In 1946, out of the army, out of a job, angry at the indifference of the job market with its inhumane “acceptable level of unemployment”, out of optimism, and scared for my starter family, I read a book about Sweden by a man named Marquis Childs called The Middle Way. He had written (in 1936) that Sweden had charted a political course, partway between capitalism and socialism, that seemed to offer promise. It had built on a labor-union-based political party and a strong co-op movement an extraordinary voting majority for a variety of social support programs. There were extremely high taxes, true, but the combination was said to have created a socially relaxed society in which citizens appeared to feel empowered, confident and secure; in short, a better system than the one I was enmeshed in.
The judgment of the world’s establishment economists was pretty nearly unanimous in pointing out to Mr. Childs, (patronizingly, he was after all just a newspaperman, not an accredited Wharton School graduate) that a full nanny state that set out to care for its citizens from cradle to grave (including child care for working parents, free education, free health care, guaranteed pensions and free state-run assisted living retirement homes), even combined with income taxes in the 50 percent range, could not possibly survive more than two or three years of dramatically unbalanced budgets, stifling bureaucratic inefficiency, and taxpayer revolt by the entrepreneur-minded, who would flee to other countries (in a so-called “brain drain”), taking their money and their talents and the future of the country with them. The economy would inevitably have to collapse, paving the way for a populist demagogue would seduce the ignorant with his empty promises and relegate Sweden to the historical ash heap of the third world. I decided to go see for myself.

Well, it is now 70 years on, and the world (both first and third), and I have all so far managed to survive, and today I got an e-mail from my 25-year-old granddaughter who lives in Stockholm quite comfortably in a government-subsidized apartment on a government-provided student stipend, with four more years of studying in prospect before she gets her degree in robotics engineering. (This was actually her second choice, after an initial try at a musical career, where she played in the government subsidized National Youth Orchestra. She said she eventually realized that she was not talented enough on her violin to rise to the ranks of soloist, and that “second fiddle” would not satisfy her. She had no problem with the education bureaucracy about changing her majors.)
The e-mail was mainly family news, but in answer to some of my questions she said that Sweden was doing just fine, thank you, with one of the strongest economies in Europe and a population that, when polled, declares itself among the happiest in the world.

For those of you who like to see the actual numbers I will give them to you. She provided links to several databases. In 2016 Sweden’s national debt was 43.4% of its GNP. (For the USA it was 104%, more than twice as high.) Meanwhile Sweden’s flourishing economy has enabled it to become one of the most generous nations in the world toward today’s nearly 17 million political refugees (who are, as we all know, “guaranteed” by the UN’s 1951 International Refugee Convention the same rights and privileges as any foreigner who is a legal resident of the country in which they have sought asylum). With a population of 9.6 million, Swedes have so far accepted 111 thousand refugees (equivalent to just over one percent of their country’s population — one refugee for every 86 Swedes). Germany, by way of comparison, with 50.6 million people, has accepted 800 thousand (almost exactly one percent of its population — one asylum seeker for every 101 Germans, a number which is threatening the stability of Angela Merkel’s government and its leading position in the EU). The corresponding numbers for my country, which embarrass me even as I type them, are 85 thousand refugees accepted into a country of 319 million, or one for every 3,753 Americans (that’s two hundredths of one percent of our inhabitants), and nearly half of us presently appear to be willing to throw them out again and lock up the lady who struggled to negotiate their humanitarian acceptance in the first place.

So much for the accepted wisdom of 70 years ago and the realities of today, and if you bring up the subject with mainstream economists of 2017 you are likely to hear the same dire predictions that Childs’s report elicited in 1936. “It’s only a matter of the timing. Look at the key numbers. People won’t stand to have their ambitions forever stifled under socialistic central direction, over-regulation, and sky-high taxes.” The Wharton School, so far as I know, like the Swedish economy, goes right on teaching the same lessons, taught by the same expert professors.

My granddaughter recently replied to one of my requests for further information with a link to a newspaper article about Stockholm being today one of the most entrepreneurial cities in the world, rivaling Silicon Valley in the number and variety of its startups. Over the past 10 years Sweden has seen the infusion of one of the highest levels of venture capitalism in Europe. My granddaughter’s student friends, she says, are, like her, excited about new scientific developments that may lead to new enterprises, and they relish the excitement of being in on the ground floor. They pull all-nighters on their computers in their dorms at the KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskålan) just as assiduously as their coevals at Stanford, and with the same goal of being the first to spot the next big new thing.
How do you account for that, I ask?
My granddaughter shrugs with an interpolated emoji and says maybe it’s just the Law of Jante.

The Law of Jante was a new one for me. I had never heard of it. Try it out for yourself though on anyone from a Scandinavian country and you will find that it is a commonly understood and accepted socio-economic concept. Jante is a fictional town in a fictional country in a novel written by a Danish author named Aksel Sandemose in 1933. In this town the mark of greatest possible accomplishment is to stay under the radar. To be at peace with your neighbors and with yourself is considered best achieved by keeping a low profile. The welfare of the community is always to take precedence over individual accomplishment. In fact, individual accomplishment is best kept concealed to avoid embarrassing anyone who may not have achieved as much as you have. The spotlight is to be avoided, since it can prove addictive, to the detriment of community solidarity. This is summed up in Jante by a law consisting of ten rather redundant commandments by which the inhabitants of the town live, the first of which is probably enough to convey their tenor — “You are not to think you are anything special.” Some of the other nine are equally blunt: “You are not to think you are smarter than we are.” “You are not to think you know more than we do.”

You get the picture. A Donald Trump would be run out of Jante instanter. A Jante citizen who got his name in the paper would feel ashamed unless it were coupled to an account of his selfless contribution to the society’s improvement. A fat bank account or a large lawn would of itself be convincing evidence of its possessor’s lack of real understanding of citizenship and his adherence to Jante law.
That law may not be considered a worthy goal by every Nordic citizen, but it is generally accepted among Scandinavians as a legitimate aspiration, says my granddaughter, and one that might, coupled with the right conditions in the rest of the world, be a worthy basis for our mutual future progress. In retrospect in fact, Sweden’s development over the past 100 years or so (since the Social Democrats first started to routinely win elections) can be seen as heavily influenced by the until then still unformulated Law of Jante.
The name of Sandemose’s book is A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks and there was an English translation published in 1936. I will not be a spoiler for any of you who might want to track down a copy and see what happens.

What I find fascinating is the apparent unquestioning acceptance in today’s U.S. by followers of The Donald that exactly the opposite of Jante’s law is the ideal to which all we Americans should strive. If The Donald has gold faucets in his tower then we are supposed to ooh and aah and admire and fantasize that someday each of us might be able to enjoy the same kind of bling. So much are we bedazzled that we have entrusted the next four years of our country’s future to his care.
Numbers and facts mean nothing in the face of the prospect of gold faucets in our bathrooms. A chicken in every pot. Father Divine reincarnated in a white skin. Remember the Reverend Ike — Fred Eikerenkoetter II — “God wants you to be rich.?” Not Marx’s “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” but “Everyone into his own Trump Tower”. And Katie, bar the door.

I could go on about Marxism and economic exploitation and the Frankfurt School , but I will give you a break — and give the last word to my granddaughter: She writes, “Trump is ridiculous. How long before he’s gone?”