The "People's Home" Explained

This week I am posting a reworked text that I originally published on my Facebook page. I think the piece is warranted on this blog to explain the root causes of certain Swedish attitudes and socio-political concepts. For those of you who read it before - we will be returning to the normal Sweden Vs. the UK format as per next week. For the rest of you, particularly my non-Swedish readers, this text might be helpful in interpreting subsequent posts!

* * *

To make sense of the viciously polarized political climate of contemporary Sweden, with the centre-right coalition dramatically dubbed "The Alliance" governing, and the Greens, Social Democrats and the Left in opposition, it is necessary to consider the remarkable social and economic makeover the country underwent during the 20th century.

At the turn of the last century, Sweden was reaping the fruits of rapid industrialization, and was in the process of transforming itself from a poor agrarian economy into a wealthy manufacturing nation. The development of large scale manufacturing plants had generally been the result of lassiez-faire industrial policies at the end of the 19th century, and as a consequence both wealth and an urbanized workforce emerged to replace the hitherto dominant rural farming class.
The unions worked in close collaboration with the upcoming Social Democratic movement to institutionalize workers rights and improve working conditions. Initiated during the 1920's and 30's, an ambitious experiment in social engineering was undertaken with the outspoken aim of establishing a cradle-to-grave governing system dubbed "The Peoples Home". This was a large-scale socialistic project relying on planned economy, with a marginal tax eventually pushing well into the eighty-percent strata - legislation implemented to eradicate private wealth and foster a unified and equalized people.
Operating supply-side economics would at this point have strangled economic growth, had it not been for the passive stance taken visavi the aggressive German NSDAP which engaged in massive trade on the Swedish mineral ore market during the war.

As World War II came to an end, with Europe scrambling to rebuild, Sweden was the only remaining highly industrialized manufacturing economy, and was over the coming 20 years thus propelled from a wealthy nation into a super-rich nation-state. By the mid-sixties, Sweden clocked in as the per-capita wealthiest nation in the world.
As this wealth flowing through the Swedish economy was associated with the success of the Social Democratic leadership (a myth deftly propagated by the party and it's affiliate union-organisations) it came to establish itself as the dominant political force for the coming half-century.

As Europe rebuilt itself, and the heavy-handed labour-tax reduced competitiveness and saw ever-dwindling manufacturing returns, the cost of the ambitious well-fare reforms quickly became unsustainable. The first cracks in "The Peoples Home" became visible during the 1970's oil crisis, in which the isolated and depreciating Swedish currency saw energy costs soar, prompting a brief shift in goverment. As the Social Democratic hegemony continued, the oil crisis and the ensuing fragility of Swedens isolationistic economic model was felt, the blame could effectively be put on the opposition which remained out of power for more than a decade after.

In order to maintain the expansive well-fare programs of The Peoples Home under a dwindling GDP, the retirement funds set aside during the golden years of Nazi funding was mortgaged. Thus, straddled with an unsustainable economy, and an escalating future retirement-defeceit, the cracks in the system eventually became so severe that the currency stagnated. In the early 1990's this prompted another government shift, the Swedish Krona was put into flotation and immediately depreciated close to 30 percent.
Again, this dire state of the economy was played on the daddeling centre-right coalition, who were in power through support by the unsavory populists in "New Democracy" - a now-defunct political one-hit-xenophobic-wonder of the 1990's. Even as the Social Democrats regained power, the People's home was coming apart at the seams.

The economy was by necessity progressively liberalized, and in 1995 Sweden became a member of the European Union. As results of the gradual liberalization of the economy propagated through the system, the ideological mythos that it was the sudden onslaught of private enterprise that had killed the morally superior and solidaric model of The People's Home was fostered. Bent on reminiscing about the Glorious Years of the 1960's and early 70's, while deploying a social-conservative agenda under prime minister Göran Persson, the Social Democratic party became increasingly irrelevant for both it's own base who were demanding the financially impossible reinstatement of the Peoples Home, and the opposition who thought them fiscally naive and backwards. The Social Democrats lost power altogether in 2006.

At this stage, a generation had grown up in the last days of the people's home, and reached maturity in a pan-european market economy. This dual experience made the upholding of the Social Democratic cosmogony increasingly difficult, to the point of bringing about a country-wide cutural shift away from socialism altogether.

By the time Sweden held it's last general election in September 2010, the Social Democrats had been so weakened that they had to pin their hopes of regaining power on a coalition with the Left party and the Greens.  Wary of faltering big-government projects, many speculate that partnering with the Left party - a fringe movement with its roots in Communism - drove additional voters to abandon the Social Democrats in favor of the centre-right Alliance.

After an humiliating obliteration in the election with a worst-ever result, the Social Democrats were scrambling to reinvent and rejuvenate themselves. Dragging their feet in a bungled and archaic closed-doors intra-party selection process, a new party leader nominee - the face of rejuvenation - was finally presented: Håkan Juholt.

The face of rejuvenation

Juholt is the long-term and left-leaning small-town Social Democrat now tasked with making his party relevant again. Some speculate this will be a tough challenge indeed, as moving the party further to the right would fashion them nothing more than a light-alternative to the centre-right coalition, and going further left might alienate more of their working base.

The erratic flip-flopping of Juholt during the early stages of the NATO-led intervention in Libya further damaged the credibility of a potential Juholt-led administration, which at the moment of writing generally is interpreted by the media as a government that could end up anywhere politically. A lack of media training has seen Juholt's bumbling shadow exchequer Tommy Waiderlich deliver gaffe after gaffe eagerly pounced on by scandal-thirsty tabloids - in stark contrast to the grave and professionally presented sitting exchequer Anders Borg. As the greens has initiated a process of distancing themselves from the Social democrats, Juholt will need to find new friends very quickly indeed in order to deliver an electable platform in time for the next election.

Recognising the democratic value of a well-organised opposition, many have expressed concerns that the Moderates, the dominant party within the Alliance-coalition, might become lodged and identified with the state in the same way as the Social Democrats were before them.

Being reduced to representing chiefly immigrants, the undereducated and unemployed, one might argue that reminiscing about the golden years of the People's home might strengthen the Social Democrats hold of their dwindling base - but one may be entitled to ask by what standard it is appropriate to consider financially unhinged nostalgia as reinvention - and if this really is the right kind of rejuvenation when Juholt bashes Twitter as an irrelevant fad?

Interestingly, Sweden's largest daily just ran a story that corroborates my point. The first link is to the Swedish original text, the second is an English Google translated version which is intelligible and hilarious in parts. If anything requires explaining in English, please use the comments section and I will do my best to oblige!

http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/socialdemokraterna-cirkus-juholts-nya-forestallning 

English version

UPDATE:

Here is another article on the same topic:

http://www.dn.se/ledare/huvudledare/klasskamp-utan-segrare

The procurement and consumption of alcohol

Line up, citizen.

The uniformed government official sneered at me, her face conveying a mixture of bewilderment and disgust:

-"What do you mean, 'special wines'?"

-Um, well, something not on the shelves right here. A Chablis, not a petit, but Chablis proper?
 I gestured down the shelf lined with bag-in-box products and sloppy Chardonnays.
(I had already abandoned asking for a Grand or even Premiere Cru. To think I had figured myself flexible not wanting a specific year or wineyard just a few seconds ago now seemed hubris bordering on insanity)

-We only have what's on the shelf.

Crowds were pushing past us on both sides, desperately filling their plastic shopping baskets with sub-par Merlot in cardboard containers equipped with plastic taps. Stench of Friday-afternoon sweat mingeled with the odd fuming alcoholic trying to minimize his cost-per-unit with superstrong canned lager.

-Oh... How can I obtain a more specific product?

-Order it in advance.

-Uh. I'm having friends over this evening. Is there another establishment that... never mind.

Her eyes were shooting deathrays saying "you should have thought of ordering your snobby swig well in advance, moron" but she said nothing and went back to re-stocking the emptying shelves with massive cardboard boxes labelled "Chill Out Wine".

I thanked her, turned around pushing through the ever-increasingly dense crowd - looking for a second at the crude Champagnes boiling on the shelf - wishfully imagining a frosty chilled Krug, somehow by accident a trapped treasure amidst endless filth - before fleeing the whole disgusting establishment empty-handed.

* * *

Had this been the end of my adventure this afternoon, it would have been an unfair reflection of the "Systembolag" (etymology for me unknown) - the Swedish state-run monopoly that controls all sales of alcoholic beverages since 1955.



Later the same afternoon I happened upon a second "Systembolaget" outlet, this time in the comparatively up-scale shopping-mall "Hansacompagniet" in central Malmö. The uniformed government officials were very knowledgeable and helpful at this time, and they also carried several of the Grand Cru's I had been looking for - and this at rather competitive prices, even considering the prohibitive tax on alcohol in Sweden. There certainly is a tangible economy of scale involved when the Swedish government procures wine, a saving that in some cases gets passed on to the consumer.

In the Western Harbour where our Swedish flat is located - an ambitious newly built seaside residential area - there is no Systembolaget. As none of the local shops are allowed to carry alcoholic beverages there is no option for us but to travel into town and visit one of the government approved venues if we wish to shop for wines in Sweden.
Attracting a relatively well-capitalized demography, the Western Harbour area would surely sustain several purveyors of fine wines, but the aim of Systembolaget is not to cater for accessibility, but rather the opposite: the official purpose of the Systembolag is to make people consume less alcohol - by making it difficult to obtain.

The Systembolag outlets all close promptly at 6pm, and have only recently taken to keeping open a few hours during the Saturdays. There is no option for picking up a bottle of bubbly on a whim a Saturday evening - it all needs to be planned in advance. This has produced an unbecoming culture of hoarding and keeping close tabs on who is drinking who's wine at parties - you will generally not find Swedes bringing a bottle of wine to a party and putting it out on a table for anyone to sample, but generally people keep track of their own drink and watch carefully that it does not run down somebody else's gullet.

This is not because Swedes are selfish (they aren't), but because if they run out of alcohol during the weekend, there is no way of restocking the supplies. This paired with the unsavoury binge-culture Sweden shares with the UK has created this peculiar behavioural pattern.

The aggressive infringement of personal freedom imposed by the Systembolag is officially justified if not by health-care costs associated with alcohol abuse, then by the poor battered wife's that would be the inevitable consequence of selfishly wanting to obtain a Laurent-Perrier on a whim a Saturday evening.

Rather than allocating resources to dealing with the causes of addiction and abuse, the Swedes voted themselves a system that will punish the whole population based on the situation of the destitute fringe.

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this whole complex, is how many Swedes, clearly in some depraved form of Stockholm-syndrome, has come to defend the humiliating situation they have put themselves: Arguments on how "no private enterprise would be able to deliver the diversity of the Systembolag" are often bandied about - as if a multitude of local merchants would not best the selection of the single government entity.

"The Systembolag can push prices on quality brands!" - granted, a government carries more financial clout than the biggest of companies - but 1) Was not the object of this institution to limit accessibility? and 2) Is there not an alarming risk that the massive orders placed by the government slants the market in favour of certain brands? Indeed there was a very controversial corruption scandal exposed in 2003 in which various heads of departments had taken to accepting lavish gifts from various producers to win them lucrative purchase orders for massive quantities of their produce.

To the proponents of the Systembolag, I would like to suggest the idea of maintaining the beloved Systembolag, but getting rid of the unflattering monopoly inasmuch as letting qualified retailers apply for licence to sell wine and beer. With all the fine qualities constantly voiced on behalf of the Systembolag I am sure it would do just fine on the open market.

* * *

In the UK, as in most of the rest of the democratic world, picking up a bottle of wine is an entirely undramatic affair. Off-licenses are allowed to sell alcohol over the counter until 11pm every night and although increased taxes on alcohol is sometimes discussed as a tool for limiting over-consumption, the Brits are in general doing just fine.

As on any open market, you will be able to find retailers covering every brand and price-level, and there is none of the scarcity implied to be the result of an absence of a Systembolag. In fact, accessibility is much better - both in terms of selection and availability. Those then voicing concerns of over-consumption ought to look at care and educative solutions rather than arrogantly imposing restrictions on the population as a whole.

As for drink culture in Sweden and the UK - it is quite comparable. Among the undereducated over-consumption prevails, particularly among the young. Many a night have I passed Fulham Broadway listening to estate agents in their early twenties belt out insufferable interpretations of "Can't take My Eyes Off of You (I Love You baby)". Their Swedish counterparts generally sing less and do much less cocaine, but viewed as a sub-culture they are practically identical and drunk on very similar lager. Either way, the existence of the Systembolag has meant little in changing these drinking-patterns when restrictive Sweden is compared to the more liberal UK.

Sweden:
- It can be hard to locate a Systembolag with a decent selection in stock
- Monopolies breed corruption
- Extortionate price levels in bars, expect a basic Martini to run you £15
+ Economy of scale delivers a competitive Les Vaudesirs price point

UK:
+ Quality wine merchants abound
+ Easy access, a wide selection
+ Good value in cocktail lounges
- Slightly higher price-point for certain brands when compared to the Systembolag

Winner:
Who woulda thunk it? The UK wins this round fair and square.

Administration and bureaucratic efficiency

In dealing with English financial institutions much administration needs to be handled due to comprehensive money-laundering-laws - particularly when one is engaged in international trade. I recently had some assets temporarily frozen by a UK company as my identity-profile with them apparently was not complete.

The English percieve Identity-cards as an infringement of personal integrity - and perhaps rightly so, considering how the government kept losing vast amounts of sensitive data in the post - and even on public transport - during the Brown administration.

As there are no Identity cards, but still plenty of regulation that requires identification, you are generally required to bring a set of utility bills, bank statements and various other letters and paperwork with you to any dealings with banks, goverment or companies.

This is not only impractical, it is also quite a flawed method of establishing a persons identity as it is comparatively easy to forge statements of this kind. For those of us who insist on perfect records of any and all transactions, it is also cumbersome as these statements sometimes take a long time to obtain and deliver.

A change of address might require new papers to be handed in to prove that you indeed are the same person at the new address (a gas bill being the ultimate was of proving this, apparently) - but to get the new papers you need to get in touch with suppliers to have the address updated first. This requires a written letter (in which you just give the new address and sign it - as if this would somehow be a superior record of proof compared to an email). Once they have the written letter in hand, your address is updated. You must then wait for your next bill to arrive - which it might or might not do as addresses are often mistyped and your bills might never reach you. You may confirm a wrongly entered address by phone, but a new written letter will be required to amend it - and you will need to wait for a new bill to arrive. Once the bill, this pinnacle of identity-proof, is in your hand, you can go ahead and make physical photo-copies of it and begin distributing it via post to the relevant institutions. You are usually asked to send at least one physical, paper-bill and a paper bank statement along with photocopies of your passport or driver's licence.

Given I had gotten used to this order of things, I was dreading the process of de-frosting my assets with said company - but as it happened I was in Sweden at the time and I was told a swedish bank statement and national ID would be sufficient to cover their needs (nota bene - they do recognise ID cards, they just don't like to use them within the UK. To me, it is sort of like the Amish: They know telephones exist and successfully have made life easier for millions of people, they just choose to ignore them.)

I needed to update my address slip with my Swedish bank and have them produce a bank statement with the new address on it. I pictured signing letters going back and forth, but as I walked into my Swedish bank office this is what transpired:

-I'd like to update my address information please. How do we go about
getting this process started?

-ID?

I presented my ID-card.

-New address?

I stated the address.

-Allright, all done. Would you like a statement too?

-Yes, how soon can you post it?

-Post? I can email it to you now or send it to your phone. Do you mean
you want a printout?

-Yes please!

-There you go. Have a nice day!

It is hard to describe the exhilirated satisfaction I felt from the civilised and expedient production of this piece of paper - as this process will be completely normal and expected for Swedes - but for a long-term resident of the UK this is mind blowing efficiency. Over the years I have been forced into disputes with almost every branch of the general infra-structure of the UK. Telecommunication-companies, Mobile phone companies, Travel companies, Insurance companies, The Passport authority, the HMRC and our local Council.  This is not because of some sort of masochistic belligerence on my part, but a process the English take for granted: to get your phone connected, you will need to allocate a few days to keep the providers from doing all the wrong things. To prevent your mail from suddenly being delivered to a random sewer after a change of address, expect to spend a week on the phone with a call centre sprawling the entirety of the Indian subcontinent. Et cetera.

During my early years in London, I would confused and dismayed bring up these experiences with my English friends as I naively assumed I might be the victim of the worst customer service conspiracy in the western world - only to be met with a laconic "yes, it can be a real nightmare."

We need to understand that we are not talking about the weather or the laws of physics here - these are mechanisms for human interaction - processes devised and implemented to solve certain normal and commonplace problems. If the process does not work, it needs to be evaluated and changed so that performance and efficiency is improved. Regrettably the processes rarely change or improve, although the whole of the system is littered with annoying inspections and customer surveys.

Instead of long and boring recapitulations of the dozens of absurd interactions of this kind I have had, I will present a light-hearted piece of fiction which I think may serve as a juxtaposition of my experiences in general. This is what I think might be the English equivalent of the above related interaction with the bank:

-I'd like to update my address information please. How do we go about
getting this process started?

-What information?

-My address, the one you send my statements to?

-Have you looked at our website? I think you do it on there.

-Can't we just do it now?

-Wait please, I need to speak to someone. (Brings manager)

-How can I help you Sir? (manager)

-He wants to change his bank details right now. (clerk)

-I'd like to update my address information please. How do we go about getting this process started? (me)

-If you go to www.thebank.com and log in, under My Pages you can request a form that you print out and post to us.

-Can't we just do it now?

-Wait a moment Sir (manager goes to the back. Clerk smiles and looks bored)

Brings another manager.

-He wants to update his details here in the office (manager 1)

-Do you have the detail amendment form? (manager 2)

-No, but if you bring it I will be happy to fill it out. (me)

-He's not logged on to the website (clerk)

-I'll get you the form printed out Sir (manager 1 walks to the back)

-Do you have two separate forms of ID with you? (manager 2)

-I have a passport, a bank statement and a swedish national ID.

-I can't accept the bank statement as that is what we are changing. Do you have any other proof of address with you?

-Of course, I always carry 5 years of book-keeping records with me in
a trolley. No, I do not!

Manager 1 returns with the form.

-Take this home (manager 2 hands over form), fill it out and make
copies of your gasbill and passport and post them to us. Would you
like me to give you the address - it's on our website...

-I'll print it out for you now, Sir (clerk prints homepage without address)

-You can also find the form on our website, if you go to www.thebank.com and log in, under My Pages there is a section where you can print it out. (manager 2)

-How long will it take to update the details? I need a bank statement with the new address on it. (me)

-I can't say, usually 5 to 7 business days. Do you need a bank statement printout? That will be £10 for each extra statement. I can make one for you now if you'd like.

-With the new address? (me)

-The statement will have whatever is currently in our system.

-How will I know when my details are updated in the system?

-When you get your next bank statement it should be on there.

-Try to work with me here. I need this to happen as soon as possible. If I post the forms you request, that will take 3 days, then you need 5 to 7 days for processing, which pushes us into next month, which means the next statement will reach me around six weeks from now. Can we get this done quicker?

-One moment Sir (manager 1 is irritated while manager 2 goes on the phone. The clerk looks uncomfortable)

-We can arrange a meeting with a bank manager for next week, you can then bring the paperwork and pay the fee for a printout, but we have to send it in the post as the system takes up to 36 hours to reflect changes to your details. There will be a 75p postage fee too. Shall I go ahead and set up this meeting?

-No, that is fine, I will just kill myself instead, thank you.

Sweden:
+ Efficient
+ Modern
-Big brother really is watching

UK:
- Staggeringly inefficient
- Backwards
+ Nigh on impossible for big brother to do anything except look at his CCTVs.

Winner:
A massive victory for Sweden which makes the UK feel like a juvenile kafka-esque nightmare.