five countries, they are all different in many ways but there is one very strong common

factor, these five countries all have very competitive free market economies. And in

every international ranking they are among the top nations in that respect. And their

economic success in recent decades demonstrates that the Nordic free market economies perform

extraordinarily well. They have produced global companies that dominate many other parts of

the world, but at the same time these five Nordic countries have developed a social welfare

system where everybody, irrespective of their income and class, gets the same right to education,

to healthcare and to equal treatment in any economic way. This coexistence of a social

welfare society with a right to education and healthcare is equally distributed throughout

society is one of the pillars of our economic and business success. So you cannot find any

business organization in any of the Nordic countries, which is advocating that we should

decrease this social welfare system. On the contrary, the prominent business leaders of

our countries realize that the evolution of this social welfare system in terms of education

and healthcare is one of the major reasons why the Nordic businesses have been globally

so successful and why our market economies have grown so aggressively.

Why? Because if we have an established system that takes care of the sick when they need

it and allow every kid to be educated to the fullness of its potential, the business leaders

can concentrate on the business. They don't have to worry about the health insurance and

everything that goes with this complicated system where you don't have a universal educational

or health right. So the Nordic formula, not just the Icelandic one, but also from Norway,

Sweden, Finland and Denmark, has created what The Economist, the preeminent weekly economic

newspaper in the world, deemed a few months ago perhaps the most successful economic model

in the last few decades. So when my American friends call it socialism in a very negative

term I'd ask them look at our business record, look at our economic record, look at the growth

rate, look at the prosperity, look at the global companies, look at the innovation that

takes place within this framework. And if you do that the evidence is absolutely clear

that to provide everybody with a right to education and healthcare is a formula for

economic and business success.