Why did welfare in Sweden begin to be dismantled from the 70s?- Can everyone get a job?
- How do we give people housing?
- The climate - how do we save it?
- Feel good in a challenging society, okay?
The newly published book "Survival – for society and people” wants to spark discussion about society and life. Read the review by Lars Gahrn, file. dr. in history, covered.!
The international right represented by the bourgeois government in Sweden in the 1970s manipulated the national accounts to make it look as if Sweden could not afford welfare and full employment. They succeeded with the help of national economist Assar Lindbeck Point by point, the author shows in the book how left-wing social democracy is necessary for a well-functioning and prosperous Sweden and the surrounding world. The author also talks about his burnout as a result of the increased pace at the end of the 90s. Then he reminds that man is fallible by nature and that we cannot legislate on matters of detail.
The book also tells about how one can to some extent increase one's well-being and reduce one's stress, despite the fact that we live in a very demanding austerity society.
Are you curious?
It is a way of looking at how the positive development was broken. There are others.
Alice Amsden points out how the developed countries discovered that several non-European countries were becoming their competitors, and deliberately took care to break their economies, including by raising the interest rates on their loans (Amsden: Escape from empire).
Susan Strange points out how the US broke the Bretton Woods agreement that had sustained the boom by refusing to redeem the dollar for gold. That is, in practice, by pushing the dollar to a falling rate, push the costs of the Vietnam War on other countries. Which led to the UK also breaking the rules by abolishing all rules for the banks in order to attract all the financial industry to London. Then the wild west was loose (Strange: Mad money).
Carlota Pérez points out that the boom was due to the entire society being rebuilt for the new industrial products that the assembly line made possible to spread to everyone. Primarily motor vehicles and household appliances. However, this could not be sustained for any length of time. sooner or later the market became saturated, and pure speculation took over with the accumulated capital that could no longer be used productively (Pérez: Technological revolutions and financial capital).
José Gabriel Palma connects to this and believes that behind the neoliberal policy was the industry that did not want to give up the favored role, mainly the car-oil complex, with the help of the financial industry. For them, neoliberalism was a way to rein in the state, which could otherwise have found a new industry to benefit and rebuild society for (Palma: The revenge of the markets on the rentiers).
You can certainly find other angles on it. To only highlight the price of oil is to make it too easy for oneself. To bring about a new golden era something big is required, Carlota Pérez has a proposal: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-to-make-economic-crisis-creative/
Whatever the precise reasons for the abandonment of Keynesianism following the oil crisis of the 1970s, there may be complementary aspects, economic statistics from the period show that GDP was higher, growth was higher and employment was higher during the oil crisis despite stagflation than when neoliberalism increased the owners' and top officials' financial share of the production outcome from the late 1970s. Most research indicates that we can afford social democracy. Or that it is social democratic economics that makes society work. The authors and books you refer to or that the car industry wanted to prevent the development of a new major product that could replace car production as the engine of the economy do not contradict my thesis. The book's thesis that Keynesianism is still extremely important for a well-functioning economy holds true. We may not need to go back to the tax level of the 70s, but the tax level between 2000-2006 was quite good if you make some minor modifications to make it easier for small house owners and income earners with salaries below 35-40 a month. The ISK tax was also good for facilitating share trading. But the ISK tax could be supplemented by a Tobin tax on monetary transactions to offset the tax loss of the introduction of the ISK tax.
You are absolutely right. The development after 1980 has been miserable on all levels - except for East Asia which has not followed the neoliberal recipe (see Amsden, or Yi Wen who has written a fun book about how the Chinese copied the US's 1800th century politics: The making of an economic superpower).
However, I think Keynes does not have the whole solution. He is too short-sighted - "in the long run we are all dead". The Chinese follow other guiding stars, e.g. Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List, who emphasize that production and productivity are more important than business, and that you have to build for the long term.
As we ourselves did right up until 1980, possibly with a little slack towards the end.
But Keynes emphasizes how production/productivity as much as possible only that this cannot continue without the actors of society having money.