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The subtitle is misleading. >How a tiny country with high government spending bred a large number of vibrant young businesses The article then goes on to attribute almost all of Sweden's success to deregulation and anti-monopoly laws---i.e., less government intervention ∝ more startup success.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whom are you expecting to pay for health insurance if one hypothetically quits working for Google and starts their own one man/woman company? Um, yourself? I have an ACA plan. It handles all the catastrophic stuff, and has a very reasonable deductible. It costs me ~$360/mo. Certainly this is a different ball of wax with a family (figure more around $1100-1400/mo for a reasonable plan) that has dependents. In my cas…
An example that demonstrates the difference compared with a place like Sweden is that if you are a pennyless student, you can't afford $360/month. That would make it hard to do a startup and still have health insurance. As a student I would would have 10000 SEK / month ($1200), in grant and student loan. [1] You would expect to need nearly all of that in any of the town Universities [2] leaving nothing for healthcare…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you quit, as opposed to being fired, you have to wait three months before being able to apply. You have to prove applying for jobs as well.
Doesn't that just encourage people to get fired instead of quitting?
You can't just stop doing your job, show up drunk, and yell obscenities at your boss all day. Well, you can, but you probably won't get unemployment benefits.
Completely missed one of the most important points: It's easier to take risks, if those risks actualizing will not destroy your life. In the US, there's very little social safety net to catch you. If you get sick before the startup is big enough, it means personal bankruptcy - and no medical treatment. Missing revenue targets can mean missing student loan payments, missing rent, etc. There's real risk you'll end up h…
Fun fact: most Swedes are covered by unemployment insurance, which gives you 70-80% of the income from your last job for a year.[1] I imagine this helps, as it's not only a safety net if your startup tanks, but also a runway for starting risky ventures. [1] https://www.justlanded.se/english/Sweden/Sweden-Guide/Jobs/U...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA, paid health insurance is tied to one's choice of employment, unless one declines the employer's coverage. Whom are you expecting to pay for health insurance if one hypothetically quits working for Google and starts their own one man/woman company? Or is this not factor in as a risk in your opinion?
The fact that health insurance is tied to employment in the us is just as much an argument for getting rid of the taxes and other incentives which led to employers being the dominant provider of health insurance.
Because of this, companies needed to find additional benefits, non-monetary, to give to employees, both to keep and attract employees. So, they started to offer medical insurance.
Well, it stuck and medical insurance has been tied to employment ever since. But, that incentive has long-since been removed from the books and employers can now happily pay as much as they can afford.
As for other incentives, I don't know of any incentives offered to employers that offer insurance, at least until recently. The current incentive is a fine, if they are meet the criteria and don't offer insurance.
Other than that, a perverse incentive that does exactly opposite of what you're asking, there is nothing else. I suppose you could be referring to the employer not being taxed on money spent on insuring their employes, but taxes are based on profits and the personnel expenses are not on that side of the ledger. There's no incentive, the money just isn't taxed because we tax profit, not revenue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: most Swedes are covered by unemployment insurance, which gives you 70-80% of the income from your last job for a year.[1] I imagine this helps, as it's not only a safety net if your startup tanks, but also a runway for starting risky ventures. [1] https://www.justlanded.se/english/Sweden/Sweden-Guide/Jobs/U...
In the US you can't collect unemployment if you quit and you have to demonstrate that you're looking for a job. Are either of those the case in Sweden?
Here is a summary of the article https://summarybrew.com/p/why-does-sweden-have-so-many-start...
Completely missed one of the most important points: It's easier to take risks, if those risks actualizing will not destroy your life. In the US, there's very little social safety net to catch you. If you get sick before the startup is big enough, it means personal bankruptcy - and no medical treatment. Missing revenue targets can mean missing student loan payments, missing rent, etc. There's real risk you'll end up h…
It's much more complex than that.
"Sweden’s impressive start-up record can also be attributed to some broader aspects of how the country is set up. Its social safety net, for instance, helps entrepreneurs feel safe to take risks. In Sweden, university is free, and students can get loans for living expenses, which allows anyone to pursue higher education. Health care is free too, and childcare is heavily subsidized. None of these benefits are contingent on having a job, which means people know that they can take entrepreneurial risks and still know many of their necessities will be covered.
“I think if you want to be an innovative country, you have to give people security so they dare to take risks,” Mikael Damberg, Sweden’s minister for enterprise and innovation, told me."
The second case, which is not present in the article is that in Sweden, working in a small company is considered a risky proposition and a such small companies are offering higher salary than big companies. It means that they tend to attract the best people too. In most of the rest of Europe (DK, DE, FR from my own experience), if you want the engineer path with good money, you need to get hired by a big company.
Here is a summary of the article https://summarybrew.com/p/why-does-sweden-have-so-many-start...
That summary would apply more or less to any Scandinavian country so those can't be the reason.
All Norwegians know this. Any other Norwegians here who can confirm?
Finns are kind of similar to Norwegians, in this aspect, only, drunker and more depressed. Danes are even more content than Norwegians with having even less, giving almost everything back to the state. They just want their "hygge".