Nice article Fred,

I agree with many of your points.

Being an employer myself I have adpoted a business model that remumerates my staff with wages and benefits substantially higher than normal market rates. I run a lean management structure with virtually no heirarchy and have found that I my business has grown stronger than I ever anticipated. I have had virtually no staff turn over and take genuine concern to nurture the happiness and wellbeing of my team.

Perhaps the type of business I run lends itself to this type of model more than others, being a finance broker, however I rarely see other small businesses in Australia adopt this model given that it works so much better than John Howards harsh and morally wrong methode of paying people as little as possible and working them to the bone.

I can tell you first hand that a well paid, well looked after and cared for team member will produce a lot more economic wealth for your business than a poorly paid, overworked, un-cared for slave ever will. It then stands to reason that the more wealth you are creating the more people you can employ.

Once you factor in the cost of high staff turnaround, constant training of new employees, staff theft due to poor pay, lack of morale due to being treated poorly, the costs of treating people like animals or machines is far greater than paying people a generous wage and providing benefits. The most valuable part; being caring, nice and recognising people, costs absolutely nothing.

Fred your hit the nail on the head when you said that John Howards view is untrue. Taking away peoples hard earned benefits, job security, dignity and trust will do nothing but damage a business economically in the long run.

Very nice article.

I've long been an admirer of the Scandinavian system of Government, and it's good to see someone actually looking at the bigger picture, rather than simply seeing the impressive GDP of the US, and ignoring its growing lower class.
I would not like to see Australia go the way of the Americans at all, and instead adopt a more socially equitable system.

Can I assume, Fred, that you are including Germany's 10.5% unemployment rate as a "strong employment outcome" from a "nordic" country?

Great story, pity about the facts.

Perseus -
For starters, Germany isn't a Scandinavian country. Secondly, the German economy has traditionally performed very well for a nation its size, though it is currently in an economic downturn - which happens in all countries from time to time.
Thirdly, unemployment is a difficult figure to quantify, as the author has pointed out.

Do you include those with part time work, looking for more? do you include retirees? students? part time students? those unemployed for less than two months? Those aged under 18? People with disabilities? If not, what kind of disabilities qualify? Those who care for children? How old do the children have to be? Those who look after someone with a disability? Those who do volunteer work instead? Those who are doing 'work for the dole' kind of practices?

If you'd like to dispute the facts, then fine, but please make sure you are referring to the Scandinavian countries the author is referring to, and kindly include some facts in your response.

Perseus, the terms Nordic and Continental are short-term words I used for presentation purposes. Germany is included among the Continental countries (with France, Italy, etc). Please explain what you mean by "pity about the facts".

Economic theories are manufactured in a greedy selfish mind set. I see everyone is riding the unemployment wagon, now if you were to look at economics from a different angle you would see there are no unemployed people, economic managment is about having a surplus workforce of around 10% but the manufactured figures say 6%, now if we blamed those people who invent Jobs for not creating enough jobs, we would see the surplus workforce as a good thing for the economy it would keep wages down, when you have a ecomomy that supports full employment {110%} wages then rise faster than anything else, surplus workers would no longer be bludgers , they would be like extra stock in the warehouse, I often wonder who came up with "unemployed worker" when the truth is they are surplus workers, maybe that happened the same time Landlords acquired tenants to pay off the mortgage , this is now widely discussed on the Net, many are calling landlords and money lenders parasites, when you think about it, you have to agree they do act like parasites, moneylenders charge rent on money we call it interest, this is all legal, how many Judges and Lawyers are collectors of interest /rent, there is the answer, we call the surplus worker, "unemployed, mangotree