>Okay, let's put this differently: you still have high wages and high
>productivity in Sweden, no?
>
>So if we're just focussing on productivity it's still possible to
>combine the two under conditions of contemporary global competition.
>Sweden trades a larger percentage of its GDP than we do.
Yes, 44% vs. 10%. But that's just the point - Sweden is a very small country that exports a lot of high value-added products, giving them lots of surplus to spread around. The U.S. is a large country with a huge internal market; we'd have to increase its exports by some $4 trillion to match Sweden's level, or about 10% of total world product. And we export lots of low value-added stuff like lemons. So I doubt the Sweden can be used as an economic model for the U.S., short of a lot of radical transformations (the role of stockholders, the structure of the corporation, capital-labor relations, etc.).
>The arguments you put above seem to be less about productivity and
>more about profitability
Yup. But from a capitalist's POV, that's the whole point of jacking up productivity.