SAAB is about to roll over and die, and the Swedish papers are full of people throwing blame at each other. Whose fault is it, when a business is shut down? Is it the the owners’ fault, for not designing the right strategy, or is the management team who lacks in excecution? Or should we blame the workers, for not working hard and smart enough?

None of the above, according to many Swedes. Instead, it’s the governments fault. It’s the government’s responsibility to secure work for their citizens. The reasoning goes that SAAB should be kept alive by the government, so that the SAAB employees could have a job to go to. SAAB has been run at a loss for the last 20 years, and other countries and businesses are obviosuly doing a much better job at building cars, but so what – it keeps people occupied.

This is article 23.1 in the Universial Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

To me, this doesn’t mean that anyone should be guaranteed a job, just by being a citizen. It means that everyone should have the right to employment, if they’re qualified to do the job. The government’s role is to offer education to everyone, but it’s the each person’s responsibility to go to school.