RESCATE DE ESPAÑA: LA TRAVESIA DEL DESIERTO HA COMENZADO (VIII)

[Dan]

El tema es que -aunque tambien me repelen las "soluciones habitacionales"-, la alternativa a hacer ciudades a lo alto es hacerlas a lo ancho.
Somos 6.000 millones, es lo que hay. O se inventa una arquitectura que armonice la vida humana con el uso de la superficie o a base de "neoclasicismo", asfaltamos el globo entero.

En cuanto a los espacios publicos, totalmente de acuerdo.

Y me han venido a la mente las arcologias de Soleri, otra idea interesante que se puede hacer bien o como el culo de mal.

[wanderer]

Maquinas para vivir…..máquinas para morir.

Heterodoxia                3/02/2013
http://www.heterodoxia.info/?p=1864

Cuando un tonto (en este caso un grupo de tontos ejpertos) agarra una linde...

O los llamados "edificios inteligentes": todo recubierto de acero y cristal. No circula el aire y achicharrantes en verano, aparte de ser panópticos.

Arquitectura psicopática, vamos.

[wanderer]

El "no hay pan para tanto chorizo" ya se ha hecho internacional:

Spain’s government
Another blow
The ruling conservative party is shaken by a damaging corruption scandal



A CHORIZO is a spicy Spanish sausage, best accompanied by a glass of Rioja, though often sliced and served in a doughy bocadillo, or sandwich. Chorizo is also slang for a swindler or cheat. At protests against Mariano Rajoy’s government demonstrators have taken to waving loaves aloft and shouting: “There isn’t enough bread for so many chorizos!”

Now the allegations have touched Mr Rajoy directly. “Never, ever have I received or handed out black money,” he insisted on January 21st. But revelations from Spain’s two main newspapers, El País and El Mundo, claim otherwise. They allege that slush money flowed liberally through the headquarters of Mr Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) for at least two decades. Some of it supposedly went straight into the pockets of the party’s leaders. “Envelopes with cash were handed out as salary top-ups to certain top party officials,” said Jorge Trías Sagnier, a former PP deputy and the only whistleblower so far to go on the record.

The allegations, although denied by almost everyone who has been implicated, have turned into a full-blown scandal. The most serious evidence, contained in secret ledgers purportedly kept by the party’s chief accountant, show Mr Rajoy receiving €25,000 ($34,000) a year for a decade. On February 3rd, standing by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, at a press conference in Berlin, a nervous Mr Rajoy protested that “except for a few bits” the ledger entries were false.

The pivotal character in the scandal is Luis Bárcenas, a party administrator for two decades, whom the party made a senator in 2004 and Mr Rajoy himself promoted to treasurer in 2008. Courts began investigating Mr Bárcenas four years ago amid allegations that he was among the beneficiaries of a backhander scheme run by local party members in Madrid and Valencia. Mr Rajoy stood by his man and the PP paid for his defence. But Mr Bárcenas eventually stood down, as both treasurer and senator. Rumours spread that he had taken away incriminating documents.

The bombshell came last month when court investigators discovered that Mr Bárcenas had a €22m Swiss bank account. He also admitted to using a tax amnesty last year to declare €10m of hidden money.

The 14-page ledger, published by El País, is said by some handwriting experts to be in Mr Bárcenas’s hand. It appears to show that much of the PP’s secret fund came from construction magnates who received public contracts and helped inflate Spain’s disastrous real-estate bubble. Regular cash-in-hand payments to the PP’s leaders supposedly carried on even while they held public office, continuing until 2009, five years after Mr Rajoy became leader.

Some recipients of loans and other payments acknowledged having received money, but said that they were entirely legal. They include Pío García-Escudero, the senate president. Press reports are agreed that the slush fund was shut down several years ago. For the rest, the evidence is either confusing, of unknown provenance or both. Certainly, Mr Rajoy and the rest of his party deny it all. The prime minister’s denial of self-enrichment deserves credence, as this is the first suggestion that he is anything less than squeaky clean.

On the other hand, El Mundo has quoted five unnamed sources who spoke of regular cash-in-hand payments to party leaders. And voters are beginning to latch on to the idea that Mr Rajoy ran a party which hid, distributed and lied about dirty money. Four out of five Spaniards believe the PP’s leadership should resign en bloc. Just over half want a snap general election.

Will the scandal bring down Mr Rajoy’s government? It has a comfortable parliamentary majority and three years until a general election. Spain’s courts proceed slowly. They have only just started hearing the trial related to a ring of world-ranking cyclists and other athletes who allegedly doped themselves at the Madrid clinic of a doctor first arrested in 2006.

Yet the damage to Spain cannot be measured by the fate of a single party at the next general election. Spaniards have lost respect for their politicians. Other parties, especially the Convergence and Union coalition, which runs Catalonia, are knee-deep in allegations of corruption. The opposition Socialists have cases rumbling, too, especially in places where mayors and real-estate developers seemingly fell into a toxic embrace. Polls show that 96% of Spaniards believe many politicians are on the take. Support for the main parties has tumbled over the past year, as a double-dip recession deepened and unemployment climbed to 26%. The king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, and his business partner were recently told to post a €8.1m bail after being investigated for corruption charges that also involve regional PP governments.

A recent poll gave the two big parties, which have run Spain for the past three decades, only 46% of the vote. The political settlement Spaniards agreed on as they emerged from dictatorship in the 1970s gave huge power to the parties to solidify democracy. This may have backfired. “Having created the monster, we are being devoured by it,” says Antonio Argandoña at IESE, a business school.

In 2011 the country’s legion of indignados took over city squares, shouting: “They don’t represent us”. They have even more reason to be indignant now.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21571441-ruling-conservative-party-shaken-damaging-corruption-scandal-another-blow

[tula]

El "no hay pan para tanto chorizo" ya se ha hecho internacional:

Spain’s government
Another blow
The ruling conservative party is shaken by a damaging corruption scandal



A CHORIZO is a spicy Spanish sausage, best accompanied by a glass of Rioja, though often sliced and served in a doughy bocadillo, or sandwich. Chorizo is also slang for a swindler or cheat. At protests against Mariano Rajoy’s government demonstrators have taken to waving loaves aloft and shouting: “There isn’t enough bread for so many chorizos!”

Now the allegations have touched Mr Rajoy directly. “Never, ever have I received or handed out black money,” he insisted on January 21st. But revelations from Spain’s two main newspapers, El País and El Mundo, claim otherwise. They allege that slush money flowed liberally through the headquarters of Mr Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) for at least two decades. Some of it supposedly went straight into the pockets of the party’s leaders. “Envelopes with cash were handed out as salary top-ups to certain top party officials,” said Jorge Trías Sagnier, a former PP deputy and the only whistleblower so far to go on the record.

The allegations, although denied by almost everyone who has been implicated, have turned into a full-blown scandal. The most serious evidence, contained in secret ledgers purportedly kept by the party’s chief accountant, show Mr Rajoy receiving €25,000 ($34,000) a year for a decade. On February 3rd, standing by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, at a press conference in Berlin, a nervous Mr Rajoy protested that “except for a few bits” the ledger entries were false.

The pivotal character in the scandal is Luis Bárcenas, a party administrator for two decades, whom the party made a senator in 2004 and Mr Rajoy himself promoted to treasurer in 2008. Courts began investigating Mr Bárcenas four years ago amid allegations that he was among the beneficiaries of a backhander scheme run by local party members in Madrid and Valencia. Mr Rajoy stood by his man and the PP paid for his defence. But Mr Bárcenas eventually stood down, as both treasurer and senator. Rumours spread that he had taken away incriminating documents.

The bombshell came last month when court investigators discovered that Mr Bárcenas had a €22m Swiss bank account. He also admitted to using a tax amnesty last year to declare €10m of hidden money.

The 14-page ledger, published by El País, is said by some handwriting experts to be in Mr Bárcenas’s hand. It appears to show that much of the PP’s secret fund came from construction magnates who received public contracts and helped inflate Spain’s disastrous real-estate bubble. Regular cash-in-hand payments to the PP’s leaders supposedly carried on even while they held public office, continuing until 2009, five years after Mr Rajoy became leader.

Some recipients of loans and other payments acknowledged having received money, but said that they were entirely legal. They include Pío García-Escudero, the senate president. Press reports are agreed that the slush fund was shut down several years ago. For the rest, the evidence is either confusing, of unknown provenance or both. Certainly, Mr Rajoy and the rest of his party deny it all. The prime minister’s denial of self-enrichment deserves credence, as this is the first suggestion that he is anything less than squeaky clean.

On the other hand, El Mundo has quoted five unnamed sources who spoke of regular cash-in-hand payments to party leaders. And voters are beginning to latch on to the idea that Mr Rajoy ran a party which hid, distributed and lied about dirty money. Four out of five Spaniards believe the PP’s leadership should resign en bloc. Just over half want a snap general election.

Will the scandal bring down Mr Rajoy’s government? It has a comfortable parliamentary majority and three years until a general election. Spain’s courts proceed slowly. They have only just started hearing the trial related to a ring of world-ranking cyclists and other athletes who allegedly doped themselves at the Madrid clinic of a doctor first arrested in 2006.

Yet the damage to Spain cannot be measured by the fate of a single party at the next general election. Spaniards have lost respect for their politicians. Other parties, especially the Convergence and Union coalition, which runs Catalonia, are knee-deep in allegations of corruption. The opposition Socialists have cases rumbling, too, especially in places where mayors and real-estate developers seemingly fell into a toxic embrace. Polls show that 96% of Spaniards believe many politicians are on the take. Support for the main parties has tumbled over the past year, as a double-dip recession deepened and unemployment climbed to 26%. The king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, and his business partner were recently told to post a €8.1m bail after being investigated for corruption charges that also involve regional PP governments.

A recent poll gave the two big parties, which have run Spain for the past three decades, only 46% of the vote. The political settlement Spaniards agreed on as they emerged from dictatorship in the 1970s gave huge power to the parties to solidify democracy. This may have backfired. “Having created the monster, we are being devoured by it,” says Antonio Argandoña at IESE, a business school.

In 2011 the country’s legion of indignados took over city squares, shouting: “They don’t represent us”. They have even more reason to be indignant now.http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21571441-ruling-conservative-party-shaken-damaging-corruption-scandal-another-blow

Mira qué pronto lo han pillado por allí.
 

Por aquí siguen los gañanes de los PPSOE sin enterarse de que el bipartidismo está (alabado sea) tocado de muerte.

[saturno]

Corruptocracia. Ni nos temen ni nos respetan

Rajoy:
    'El problema de la corrupción no son las leyes'

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/08/espana/1360340698.html

En boca de un politico, es como haber escrito su propio epitafio.

Pienso (quiero pensar) que el periodista no lo entendio bien.
He buscado otros medios - google no encuentra otras fuentes.

No sé.

Si es cierto
que lo dijo, que lo piensa como lo dijo,
creo que es grave de veras.

[KH Rummenigge]

Maquinas para vivir…..máquinas para morir.

Heterodoxia                3/02/2013
http://www.heterodoxia.info/?p=1864

Cuando un tonto (en este caso un grupo de tontos ejpertos) agarra una linde...

O los llamados "edificios inteligentes": todo recubierto de acero y cristal. No circula el aire y achicharrantes en verano, aparte de ser panópticos.

Arquitectura psicopática, vamos.

"Las máquinas son necesarias pero de allí a querer ser una* y vivir dentro* de otra hay mucho trecho."

Comorrr?

A ver si la arquitectura y la semántica es un cristo con 2 pistolas... porque no hay por donde cogerlo.

>*
>efecto glow0red,2,300
>under request
>best regards

[Oslodije2]

Para amenizar la siesta, que un viernes a esta hora currando se hace muy cuesta arriba. Nivelazo patrio.   

La patronal descalifica al INE y niega que haya casi seis millones de parados

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2013/02/07/actualidad/1360270022_879827.html

salud

¿Cuánto creeis que tardará en acabar como Díaz Ferrán? Y ya de paso ¿cuanto tiempo creeis que tardarán en dar un indulto o similar a este último?

[Starkiller]

Pues a mi me encanta el brutalismo, oiga. Además de que las paredes de hormigón aislan la temperatura de puta madre, así como los ruidos. Y tienen personalidad. A diferencia de los bloques cuadradotes todos iguales y sin personalidad con los que nos regalan últimamente. Mucho fi y mucha hostia, pero esos si que son vacíos (Amén de embotellar la vida en la calle en sus piscinas y pistas de paddel). Y las paredes de pladur, con las que disfrutas de las ventosidades del vecino.

Quite. quite. Lo que me gustaría a mi vivir en un edificio brutalista, tipo torres blancas o similar....

[panoli]

Después de una semana revisando y tal vez maquillando hoy se han atrevido a colgar los datos fiscales de Rajoy:

http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/Presidente/biografia_new/070213rentaypatrimonio

Dice el País que está solo desde 2003, justo cuando dejo el gobierno de Aznar 

[Taliván Hortográfico]

Y me han venido a la mente las arcologias de Soleri, otra idea interesante que se puede hacer bien o como el culo de mal.

Miedo me da una reunión de vecinos para discutir una derrama en una arcología de ésas... 

[Dan]

Y me han venido a la mente las arcologias de Soleri, otra idea interesante que se puede hacer bien o como el culo de mal.

Miedo me da una reunión de vecinos para discutir una derrama en una arcología de ésas... 

No tiene porque ser peor que en "las colmenas" de Jose Banus. Dependera -como siempre- de la ejecucion. De hecho la idea de Soleri es dejar mucho espacio entre arcologias en plan ciudad jardin, aunque esa idea no es suya.



En cuanto a Rajoy, ni las cuentas en A le salen al hombre 

http://www.eldiario.es/politica/Rajoy-coinciden-ingresos-Congreso-Diputados_0_99390182.html

Los datos fiscales de Rajoy no coinciden con los ingresos que declaró en el Congreso de los Diputados

Gonzalo Cortizo

09/02/2013 - 14:28h

Los datos fiscales del presidente del Gobierno no coinciden con su declaración de ingresos depositada en el Congreso de los Diputados. El último dato enviado por Rajoy a la Cámara Baja es de 2010. En ese documento, Rajoy declara haber recibido 98.225 euros del Partido Popular en concepto de dietas y gastos de representación. Sin embargo, en la declaración publicada en la web de Moncloa la cifra es mucho más alta: 181.098 euros.

No es el único desfase entre las cifras presentadas por el presidente. Mientras Rajoy declaró al Congreso unas retenciones de 87.651 euros, en el documento alojado en la web del Congreso las retenciones declaradas ofrecen una cifra distinta: 86.951 euros. Las cifras presentadas por Rajoy a Hacienda y al Congreso no coinciden.

Fuentes oficiales de Moncloa consultadas por eldiario.es, señalan que la explicación podría ser que Rajoy declaró al Congreso ingresos netos y a Hacienda los brutos. Sin embargo la diferencia entre ambas cifras es de casi 100.000 euros que Rajoy percibía del PP y de los que nada dijo al Congreso de los Diputados, según el cotejo de la nueva documentación publicada.

[Pagador de facturas ajenas]

Y me han venido a la mente las arcologias de Soleri, otra idea interesante que se puede hacer bien o como el culo de mal.

Miedo me da una reunión de vecinos para discutir una derrama en una arcología de ésas... 

No tiene porque ser peor que en "las colmenas" de Jose Banus. Dependera -como siempre- de la ejecucion. De hecho la idea de Soleri es dejar mucho espacio entre arcologias en plan ciudad jardin, aunque esa idea no es suya.



En cuanto a Rajoy, ni las cuentas en A le salen al hombre 

http://www.eldiario.es/politica/Rajoy-coinciden-ingresos-Congreso-Diputados_0_99390182.html

Los datos fiscales de Rajoy no coinciden con los ingresos que declaró en el Congreso de los Diputados

Gonzalo Cortizo

09/02/2013 - 14:28h

Los datos fiscales del presidente del Gobierno no coinciden con su declaración de ingresos depositada en el Congreso de los Diputados. El último dato enviado por Rajoy a la Cámara Baja es de 2010. En ese documento, Rajoy declara haber recibido 98.225 euros del Partido Popular en concepto de dietas y gastos de representación. Sin embargo, en la declaración publicada en la web de Moncloa la cifra es mucho más alta: 181.098 euros.

No es el único desfase entre las cifras presentadas por el presidente. Mientras Rajoy declaró al Congreso unas retenciones de 87.651 euros, en el documento alojado en la web del Congreso las retenciones declaradas ofrecen una cifra distinta: 86.951 euros. Las cifras presentadas por Rajoy a Hacienda y al Congreso no coinciden.

Fuentes oficiales de Moncloa consultadas por eldiario.es, señalan que la explicación podría ser que Rajoy declaró al Congreso ingresos netos y a Hacienda los brutos. Sin embargo la diferencia entre ambas cifras es de casi 100.000 euros que Rajoy percibía del PP y de los que nada dijo al Congreso de los Diputados, según el cotejo de la nueva documentación publicada.

Es lo que tiene poner como asesor a un j*dido mono

[Pagador de facturas ajenas]

A la hora de comer teniamos puesto un informativo (no se si era cuatro, es muy posible que fuera otra cadena, no estoy seguro) y ha salido Freddy Burracalva en un mitin soltando una pedazo de arenga antiUE ante su parroquia y exhortando al barbash a dejar de seguir las politica de Bruselas (para mi parte de razon lleva, pero se les ve el plumero a la legua).

El carpet bombing deberia de soltar unas buenas bombas sobre la faccion PSOEra para desacreditarlos (mas de lo que estan). Tienen miedo, un miedo como el que no han tenido desde 1936. El chiringo se les escapa...

He buscado y he encontrado esto:


Rubalcaba: "La política de la UE es una máquina de euroescépticos en España"


El secretario general del PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, ha alertado hoy de que el proyecto europeo está "gravemente enfermo" por culpa de las políticas "insolidarias" de los gobiernos de derecha que, a su juicio, son "una máquina de hacer euroescépticos" en países del sur Europa como España.

"En España está creciendo el escepticismo, de una Europa que no nos quiere, que sólo nos regaña", ha subrayado Rubalcaba en su intervención ante los líderes progresistas europeos reunidos hoy Turín y difundida en la página web del PSOE.

Rubalcaba ha lamentado la profunda crisis económica, social y política que sufre España, un país que "creía en Europa", pero que ahora sólo recibe "hombres de negro" que sólo traen "austeridad, recortes y sufrimiento" y que dicen que los españoles deben "pagar" por lo que han hecho "mal" en el pasado.

Para el líder del PSOE, los españoles piensan con razón que en la UE sólo manda la canciller alemana, Angela Merkel, y se preguntan cómo es posible que las autoridades europeas hayan prestado 40.000 millones de euros a la banca y sólo han destinado 6.000 millones para el empleo juvenil en los presupuestos comunitarios.

"Hay que dar la batalla por una Europa distinta", ha reclamado Rubalcaba, que ha afirmado que la responsabilidad de los socialistas europeos es liderar el "renacimiento" de esa Europa más social y sobre todo más solidaria, dentro y fuera de la unión.

Por eso, ha dado su apoyo a Pier Luigi Bersani, secretario del Partito Democratico y candidato del centroizquierda a la Presidencia de Italia, presente en la reunión de Turín, para que gane las elecciones y lidere junto con el gobierno socialista francés esa nueva Europa.

"No penséis solo en los italianos, pensad en los griegos, en los españoles, en los portugueses", ha proclamado Rubalcaba, que ha pedido a Bersani que recupere la imagen de Europa "que nos quiere".





http://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/4590028/02/13/Rubalcaba-La-politica-de-la-UE-es-una-maquina-de-euroescepticos-en-Espana.html

[Currobena]

¿Un  modelo para la TE? Los países nórdicos:

Northern lights The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism, says Adrian Wooldridge   Feb 2nd 2013     |From the print edition              THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has passed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics.
Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%.
  Special report

• Northern lights
• More for less
• The ins and the outs
• Global niche players
• If in doubt, innovate
• Cultural revolution
• The rich cousin
• The secret of their success

Sources & acknowledgementsReprintsRelated topics

• Private Education
• Education
• Think-tanks
• Political policy
• Government and politics

     Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period. This allowed a country with a small, open economy to recover quickly from the financial storm of 2007-08. Sweden has also put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy.
Most daringly, it has introduced a universal system of school vouchers and invited private schools to compete with public ones. Private companies also vie with each other to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly. Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who lives in America, hopes that Sweden is pioneering “a new conservative model”; Brian Palmer, an American anthropologist who lives in Sweden, worries that it is turning into “the United States of Swedeamerica”.
There can be no doubt that Sweden’s quiet revolution has brought about a dramatic change in its economic performance. The two decades from 1970 were a period of decline: the country was demoted from being the world’s fourth-richest in 1970 to 14th-richest in 1993, when the average Swede was poorer than the average Briton or Italian. The two decades from 1990 were a period of recovery: GDP growth between 1993 and 2010 averaged 2.7% a year and productivity 2.1% a year, compared with 1.9% and 1% respectively for the main 15 EU countries.
For most of the 20th century Sweden prided itself on offering what Marquis Childs called, in his 1936 book of that title, a “Middle Way” between capitalism and socialism. Global companies such as Volvo and Ericsson generated wealth while enlightened bureaucrats built the Folkhemmet or “People’s Home”. As the decades rolled by, the middle way veered left. The government kept growing: public spending as a share of GDP nearly doubled from 1960 to 1980 and peaked at 67% in 1993. Taxes kept rising. The Social Democrats (who ruled Sweden for 44 uninterrupted years from 1932 to 1976 and for 21 out of the 24 years from 1982 to 2006) kept squeezing business. “The era of neo-capitalism is drawing to an end,” said Olof Palme, the party’s leader, in 1974. “It is some kind of socialism that is the key to the future.”
     The other Nordic countries have been moving in the same direction, if more slowly. Denmark has one of the most liberal labour markets in Europe. It also allows parents to send children to private schools at public expense and make up the difference in cost with their own money. Finland is harnessing the skills of venture capitalists and angel investors to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Oil-rich Norway is a partial exception to this pattern, but even there the government is preparing for its post-oil future.
This is not to say that the Nordics are shredding their old model. They continue to pride themselves on the generosity of their welfare states. About 30% of their labour force works in the public sector, twice the average in the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, a rich-country think-tank. They continue to believe in combining open economies with public investment in human capital. But the new Nordic model begins with the individual rather than the state. It begins with fiscal responsibility rather than pump-priming: all four Nordic countries have AAA ratings and debt loads significantly below the euro-zone average. It begins with choice and competition rather than paternalism and planning. The economic-freedom index of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank, shows Sweden and Finland catching up with the United States (see chart). The leftward lurch has been reversed: rather than extending the state into the market, the Nordics are extending the market into the state.
     Why are the Nordic countries doing this? The obvious answer is that they have reached the limits of big government. “The welfare state we have is excellent in most ways,” says Gunnar Viby Mogensen, a Danish historian. “We only have this little problem. We can’t afford it.” The economic storms that shook all the Nordic countries in the early 1990s provided a foretaste of what would happen if they failed to get their affairs in order.
There are two less obvious reasons. The old Nordic model depended on the ability of a cadre of big companies to generate enough money to support the state, but these companies are being slimmed by global competition. The old model also depended on people’s willingness to accept direction from above, but Nordic populations are becoming more demanding.
Small is powerful
The Nordic countries have a collective population of only 26m. Finland is the only one of them that is a member of both the European Union and the euro area. Sweden is in the EU but outside the euro and has a freely floating currency. Denmark, too, is in the EU and outside the euro area but pegs its currency to the euro. Norway has remained outside the EU.
But there are compelling reasons for paying attention to these small countries on the edge of Europe. The first is that they have reached the future first. They are grappling with problems that other countries too will have to deal with in due course, such as what to do when you reach the limits of big government and how to organise society when almost all women work. And the Nordics are coming up with highly innovative solutions that reject the tired orthodoxies of left and right.
The second reason to pay attention is that the new Nordic model is proving strikingly successful. The Nordics dominate indices of competitiveness as well as of well-being. Their high scores in both types of league table mark a big change since the 1980s when welfare took precedence over competitiveness.
 Explore our interactive guide to Europe's troubled economies The Nordics do particularly well in two areas where competitiveness and welfare can reinforce each other most powerfully: innovation and social inclusion. BCG, as the Boston Consulting Group calls itself, gives all of them high scores on its e-intensity index, which measures the internet’s impact on business and society. Booz & Company, another consultancy, points out that big companies often test-market new products on Nordic consumers because of their willingness to try new things. The Nordic countries led the world in introducing the mobile network in the 1980s and the GSM standard in the 1990s. Today they are ahead in the transition to both e-government and the cashless economy. Locals boast that they pay their taxes by SMS. This correspondent gave up changing sterling into local currencies because everything from taxi rides to cups of coffee can be paid for by card.
The Nordics also have a strong record of drawing on the talents of their entire populations, with the possible exception of their immigrants. They have the world’s highest rates of social mobility: in a comparison of social mobility in eight advanced countries by Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin, of the London School of Economics, they occupied the first four places. America and Britain came last. The Nordics also have exceptionally high rates of female labour-force participation: in Denmark not far off as many women go out to work (72%) as men (79%).
Flies in the ointment
This special report will examine the way the Nordic governments are updating their version of capitalism to deal with a more difficult world. It will note that in doing so they have unleashed a huge amount of creativity and become world leaders in reform. Nordic entrepreneurs are feeling their oats in a way not seen since the early 20th century. Nordic writers and artists—and indeed Nordic chefs and game designers—are enjoying a creative renaissance.
The report will also add caveats. The growing diversity of Nordic societies is generating social tensions, most horrifically in Norway, where Anders Breivik killed 77 people in a racially motivated attack in 2011, but also on a more mundane level every day. Sweden is finding it particularly hard to integrate its large population of refugees.
     The Nordic model is still a work in progress. The three forces that have obliged the Nordic countries to revamp it—limited resources, rampant globalisation and growing diversity—are gathering momentum. The Nordics will have to continue to upgrade their model, but they will also have to fight to retain what makes it distinctive. Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock, of the World Bank, have coined the term “getting to Denmark” to describe successful modernisation. This report will suggest that the trick is not just to get to Denmark; it is to stay there.
The final caveat is about learning from the Nordic example, which other countries are rightly trying to do. Britain, for example, is introducing Swedish-style “free schools”. But transferring such lessons is fraught with problems. The Nordics’ success depends on their long tradition of good government, which emphasises not only honesty and transparency but also consensus and compromise. Learning from Denmark may be as difficult as staying there.

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570840-nordic-countries-are-reinventing-their-model-capitalism-says-adrian
 

[Zabulón]

Perdónenme ustedes por abrirme paso, interrumpiendo para felicitar públicamente a Sardinita en lata porque acaba de ser padre y quiero darle la Enhorabuena así como a la madre de la criatura. Felicidades