The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

by Anu Partanen

Your business has to be in good-enough shape that it’s not going to crumble just because someone is taking care of their children. If your business can’t handle that, then you have a problem with either your business model or your management.”

The Nordic approach protects the individual first, on the grounds that stronger individuals will build stronger companies, but it also protects the employers by instituting the same guidelines for all.

thus Nordic people dislike such hierarchies and celebrations of success.

While the structures of Nordic society do an excellent job at supporting people’s autonomy and well-being, Nordic culture could do better at accepting variety and idiosyncrasy.

What Americans need, so that they can stop struggling so hard to be superachievers, is simple: affordable high-quality health care, day care, education, living wages, and paid vacations.

They can study whatever they want, and they don’t have to risk their financial future to do so.

they have managed to give people the independence necessary to shape their own lives, and to love their family and friends without economic encumbrance and without debilitating anxiety.

Nordic employment rates are largely a result of these policies, not a prerequisite for them.

However, Nordic countries today are also much more diverse than most Americans realize. In fact, many American states currently have fewer foreign-born residents than even Finland does. Sweden, meanwhile, has more foreign-born residents relative to population than the United States as a whole.

don’t believe that diversity alone means that the U.S. could not implement universal social policies. Many diverse nations, among them Canada and the Netherlands, have more Nordic-style systems.