The underlying moral logic

By E.G. | AUSTIN

LAST month our Bagehot columnist flagged a new paper that the Nordic governments were set to present at Davos, on "The Nordic Way". Among the interesting arguments in the paper is an analysis of Nordic individualism:

While much has been written about the institutionalized aspects of the Nordic welfare state, few have paid much attention to the underlying moral logic. Though the path hasn't always been straight, one can discern over the course of the twentieth century an overarching ambition in the Nordic countries not to socialize the economy but to liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency within the family and in civil society: the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands, children from their parents—and vice versa when the parents become elderly.