{"id":440,"date":"2004-12-05T16:44:09","date_gmt":"2004-12-05T23:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=440"},"modified":"2004-12-05T16:44:09","modified_gmt":"2004-12-05T23:44:09","slug":"the-obstruction-industry-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/12\/the-obstruction-industry-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"The obstruction industry, part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part I<\/a> should to be read first.<\/span>Argument 2: The blockade is good for Sweden:<\/span>
\nLet’s imagine for a moment that these pesky Latvians have successfully taken over a large segment of the Swedish building sector by constantly underbidding on wages. What would happen? It would cost less to build a house. More houses would get built. More houses would be on the market. It would become cheaper to buy or rent a house.<\/p>\n

These savings would apply to all Swedes who consume housing. The money saved can be put to productive use, or consumed, and a multiplier effect guarantees that Sweden as a whole gets richer. The average Swede is better off if the price of housing goes down.<\/p>\n

It follows that the average Swede won’t be<\/em> better off if the blockade is successful and Latvians are kept from competing. Then why isn’t there a groundswell of support by average Swedes for the Latvians, purely for selfish reasons?<\/p>\n

I can think of a couple of reasons. Maybe everyone believes in “ordning och reda<\/a>,” loosely translated into orderliness, a system intended to mitigate market effects on wages, so that over time no one particular labor group comes to be at a comparative wage disadvantage, even if new disruptive technologies (computers) or changing political realities (the common market) would warrant such relative wage discrepancies, over time.<\/p>\n

In other words, the average Swede might prefer to avoid income discrepancies over time by keeping wages rigid, rather than by allowing wages to fluctuate according to the market but then using tax revenues to redistribute income or retrain workers that are losing out. They might trust ordning och reda over a market-based mechanism because they believe it benefits them individually, even though they accept it produces less wealth for Sweden as a whole.<\/p>\n

Or maybe Swedes are nationalists, and prefer to over-pay their compatriots for a job that foreigners will do for less. I doubt it, though.<\/p>\n

My own favorite theory (that I just made up) is that when it comes to the housing market, there is an asymmetry in the way in which the interests of producers and consumers are defended. While those who supply the labor that goes into the production of housing are well represented by Byggnad, those that consume the eventual product are not; there is no association of house buyers and renters (that I am aware of), because if there were, they’d be demanding to know why there is such a long waiting list for affordable housing in Stockholm for everyone except LO leaders, and why the Latvians can’t come over to solve the problem, as they are clearly itching to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part I should to be read first.Argument 2: The blockade is good for Sweden: Let’s imagine for a moment that these pesky Latvians have successfully taken over a large segment of the Swedish building sector by constantly underbidding on wages. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-economics","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-76","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}