The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism

Here is the Myth exposed:

No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia

When Bernie Sanders was asked during CNN’s Democratic presidential debate how a self-proclaimed socialist could hope to be elected to the White House, he gave the answer he usually gives: Socialism has been wonderful for the countries of Scandinavia, and America should emulate their example.

“We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” Sanders said. When the moderator turned to Hillary Clinton, she agreed that America has to “save capitalism from itself” and that, yes, Scandinavia is great. “I love Denmark,” declared Clinton. It was the only time in the debate a candidate uttered the verb “love.”

Liberals have had a crush on Scandinavia for decades. “It is a country whose very name has become a synonym for a materialist paradise,” observed Time magazine in a 1976 story on Sweden. “Its citizens enjoy one of the world’s highest living standards. . . . Neither ill health, unemployment nor old age pose the terror of financial hardship. [Sweden’s] cradle-to-grave benefits are unmatched in any other free society outside Scandinavia.” In 2010, a National Public Radio story marveled at the way “Denmark Thrives Despite High Taxes.” The small Nordic nation, said NPR, “seems to violate the laws of the economic universe,” improbably balancing low poverty and unemployment rates with stratospheric taxes that were among the world’s highest.

Such paeans may inspire Clinton’s love and Sanders’ faith in America’s socialist future. As with most urban legends, however, the reality of Scandinavia’s welfare-state utopia doesn’t match the hype. [...]

The rest of the article goes into detail about how Scandinavian prospered in spite of socialism, not because of it. How socialism nearly destroyed their prosperity, and how they have spend years rolling back welfare and taxes, and re-introducing free market reforms. How much of the success of Scandinavian countries has to do with who they are:

[...] The real key to Scandinavia’s unique successes isn’t socialism, it’s culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries. In the region’s small and homogeneous countries (overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and native-born), those norms took deep root. The good outcomes and high living standards they produced antedated the socialist nostrums of the 1970s. Scandinavia’s quality of life didn’t spring from leftist policies. It survived them. [...]

Read the whole thing, it's short and it gets to the point, with many embedded links to back up what it says.

BTW, I've no objections to looking at Scandinavia as a model, so long as we look at everything, their successes and their failures. We could learn a lot from both of those. If some things they've done were successful and could be adopted by us, so be it. It's just the sweeping generalizations based on fantasy that I'm leary of. Read the whole article. Why adopt policies from the Scandinavians that they themselves have discarded as unworkable? Even policies that work for them in their largely homogenous culture, may not necessarily transplant to ours. When looking for role models, let's keep it REAL, shall we?
     

How to Get a College Degree without the massive, crushing debt inflicted on us by the “Student Loan Industrial Complex.”

Testing Out: How to “Moneyball” Your Way to a Debt-Free College Degree

I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up with the ancient “college savings tips” so-called experts keep force-feeding us:

“Fill out the FAFSA before senior year to maximize aid eligibility!”
“Buy used textbooks, you’ll save hundreds!”
“Apply for scholarships. Try FastWeb.com!”

If you follow this advice, you will be thoroughly and totally prepared for college…in 1995. (You know, just in case that year ever comes back.) But in 2013, these strategies will get you slaughtered by the “Student Loan Industrial Complex.”

[...]

Why You Should Look at College Like an Investment

If this post makes it sound like you’re “Frankensteining” your education, cobbling various exams and credit sources together to form a degree…you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m advocating.

This might seem strange at first, but I encourage you to look at it differently.

Why do we see college as this magical guarantee of financial success? It’s because of these oft-cited studies on how much more graduates earn over their lifetimes than non-grads. We hear sweeping statements (“people with bachelor’s degrees earn $1 million more!”) and assume that it MUST be a great investment, no matter what it costs.

Actually, we don’t just assume it — we’re explicitly told that it’s true:

“Over a lifetime, the gap in earning potential between a high-school diploma and a bachelor of arts is more than $800,000. In other words, whatever sacrifices you and your child make for [a] college education in the short term are more than repaid in the long term.”

That’s from CollegeBoard, the organization that makes the SATs. They’re basically telling you to just pay whatever a degree costs.

It’s horrible advice.

You don’t make huge financial decisions with simplistic rules like “whatever sacrifices you make are worth it in the long-term.” How is that any different than telling you to shoot first and ask questions later? No — you make huge financial decisions is by running the numbers.

Which brings us back to these studies on college graduate earnings. They aren’t “wrong,” but they are misleading.

Here’s why: earning a higher income doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting ahead. You can earn $20,000/year before college, get a $60,000/year job afterwards, and still be no better off. If you spend $100,000 for a degree (and take four years off of work to do it) you have incurred a huge financial and opportunity cost.

You took out a loan against your future earnings which must now be repaid over five, ten, maybe even fifteen or twenty years. Even then, once all the loans are repaid and you’ve earned back all the income you lost by not working, guess what? All you have done is break even!

You’re back at square one. Finally, after years of repaying loans and interest, you can start actually benefiting from the higher income you earned your degree for. Most college students don’t realize that this is what they’ve agreed to until after they graduate. They just see college as a magical guarantee of financial success. Yet whether they realize it or not, their student loans often chain them to a life of indentured servitude.

The return on an investment is inversely proportional to the time and money invested. In plain English: the longer it takes you to graduate, and the more you pay, the less valuable your degree ultimately is. [...]

This is a fascinating article, not only for pointing out the pitfalls of going into debt for an education, but also for the heaps of practical advice for avoiding that debt and still getting your degree.

The comments after the article are just as interesting. The author is criticized for his advice, and he answers his critics. A very lively, informative discussion.

And this isn't theoretical; people are actually doing it:

The DIY Degree: Using Self-Education to Earn a Bachelor’s Degree in 1 Year

“What’s the point of learning, if you don’t get a degree after?”

This has been the biggest criticism of my MIT Challenge, and honestly, it’s not an easy one to avoid. Even if weirdos like me are willing to learn a degree outside of school, the truth is the world still values that piece of paper. Unfortunately, until recently I’ve had little answer to this complaint–it seems if you want the degree, you have to suffer through an often slow and expensive process.

That was before I met Jay Cross. Jay in many ways did a project similar to mine–he completed a bachelor’s degree in less time, mostly through self-study. The only difference? Jay got a real degree for his efforts.

I asked Jay to write a guest post to share his method with you. Not only does it work, but it gets results in the real world as well. Jay has already had career opportunities that would be the envy of a lot of college grads, having staff writing positions for major publications and entrepreneurial ventures. Jay demonstrates that not only can self-education work, it can be a true alternative for many students hesitant about college.

The DIY Degree, by Jay Cross

Today, I’m going to show you a totally new twist on self-education.

We’ve long been told that learning is an “either/or” decision. You can either spend four years in college and earn a degree…OR study on your own with no degree to show for it. But what if you could have the best of both: the credential employers crave, with the speed, personalization and low cost of self-study?

You can.

Using the “degree-by-examination” approach, you can earn a bachelor’s degree by taking tests instead of classes. It works no matter where you live, lets you graduate in one year instead of four, and costs roughly 1/20th the price of a regular degree…with the exact same legitimacy and earning power.

The problem: society DOES still value degrees

Some jobs require degrees no matter how smart you are. Even in more flexible professions (like programming) there’s always one or two “By-The-Book Bob” types who reject non-grads on principle.

This concerned me, even with all I had accomplished already. If there was any way to graduate for minimal time and cost—and eliminate this potential obstacle—it seemed worthwhile to try. Of all the different approaches I researched and read about, degree-by-examination was the college shortcut that actually worked.

Before I explain, allow me to share the struggles that led me to this discovery in the first place. [...]

See how he did it. This is must reading for anyone who is considering going into deep debt for a college education. There ARE alternatives. I wish I had known this back in the day, when I dropped out of college because it was so enormously expensive. These are alternatives that can really work.


Also see:

Graduate faster and spend less money with DIY Degree’s “Cost-Per-Credit” Calculator
     

The Benefits of a "non-credit" Education

I've been looking at ways to expand my current work skill-set. I came across this website, which offers many different kinds of courses on-line:

www.ed2go.com

Online Courses:

Comprehensive online course in a convenient six-week format

Expert instructors lead each course

Engaging student discussion areas

New sessions starting monthly

Confirmation of completion awarded with passing score

These courses are non-college-credit courses, so they cost much less. You do get a certificate of completion afterwards, so if you use them to learn business skills, you have something to show that you studied the material and passed the exam. You just can't apply it toward college credit, which is fine if you aren't aiming for a degree.

You can take these courses directly from the website. But it's worth noting that Ed2go also has partnerships with colleges, where the college offers these courses as part of the college's own website. My local community college does this, and cost of taking courses through them is more than 1/3 cheaper than taking courses directly from Ed2go.

The courses I looked at took six weeks to complete, with an additional two week grace period to complete the work and take the completion exam.

If the courses that Ed2go.com offers are not substantial enough for you, they have a link on the lower right side of their front page, to more substantial offerings:

www.gatlineducation.com

Online Career Training Programs:

Learn in-demand skills recognized by employers

Start anytime - work at your own pace and complete in 3 to 6 months

Textbooks and learning materials are included

Support offered via phone, email, or live chat 7 days a week

Expert instructor assistance provided

These are also non-credit courses, but more specifically oriented toward job goals. For instance, their Bookkeeping course is for preparing the student to take a national exam to become a certified bookkeeper. Their Pharmacy Technician course prepares the student to take the Certified Pharmacy Technician's exam. Etc.

The Gatlin website is also run by Ed2go, but these more advanced courses are not offered directly by Gatlin or Ed2go; they must be taken via a participating partner school. They have a page where you can type in your zipcode, and it will show you the nearest partner school to you.

Even so, since these courses are on-line, you can usually register with the partner-school for the courses without ever having to set foot on their physical campus.

These courses are typically 3 to 6 months long, you can do them when it's convenient for you, and if you don't finish by the end of the course, you can get a 6 month extension to compete it, free of cost.

I like this a lot, because you can take the courses at your own pace, you get the benefit of the knowledge and a certificate to prove that you did the work, but you don't have to go into debt borrowing money to earn college credits that you may not want or need.

For anyone who is just looking to increase their job skills, I'd say it's definitely worth checking out.