The World Does Not Wait?

I'm reading the Regeringsförklaring of Reinfeldt 2009 and the book Världen Väntar Inte by Gunnar Hökmark (free on his blog). Reinfeldt is using the expression "when the turnaround comes" which in Hökmark's opinion would be dangerous. Waiting is no good. However, Reinfeldt is also using the expression "work ourselves out of the crisis". Much better according to Hökmark.

I find one paragraph in particular in the Regeringsförklaring that joins the two texts:

"If welfare is part of our earthly workday, it is sometimes said that International Politics is its opposite. Despite this, the financial crisis has demonstrated that we belong together on Earth. Our actions have effects on others. Contemplating the Nation State no longer provides all the answers."

If I have understood Hökmark's book correctly, it is an attempt to place Sweden in the world of today. It is all about these capital flows.

The core of welfare, which Reinfeldt discusses thoroughly, depends of how the industry and research in Sweden fares internationally. Hökmark mentions that we now are in the second wave of globalization. We will have to do the things we did but preferably a little better in a world where two new civilizations, India and China, start to compete on basically our skill level. Earlier, in the first wave, we bought inexpensive gadgets and sold expensive tools and skills.

There should be no problems with this using the same thinking as the US when they started up Japan and Germany after World War II. Arguably this worked much better than the penalty scheme used after World War I against Germany and we have now had peace over a times pan that is long on the conflict scale in Europe. The more the merrier.

Hökmark provides an good discussion on the situation on research and development in the EU compared to the US, Japan and China. China already spends as much as EU as percent of GDP which is about half of that of the US and Japan. I remember reading an article in Le Monde by Romano Prodi, president of the EU Commission between 1999 to 2004, where he wrote that in Japan and the US they have 9 and 8 researchers per 1000 workers, respectively, whereas in the EU they only have 5. This article then is in sync with Hökmark's data. Hökmark think this depends on how universities are organized in Europe. Prodi called it a catastrophe. It is probably wise to try to follow China in these investments in the future so that we don't have to compete with Japan, the US and China unfavorably.

Reinfeldt points out that it is useful to think in terms of civilizations also when it comes to the environment and its protection. The EU only produces 14% of global exhausts. However, finding motivation for extinguishing all those coal fires in the middle of a financial crisis is probably going to be difficult.

With a larger total market than before it is going to be more difficult to be unique and therefore there is a lot of talk to stimulate entrepreneurism. An entrepreneur is apparently someone who starts a business with a creation. A new hairdresser in the neighborhood is not considered an entrepreneur. Following public education in the US there was at the second half of the 19th century a lot of entrepreneurs and the same was seen in the second half of the 20th century only now they where stemming from an army of PhDs. There is probably not going to be a third wave because the education is saturated at present. The number of entrepreneurs are then probably coming at the same rate so growth might be hard to come by.

The relative lack of growth in the Western civilization compared to India and China is of course frustrating to watch. Even more frustrating is that the so called GPI (genuine progress indicator) had not increased since the middle of the 1970s even if the GDP has. There is a lot of talk about the GDP measurement being useless as a progress indicator. My hope is that the Western civilization is going to try to introduce sustainability to improve matters and to lead into the next developmental stage of mankind. If China and India does not beat us on it?