Climbing out of the Abyss

Slí Eile11/06/2009

Slí Eile: Have ‘non-economists’ anything to contribute on how we climb out of this abyss?

In a series entitled ‘Re-imagining the Future’ the Irish Times has begun a series on how creative thinking can offer a way forward as some artists and writers talk ‘about where we’re at and how we can move on’. In today’s piece, Booker Prize- winning novelist and writer, Anne Enright is quoted as follows:If you look at a model of how to do that, the people that have been most successful in doing that are the Scandinavians, and their high-tax economies, the opposite of the road we took in terms of looking after each other. And they’re very good at it . . . It’s a real pity this crash has happened now, because, if it hadn’t, in 100 years’ time we might be really mature, comfortably bourgeois with Scandinavian communal systems, lots of good affordable creches.

What do PE readers think? May be the impetus towards a new social deal arises from the failure of the present one to deliver an adequate quality of life to many or most people.

Posted in: Europe

Tagged with: nordic model


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