Anders Borg
Anders Borg
Anders Borg is a Swedish economist and politician who served as Minister for Finance in the Swedish Government from 2006 to 2014.
2011 Financial Times elected Anders Borg to Finance Minister of the Year. For a decade Sweden could plausibly claim to be Europe’s most successful economy.
Anders Borg, the (formerly pony-tailed) centre-right finance minister since 2006, likes to trot out numbers for his time in office: GDP growth of 12.6%, a rise in gross disposable incomes of almost 20%, a budget moving into surplus and a public debt barely above 40% of GDP. These figures not only outshine Britain and the euro zone; they also eclipse America.
The Economist Politicians from both right and left could learn from the Nordic countries. The main lesson to learn from the Nordics is not ideological but practical. The state is popular not because it is big but because it works. A Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care. The Nordics have pushed far- reaching reforms past unions and business lobbies.
The proof is there. You can inject market mechanisms into the welfare state to sharpen its performance. You can put entitlement programmes on sound foundations to avoid beggaring future generations. But you need to be willing to root out corruption and vested interests. And you must be ready to abandon tired orthodoxies of the left and right and forage for good ideas across the political spectrum. The world will be studying the Nordic model for years to come.
