Health care offers only one example of this dynamic. Medical schools are free in Norway. If the Norwegian med schools turn out to be full when you want to learn to be a physician, the system will send you to med school in Denmark or Sweden, or even the UK, not only tuition-free, but with a stipend for expenses.
No one I interviewed for my book Viking Economics wants their country to be seen as paradise. Norwegians tell me they live in a nation of complainers. In all the Nordic countries, people are constantly researching outcomes to find out how to improve.
Widespread public debates, for instance, are going on in these nations about the racism that shows up when they open the doors to immigration. Sweden took in more refugees from the Middle East two years ago than any other European nation. One Norwegian in five is foreign-born.
Debates about carbon pollution, meanwhile, have become heated. Norway now ranks as the only Nordic oil exporter, and a growing movement of Norwegians insists that the oil be left in the ground.
Despite Scandinavia’s flaws, the international comparisons using the Gini measure of income inequality make it clear: The Nordic economic model produces dramatically higher levels of equality than economies in the United States or UK. One result: vibrant democracies with very high rates of voter participation and far more press freedom than in the United States.
The Nordics still have problems, but by pushing their economic elite out of dominance they have given themselves the ongoing capacity to solve those problems. Their example raises the question: When will we in the United States focus on a positive egalitarian vision and train ourselves for the nonviolent direct action campaigns that will get us what we want?