owe.
Prices should be publicized, I agree, but you can ask to get something pre-authorized. It just takes longer.
>why can I not tell them no I dont an unnecessary x-ray
You can ask your doctor why you need an x-ray, why they deem it necessary, and refuse if you like
>and why am I not told cost owed by me until after the procedure only to find out it's just an absurd amount of money
Again, you can ask for pre-auth.
You can’t base a system on the “free market” then prevent consumers from having pricing information.
It certainly wouldn’t fix everything in the US, but it would be a huge help.
To be honest, I’m not sure why hospitals in the US haven’t taken the lead on this. If I had a choice between two hospital of similar quality, but one provided price transparency and maybe even a price guarantee (your procedure will cost $X, guaranteed), I would certainly go to that hospital.
Even then though, making prices transparent wouldn’t address the primary scenario that results in personal bankruptcy, which is emergency care. You can’t exactly shop around for the cheapest ER facility if you’re bleeding from a gunshot wound.
In a non-emergency situation, you can certainly try to read up on your own, but the medical literature is not always easy to interpret. A friend of mine asked for advice after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. Despite having a PhD in neuroscience and working as a researcher in a PD Center of Excellence, I had a really hard time making a recommendation. (Neuro conditions are particularly hard, but this is also possibly the best-case match with my experience).
He readily admitted that the hospital has a very poor grasp on their own costs. At a high-level, they just charge as much as they can - sometimes they lose money, sometimes they make a 90% profit. They pool it all together (usually by line of business) and hope it all works out as a profit.
That’s why specialized, stand alone clinics (e.g. MRI clinic) have some of the best prices. They know exactly what things cost and can make sure prices reflect it.
And as the other poster said, you always have the right to refuse treatment, up to your death if you like (unless it is some kind of involuntary commitment where you are put there because you are supposedly dangerous). Many terminally ill people choose to go this way.
Seriouy doesn‘t your hair stand up in horror when you re-read this?!
„You can always choose to die when you can‘t afford treatment“. WTF?!
It gets worse, bundling those two is the epitome of conflict of interests when you find yourself the victim of the hospital's negligence and expect your insurer to act in your best interest.
Nope!
In contrast when I was in a much much smaller "community" hospital in China I just walked in, talked to the lady at the desk, and she gave me a prescription. No temperature taking or anything...
What OP is suggesting is that it doesn’t financially ruin you in Sweden, you just die waiting to see a doctor.
Do cancer survival rates differ in countries with government health care vs. private?
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2....
The problem (which I think is what OP were talking about) is anything that’s not critical but still need to be looked at by a specialist. In that case long waiting times are not uncommon. Yes it’s a big problem but it’s not a problem that will kill you.
If people were dying left and right from waiting for cancer treatment. There would be a ton of news about that. No less in American media showing how bad European health care is.
Why isn’t this a thing? Can someone in the industry chime in?
While you are relatively young maybe the probability is low. That’s also when you are working so private health insurance and income protection insurance would have you covered I imagine.
So, I can’t see why any insurance company could offer reasonable rates given those odds.
Do you go to a special doctors office for the top 5-10%? The one I go to is full of ordinary middle class people. 80% of Americans polled rate their healthcare as excellent or good: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar....
The American healthcare system isn’t hard to fix because it only works for 5-10% of people. It’s hard to fix because it works for 80% of people. Americans don’t irrationally cling to a system that’s bad for 90% of them. (Even among Democrats, a large fraction oppose getting rid of current health insurance: https://slate.com/business/2019/10/medicare-for-all-is-getti...)
Americans stick to the current system, because it works for most people. Most middle class people don’t go bankrupt when they get sick. And the middle class pays the lowest taxes in the developed world, because they don’t pay 20-30% payroll taxes like in European countries to support healthcare for the bottom quarter of earners. That’s the bargain people have voted for. That is obvious, because candidates who campaign for Swedish style healthcare don’t propose Swedish style taxes to go with it. Elizabeth Warren isn’t running on a top tax bracket that kicks in at $75,000 — she’s running on a wealth tax Sweden abandoned and corporate taxes higher than Sweden. Because Americans won’t vote for the bargain between healthcare coverage and middle class taxes that Swedes have adopted.
It’s not the system I’d prefer, I’d rather pay more taxes and make sure the bottom 25% have adequate healthcare. But the notion that everyone is actually irrational and the current system only benefits a small minority is self deception.
All this fearmongering over such a rare occurrence is actively causing harm: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/11/lockdown-...
Not that the US obsession with guns and lax gun control that enables school shootings is defensible.
Crazy, I know.
Who knows who is right. But it’s ridiculously arrogant to say that the American position is not defensible. It was literally just a couple of generations ago when the US was air dropping rifles into France to support the Resistance. Even if we have now entered an age where ordinary people don’t need guns—that new age is younger than computers, supersonic flight, or television. Its far too soon to conclude that’s this is how the world will always be from here forward.
It's a crackpot idea to think that 'arming citizens' helps the whole. And the fact you think it's 'arrogant' to spell out a basic truth that the rest of the world understands is dumbfounding.
For literally nothing.
They are _avoidable_, that's why they are not overstated.
A school age child is nearly 200x more likely to die by suicide than from a school shooting. That's a tragedy. And that's _avoidable_. Which do you hear about more?
The attention and resources of society are limited. We would be better off allocating resources to bigger problems, but we don't. That's a tragedy.
The rest of the world doesn't have the school shooter problem.
It's fixable, and the fix is bleedingly obvious. There's no excuse.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jan/31/jose-oliva...
What I think would be helpful in the US is universal catastrophic insurance. Worst case scenario, you’re covered. If you want everyday health insurance, let people buy it or get covered if low income.
Many universal system use this type of coverage.
> However, the magnitude of the bankruptcy effect is much smaller than previously thought: we estimate that hospitalizations cause only 4% of personal bankruptcies among nonelderly U.S. adults, which is an order of magnitude smaller than the previous estimates described above.
I'm not convinced on this point. Over 90% of Americans have health insurance[1]. Sure, insurance might not cover every dime of every bill, but I can't imagine falling ill is an instant and universal cause for financial ruin like people claim.
Disclaimer: I've been lucky enough to not have to use my health insurance for anything serious. But I have had to use other kinds of insurance (car, home) and by and large it's been fine. We hear horror stories a lot because they're sensational and they sell well, but people continue to buy insurance because it actually does provide value.
[1]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26...
Insurance isn't equal to insurance. The car insurances in the US are the most comfortable in the world. Something happens, you're covered, the insurance pays. Not so in other parts of the world. You drive out of the parking lot scratch another car? It's considered normal in the US. Not so in Germany. You scratch someones car by accident? Anything is possible now.
Why compare apples and bananas? I had a surgery in Taiwan and worked in Healthcare in a couple of countries. I also had health insurance when I was working in the US and got hit by a car while on a bike.
And while the insurance and the other drivers car insurance paid for most, man you sure have to be careful that someone can tell the emergency not to take you to the wrong hospital.
Let's stop pretending there isn't something seriously wrong with the US healthcare system. If all stars align everything is fine, but just an MRI can take anything from 1000 to 2000 or more dollars depending on whether you have insurance or not. You don't have to pay the 2000 dollars if you know better, but it's basically like a bazaar where you have to bargain if your insurance hasn't done so already.
Germany was at that point in the 1920s(or sometime around that) actually. I'm not a fan of Germanies healthcare system, especially since it's such a huge chunk of an already low income, but all the issues you describe about other countries are mostly non issues in Germany.
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(18)30509-6/fulltex...
I am a much bigger believer in "the market" than most people. But the problem with the medical industry is that many / most things happen under serious time pressure.
The seriousness and imediatness of medical procedures means that competition and choice often do not get to play a role in your decision making. For many people in many circumstances, the MRI machine nearest them has a complete monopoly.
How do we bring the miraculous efficiency of the market to an industry where people often cannot make consenting and informed decisions? Its a very hard problem to solve.
This is where my question stems from I suppose. How well insured is the average American? How often do people get stuck at out-of-network care and how much does that cost?
The study you linked is very interesting. My main takeaway is that the average loss after 2 years is 92k, which is significant.
It doesn't seem like they control for employment status? Cancer and cancer treatment can often mean people are unable to work. So, medical bills or not, I could see keeping up with your mortgage and expenses getting near that figure.
There is also full car insurance in Germany: https://www.howtogermany.com/pages/vehicle-insurance.html
Studies looking at out of pocket costs for insured people show much lower figures: https://healtheconomicsreview.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
> The financial burden of cancer varies with the types and coverage of health insurance. An analysis of the 2010–2014 MarketScan data showed that an average patient with employer-provided plan had incurred about $7000–$11,000 OOP expenses over 4 years following diagnosis for a series of care that worths $100,000–$280,000.
Another report: https://www.forbes.com/sites/arleneweintraub/2017/08/10/even...
> More than one-third of cancer patients who carry insurance spend more out-of-pocket for their treatments than they anticipated having to pay. Among those who report being blindsided by the costs of their therapies, the median monthly out-of-pocket expenditure is $703.
Among the one third of people who report being surprised by out of pocket costs, the median payment is $703 per month, or about $8,500 annually. That’s a lot, and it can be surprising. But The median individual income for someone 45-55 is $80,000. That’s about 11% of income, or smaller than the difference in the tax wedge between the US and Sweden.
And to put that in context: out of the minority of people who get cancer, and the 1/3 of those people who report being surprised by out of pocket costs, the amount of out of pocket costs is about the same as what everyone with the median prime age US income would pay in extra taxes in Sweden every year even when healthy.
The median American household currently holds just $11,700 in savings. most people in usa would be ruined financially by a serious sickness where each day at the hospital alone could be up to $5000.
Those news stories about people being ruined, are in the news exactly BECAUSE they are unusual.
The policy problem is that to adequately cover the lower-middle class you would need to substantially raise taxes on the upper-middle class, which pay anomalously low tax rates in the developed world. And the upper-middle class in the US quite enjoys their low tax rates. (While often focused on, the upper class often pays aggregate tax rates in places like California and New York that are more in line with Europe.)
When I see the costs of an operation in America, they just do unnecessary operations, because they can earn extra money. When your argument is "most people won't go broke", that is a really fucked up statement.
Medicare ( that the current administration is trying to slash) is a partial fix for a very expensive and failed system.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/press-release/2018/new-surv...
If a cancer related, life-saving surgery takes 4-5 months to happen before you can have it, I'm not sure it really matters if it ends up being free or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/10/nhs-england-...
> Over 18,000 suspected cancer patients a month in England are now not getting to see a specialist or starting their treatment within prescribed timescales, NHS England’s latest performance data has revealed.
That's literally what is written in the article. People who wait several months to get a necessary CT or imagery before they can decide to do anything about it. Some cancers can progress very fast in the space of a couple of months, it's basically the difference between life and death in some cases.
And not to mention if you're saddled with a particularly bad employer, they won't give you the time off to see the doctor in the first place.
Meanwhile there are companies in Canada that help Canadians get their MRI's in the US because it's so slow there. And clinics near the border advertise in Canada.
I've never had a problem with delays in large metro areas in california. I do recall hearing Boston was the worst big city to find a new doctor, supposedly due to Massachusetts' push have universal coverage.
I really don't understand why this myth persists. Ideological blinders or obstinate ignorance.
Grenades became much easier to get ahold of than handguns, which have had some weird effects, as they seem to have come to be used as intimidation between rivals.
The use has been dropping the last few years, and should hopefully be back to the pre "legalization" levels soon.
It's all certainly quite unfortunate, but the number of casualties are perplexingly low. It really seems that whomever it is that does these bomb/grenade attacks go out of their way to avoid people getting killed. Not that I understand why exactly, except that it seems to be about intimidation in the majority of cases.
I am in the US and go to good dentists and doctors, who are out of my insurance network incidentally, and they and the specialists they refer me to can easily have three month waiting times.
Also Sweden has been following the US lead of cuts and privatization since the 1990s, often led by the Social Democrats. It's a great strategy for the idle class - push through public health spending cuts due to costs, then bemoan the inevitable wait times as reason to privatize.
The only way to speed up the process would have been to pay cash to a specialist who doesn't accept any insurance, which would be a $350 consultation then $250-350/hr each visit after the fact.
Welcome to the magical universal healthcare.
I've waited 6 months to see a specialist here in the US. The fact is that countries with universal healthcare have shorter wait times than the US does[1], and they manage to cover all of their citizens.
[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
If I was willing to go to any specialist, I could have seen one pretty quickly.
It isn't just the mental health field. I have a colleague with a daughter who needed an addiction specialist, and that was another 6 month waiting list. People die waiting on those lists.
Public healthcare works way better in Australia, I went home and saw a doctor there, got to see a doctor straight away, got scans & referral etc within a week.
Other expats have told me I should go to Germany or the UK if I urgently need health care
This in the US would probably have meant a bankruptcy for someone in his income bracket.
The system is not perfect but after living in the US for 13 years I can tell you you never worry about health care here.
Edit: Nobody mentions you can also pay extra and visit a specialist right away! The wait is if you want the visit for the government price: 12 dollars for initial visit, 30 dollars for a specialist.
As a Swedish entrepreneur with 2 exits under my belt and a startup in progress, nothing boils my blood more than bullshit like this. You want to encourage entrepreneurs? stop making up bullshit laws and initiatives that does nothing but fuck us over every single day.
Initiatives like this have the exact opposite effect of how they´re advertised as I´ve personally experienced first hand. Yet somehow all you read about is the outgoing PR of how great this place is, when in fact it is a god awful place to conduct business in. Heck just living here is becoming a nightmare as of late.
It´s time to move on from this shit hole to somewhere more welcoming. Too bad the US immigration system is a clusterfuck regardless of how much money you´re willing to throw at it.
</rant>
As requested here is an example: Lets take the "Right to Leave to Conduct a Business Operation Act" or "maternity leave". In both of cases if you work at an early stage startup and exercise your right to take a leave (paid or otherwise), I as an employer have to hold on to that position for the duration of the entire leave of absence. In the case of maternity leave (~1.5 year of paid leave) for instance, I have to hold that position open for you as an employee. The last startup I was involved in had a female employee that was there for about 6 months and then left work for ages before returning, and then "somehow" in an "unplanned manner" managed to quit a few weeks after. Zero work experience, have to hold the spot open for her, have to hire expensive replacement consultants for the duration of the leave which could be extended at any point and I am also obligated to provide benefits to the workers that come in as temporary replacement at a higher cost???? All of that without having the right to fire or suspend said person.
Imagine being 1 out of 6 employees and you just vanish, leaving behind everything for the company to pick up by having to hire a secondary person as a consultant for far more money, giving them those same benefits while keeping your position open. Startups cannot afford these costs period. Not every startup enjoys the millions of SV dollars. Our bootstrapped startup almost went under because of employee benefit payments for people who were not even showing up to work and we cannot fire by law.
This is beyond sinister and it isnt done to protect employees, it is merely done to extract the maximum amount of value from companies at all stages so that the state can afford to deliver on its never-ending promises of "FREE EVERYTHING".
One of my best friends have had a full salary for the last 5 years and have not worked a single day. Who pays for that do you reckon? and in what world is that fair to the rest of us?
- You couldn't fire somebody who went on maternity leave
- You had to provide benefits to your employees, even temporary ones
Seems like the laws are working to protect employees as intended to me.
Also, tech salaries are quite high -- as a consultant, you make more than in London at least.
You think I am talking shit? well... I studied in the US and worked as a program director for a technical University based in Stockholm whose sole job was to output developers into the market in line with what all the hundreds of CTOs that I interviewed required.
Trust me when I say this, that article you linked to is pure PR bullshit. You can find the same article written about Paris, London, Berlin, etc. It´s all PR bullshit that people spin in order to attract foreign capital.
> Also, tech salaries are quite high -- as a consultant, you make more than in London at least.
at some point you ought to realize that what you´re saying is bullshit, and this sentence should have tipped you off to the fact that you´re talking out of your ass.
The article might or might not be bullshit, but there's a lot of highly valued tech companies per capita in Sweden, and I know for sure the consultant prices aren't bullshit as I've worked for quite a long time as just that. I'm usually not the kind of person that "talks out of my ass".
I work closely with developers from both the US and Sweden, and this hasn't been my experience at all. If anything it's been the reverse.
What I can say though is that developers from Asian countries leave a lot to be desired. Which is funny as you've outsourced jobs to Vietnam.
At some point you ought to realize that what you're saying is bullshit too.
My previous startup was a tech one. The current one that is in Vietnam is for production and manufacturing of physical goods. The parts I moved to Vietnam are the manufacturing parts and the parts that moved to Eastern Europe are the tech parts where you can a lot more value for much less.
So no I am not talking shit, you just dont know enough about my specific case to judge it, yet somehow you have managed to do just that.
The only technical university in Stockholm is KTH, I believe - is that what you're talking about?
> whose sole job was to output developers into the market in line with what all the hundreds of CTOs that I interviewed required
That's not how a university's role is usually seen.
Academia is a fraud, but to the extent that it produces useful employees it is at least socially justifiable.
This was essentially the whole point of my original post about consultants. But people dont get this. After all taxes are paid, you get something like 375-475sek/h if even that as this is the above average level of salary.
Compared to when I lived and worked in London, this is a joke. That´s before factoring in cost of living relative to income. You live a much better life in London than you do in Sthlm for instance so I am not sure where you got that last part from. Especially if you consider how massively fucked the Krona is right now
You're also going to pay taxes being self-employed in the UK, and whether you prefer London over Stockholm is subjective; what you need to consider is the cost of real estate mainly vs statistical incomes, rather than anecdotes.
Regarding how "massively fucked" the Krona is, check this chart: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=SEK&view=5Y
Perfectly doable of course, for someone into tech. But just to put things into perspective.
Why would you need to earn 3x as much?
So yea, looks like the laws are working as intended... amirite?
I wonder if Estonia is okay for startups?
In my city the IT sector unemployment is around zero point something figures, meaning it's quite difficult to find new qualified workers. I've even heard about cases of French and Belgian citizens moving to Eastern Europe to work in IT. It sounds crazy.
Frankly I welcome companies to try and outsource their work. It almost never works out well because they pay garbage rates and get garbage code back. I have zero concerns about software jobs being outsourced.
Anyhow, I agree. Seems like the laws are actually working as intended as I have started to outsource to Asia. Your laws did wonders to protect the workers which they were "intended to help". Man this is way to fucking hilarious and sad at the same time.
From Sweden's point of view, the positions you have outsourced will be covered by a company which is willing to pay the price of access to the labor market in Sweden. Which is not unlike a tax.
Did you budget for Sweden's taxes in your startup? Not doing that and then posting a <rant> that you suddenly have to pay taxes and that the existence of the tax code forces you to outsource to Asia would be quite similar to your post here.
I recently went to a european country with similar laws and was talking to an american ex-pat woman running the tour I signed up for. She said when she first decided to stay a while in this country and started looking for jobs, people were asking her strangely personal questions like how serious she was with her boyfriend. Only after she took her maternity leave a few years later did she realize they were actually gauging how big a maternity leave risk she was going to be while not quite asking her that outright because that would be technically illegal.
The kicker is now she was running her own small tourist business, and she flat out said that she would think long and hard about hiring a woman in her 20's for the exact same reason. In this country she would have to pay a person taking maternity leave out of pocket for up to a year and the government would reimburse her a year or two after the person comes back. The issue was that for a small 3-4 person operation, losing a person for a year while paying whatever % of salary is a significant risk to the business -- she wasn't sure she could stay afloat while waiting for the government to reimburse her (plus this was a mediteranean government not known for german levels of solvency...)
None of this is to say any of this is right or just, but it's just a first-hand tourist story I got that shows it's difficult to create a system that works (at least if "works" is defined solely as "maximizing business growth"). Even if something is formally illegal doesn't mean it doesn't appear as some of the informal mental calculus, and an honest discussion about this would say "yes, these policies can impact business growth and have unintended consequences." The followup conversation no one in the US is willing to have, though, is should we really be fetishizing business growth above all else?
I found it valuable.
It sounds like you're one of those people who'd prefer smaller government too. Just like in the US.
I'm sorry but I'm just a bit shocked because I didn't think Swedes had lost their socialist spirit so much. Clearly you're a product of the Bildt era.
That freedom of choice he advocated in health care for example has already backfired multiple times where the end user/consumer has suffered.
Your vision of Sweden would only benefit yourself and your own kind, business owners and employers, in the long run.
Bullshit. It´s a way to purchase votes and generate tax $$ plain and simple. Workers lives are not bettered by crippling startups. That´s the EXACT opposite of what is true. You want more business rather than less so the worker have more choices to pick from and there is more competition for the labor of said worker which would enable him to get an even better life and living standard.
> I'm sorry but I'm just a bit shocked because I didn't think Swedes had lost their socialist spirit so much.
The fact that you´re shocked tells me all I need to know about how well this PR game has been played. Sweden isn´t "socialist". How many times do we need to repeat that? Just because a company has a state run safety net that does not mean that it is a socialist country. By that definition, every country is a socialist country. Your definition of socialism is pretty fucked. Read about the 90s and the restructuring of the Swedish economy post the Housing crisis for Christ sake. It´s like facts seem to magically get altered just because Bernie said so.
> Clearly you're a product of the Bildt era.
I wonder how many calories you burn a day by jumping into conclusions... and no I am not. Not even close. I am merely an observer of two contradicting messages that are being put on display: 1) Sweden is one of the best places for startups, and 2) startups are burdened unlike any other country I have been to or read about. I cant personally square that circle and pointing that out does not make me a "product of Bildt" era, as if that actually means anything...
> That freedom of choice he advocated in health care for example has already backfired multiple times where the end user/consumer has suffered.
1. Dafuq does that have to do with anything?
2. ah I see, you categorized me as a "Bildt follower" just so you can assassinate me by association. Noice! Well played but... naah try again. That shit doesn´t fly here.
3. if "freedom of choice" backfires for some reason, then freedom ought to be suspended in favor of centrally planned alternatives? give me a break, not even real socialist doctors (not your kind of quasi-socialist) would accept that premise.
4. You want to talk about consumer suffering? Open up the USD/SEK or EUR/SEK chart and see what the currently lovely policies have done to the consumer.
>Your vision of Sweden would only benefit yourself and your own kind, business owners and employers, in the long run.
Sadly enough, That´s the exact opposite of what I am trying to achieve because if we keep on going the way we currently are, Sweden will be a graveyard a few decades from now. A businessman ALWAYS wants a strong and rich consumer so that he in turn can make money off of said consumer. My goal is to enrich the consumers of society not reduce their wealth. But then again, I can´t expect logic to come easy to a sophist.
> Your vision of Sweden would only benefit yourself and your own kind
Please don't cross into personal attack. It helps nothing and provokes worse, and I"m sure you can make your substantive points without it.
Have a main company that does stuff, which hires subcontractor subsidiaries. They have one employee each.
Then, when she took maternal leave, you could just have liquidated the subcontractor - problem solved.
> You can't just claim that the people that are effectively your employees are simply contractors.
No, they are the employees of my subsidiary. They are entitled to all of the protections of labour law, including all the maternity leave and all that. If the subsidiary goes out of business, too bad. That's what they're for.
Calling for us to point to a certain paragraph of a certain law is not really fair, because we're generally not lawyers here. Can you instead explain why all companies are not structured the way you suggest. Because all managers are idiots, or because they've realized that it's not legally sound?
In America, people have a long and proud tradition of coming up with Byzantine workarounds for laws. In Europe, not so much.
I can't prove a negative, but you can prove a positive.
The company hiring the subcontractor would run a high risk of being classified as the employer despite the intermediate company.
That’s unfortunate but that’s what you need to handle if you are an employer. You know the rules when you start a company and when you hire someone. There are some exceptions in place for smaller employees too.
Competition means that successful companies that survive are those that manage to cope with such terrifying things as employees going on parental leave.
I’m not sure how you ended up managing a company with several employees while seeming surprised by the labor laws in the countries where it operates?
100%, and we managed because I had taken into account all of that stuff. But people cant claim that this place is great for business while exposing startups to these massive risks.
> I’m not sure how you ended up managing a company with several employees while seeming surprised by the labor laws in the countries where it operates?
Plenty of these laws came to me personally as a shock because it isn´t really easy to know all of your obligations ahead of time especially when there are thousands of things to take into account.
It saddens me to say this but every time I hire someone I have to put aside 125% of their salary aside for both employer taxes as well as a "rainy day fund". Imagine claiming that such a place is business friendly. That´s my beef, nothing else.
You can't answer if that is unreasonable unless you compare to other countries. As an example, in the US you would have to also pay for health insurance. And if the employee were to get sick they might still not see a doctor immediately because of the premiums, leading to further time off.
No actually you can’t fire the small employees either. It’s quite disturbing really. :P
I somehow doubt this is the full story. Would you mind going into a bit more detail?
https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_bar...
But what´s your point? it could be one cent on the dollar, that does not change a thing for me as a business owner though. It isnt the money that is the primary problem even though it is a problem.
I’ve been on parental leave myself and my small employer hired a replacement, and by the time I got back we were both needed because they ran a successful and expanding business.
The reality is somewhere in the middle. Generally in Northern Europe, excluding UK, you have a history of huge (monopolistic) companies that dominate the economy. So you end up with labour policies that reflect that...which is kind of terrible for the way the world is going. If you could take the job market flexibility and social policy without the freeloading, that would be something...I am not sure anyone has done this. And btw, this model would bring the US to its knees. It will be interesting to watch if it occurs...but I also hope it doens't.
It’s equally true that these laws may not create a great climate for small tech startups.
I don’t think there is an easy answer to how to liberalize the labor market without it damaging large groups of blue collar workers (which would make it politically impossible). Denmark has an interesting model where employment security is weaker but in return the safety net is better. I think this is where Sweden could be headed as well.
There are countries in the world other than the United States and Sweden. Also why should any country have an obligation to open their doors just because you're willing to throw money at them?
That aside, one of my Canadian friends spent a year in Chile creating a startup because the Chilean government paid a good chunk of his living expenses in an effort to bootstrap their tech entrepreneur scene. There are many interesting options around the world of you seek them out.
Yea not none is really pro business the same way as the US is unfortunately. Also the US offers multiple states with multiple jurisdictions so you can decide for yourself what level of regulation you are willing to tolerate and move accordingly. That´s like 50 countries in 1 :D
Also, no one has to open up their doors. I am just personally disappointed because I want to work hard and prosper in a place that is pro-business that speaks English. I have considered moving to Asia for a long time but I dont think that I´d enjoy living there.
> That aside, one of my Canadian friends spent a year in Chile creating a startup because the Chilean government paid a good chunk of his living expenses in an effort to bootstrap their tech entrepreneur scene. There are many interesting options around the world of you seek them out.
I tried South America for a while. It didnt work for me as I dont speak the language and English isnt very dominant at times. So I´d need a year or two to learn the language before I can even get started in a place like that.
Anyone who has a run a small business knows how hard it is to turn 50c to $1, and how easy it is for the democrats/socialists to take it away.
Shouldn't it be the choice of the employees what they do with their unpaid time off?
I can't find any evidence for this. According to wiki[1]: "Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: China (125), United States (121), India (27), South Korea (11), UK (10), Israel (7), Sweden (5), Indonesia (5), France, Hong Kong (3), Portugal (3), Switzerland (3), Australia (2),Estonia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Singapore (4), Ukraine (2), and thirteen other countries (1 each)."
Smells like propaganda to help the stagnating innovation in europe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_compan...
First time I see that perspective. Could you develop, and explain why you think the World Economic Forum would do something like this?
Someone in the group may have had a meeting with someone from the city of Stockholm either public or private, which gave them the impetus or idea to talk about how they've been successful.
The author of the post, 'Sean Fleming' is a journalist from the UK with a background in PR, more than likely he's hired to 'write stuff' that is favourable to the WEF, and so this seems like a neat thing to talk about.
Basically, it's PR. There's nothing wrong with it, but that's what it is.
I'm doubtful that anyone in such a position is paid remotely enough to go really in-depth and to discover the underlying correlational factors such as the effect of very high taxes, or the real productive measures of '6 months off'.
It's just a little note from the WEF on how Sweden might possibly have some interesting differentiating thing.
And I love Soundcloud, but what are you talking about?
Startups mostly profit from access to homogenous large consumer markets and extreme clusters. Neither has ever been the goal of German economic development, largely because it's incompatible with the sort of cultural values German's consider important.
[1] https://hbr.org/1992/03/lessons-from-germanys-midsize-giants
I don't think that reducing a country or an econonomy to a single metric (here: gdp, I guess?) is the right approach; we are looking at very complicated systems here. One thing that makes Germany unique is its Mittelstand-phenomena [0].
Historically, innovation isn't driven by wealth, but by pressure, see: times of war, or the US' "make it big or die"-mentality.
Germans are very well off: cabs in every village are high-end mercedes models (suggesting that the entire society is rich), and social security is simply unmatched globally (afaik, no other country pays you 400eur+rent until you find a job, no matter how many years it takes).
Growing up in this environment, I never felt incentivized to come up with ways to become super-rich (which is the idea behind being an entrepeneur, isn't it?). Theres just no point to that hustle if you can live a really decent life working a normal job.
Sure, there is some class struggle (and there always was), but generally speaking, people just don't need to "make it" on their own - opposed to the US, where status is everything)
It's driven by both. New hypotheses get generated in times relative wealth, when people can afford not to default to the availability bias of ideas that exist already.
Pressure for success results in the selection of the more optimal hypotheses available to put into action. Much of the science and tinkering that led to wartime technology used in the world wars, for example, was done during non-war time.
If you place too much on the side of survival pressure, you will be over optimized for the short term, and likely generate fewer innovations.
If I use unicorns (parent post) per millions of population (figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio... - rounded up to nearest million .5 up - thus Estonia (1.3M has 1M in this calc, giving it 2 unicorns per Million people!))
Estonia 2.00
Israel 0.78
Singapore 0.67
Sweden 0.50
HK 0.43
USA 0.37
Portugal 0.30
SKorea 0.22
Belgium 0.17
UK 0.15
China 0.08
Australia 0.08
Canada 0.05
France 0.05
Ukraine 0.05
Germany 0.02
India 0.02
Indonesia 0.02
Sweden is forth in the list, with Estonia and Portugal as real surprises. Guess the effect of just one Unicorn / outlier is high but even so ... SV is clearly not the only way.
What's weird is every time I've brought it up, either my comment gets buried or a bunch of excuse makers jump in and say "it's not like that, it's just you..." Not until very recently have I noticed other people talking about the lovely EU propaganda and not getting buried.
The boss being forced to take me back?
The usefulness of this seems predicated on employment shortages (otherwise people don't need permission to leave).
You are asking on HN, so you are bound to be the kind of person who can go to Sweden, find work or continue to work remotely for your present employer or whatever, and settle into things and be welcomed.
The office language is often English, everyone speaks excellent English and everyone is happy to speak it. I know many immigrants in the IT sector who have picked up only the most basic Swedish despite years of living there; you can get by by just talking to absolutely everyone in English.
At least half of the programmers at offices I’ve seen are immigrants. They have a variety of reasons for going to Sweden, which usually seem to start with uni eg from the classic “met my wife-to-be when she was an exchange student” to “studied here, never went home” etc.
Now there’s an entirely different experience for the unskilled and refugees, but although there is an veiled racist vocal right wing, the real people, even those who live near flyktingboende, seem compassionate.
This is btw the case for immigrants in most places in the world, especially Asia. But because Sweden especially gets such a high reputation for being welcoming, I feel the need to contextualize.
Ha det gott.
A friend moved here from the states for a job, so he had the job ready before he came. He learned enough swedish to speak it daily within 2 years. No problem getting citizenship.
By comparison, moving to Germany was a breeze and I still have a valid German green card to this day. In retrospect, this is almost obviously true when you compare the demographics of both countries. Sweden is more homogenous than Germany by far despite offering social benefits that are substantially more valuable.
If you are coming on a work visa expect some difficulties. And if you do anything minor like not taking out all your vacation days you will lose your visa.
Basically, you can leave your job (unpaid) but your contract still holds, so you can get back to your job if things don't go as planned.
(Maybe not being paid is a factor?)
Such laws are generally not lawful in Europe. It certainly isn't here in Denmark, and I imagine it's the same in Sweden
I've had to insist on that clause being removed at a couple of places I've worked. As long as anything I build in my spare time (which I like to do a lot) isn't competitive.
That firm suggested that it was enforcable, and more so the closer your "invention" is to the business of your employee.
This, however, does not hold if your invention is patentable, since patentable inventions have special protection in Swedish law.
This is ironically not applicable to software, since we don't have software patents.
I dunno, but this just feels very strange. Sure the unicorns, but to call it the #1 startup capital in Europe? Something HAS to be better at this, Berlin perhaps?...
“Employers can only turn the request down if the employee is vital to the business’s operations. Also, your new idea can’t compete with your existing employer, nor cause them any significant inconvenience.“
No-one* uses this 6 month sabbatical for startup purposes.
Anyways whatever Sweden's PR people are getting paid, it's not enough.
Also you are still unpaid, all you get is job security. This is something im sure other companies would be cool with it if you are essential enough...
This might actually be true (that people are entitled to this) I guess, but you are correct that basically no one does.
They want to be called entrepreneurs - why would they not grow balls, take risk like proper entrepreneurs do and not hide behind socialist populist state?
Looks like a lot of people on HN have left-leaning views despite the name "HACKERnews"
The idea is basically that the idea of being forced to look for work, something that can be very draining, is keeping people from taking the chance. This law allows swedes to give their idea a shot without having the lack of job loom over their head.
> Looks like a lot of people on HN have left-leaning views despite the name "HACKERnews"
I'm not really sure what you mean with this. Can you not be a hacker/entrepreneur/developer and have left-leaning views and ideas? If that's the case I have a few friends that need to change their views or sell their companies.
And these friends are left-leaning Danes. So in essence, if you're American, you can generally compare their views to a slightly more "extreme" version of Bernie Sanders.
Looks infantile to me.
2. I would imagine entrepreneurs and even more business owners statistically should be right-leaning. Especially, when they start feeling how socialist government "loves" them ;)
3. yes, i was wrong. didn't think it through. hackers can be left leaning. probable today's hackers are naturally left-leaning from what i can see from the comments :)
"The problem with socialism is that it runs out of other peoples' money"
This makes absolutely no sense. Whats does being a hacker have to do with being leftist or rightist?
I just don’t see the magic in this or the extended parental leave
Why can’t any healthy functioning adult do the exact same thing on their own ?
is 6 months living expenses really holding back your entrepreneurial dreams?
This isn't even that. It's unpaid time. You're just guaranteed to be able to return to your existing job afterwards.
Because they know it would be very hard to be re-hired if things don't work out.
> is 6 months living expenses really holding back your entrepreneurial dreams?
No, for most people it's the thought of renouncing a guaranteed job. With this sort of thing, you know that there is a safety net if the business doesn't take off in 6 months.
Do people never change jobs in Sweden?
Unemployment rate is 6.6% in Sweden - is it that hard to find a job?
What is so hard about it?
Also, that are not getting paid during those 6 months in Sweden either. Don’t see the big deal here.