Yet if you compare Europe’s main Anglo-Saxon economies, Ireland and Britain, with Sweden - Scandanavia’s darling - you find Ireland and Britain are more effective at increasing incomes of poor people. Allister Heath wrote earlier this year, based on research from the think tank Open Europe: “the incomes of the poorest 10% of Swedes have grown six times slower than the poor in the UK and eight times slower than the poor in Ireland over the past decade... Average incomes in the EU excluding the UK and Ireland are up 37.1% and that of the poorest tenth by 19.2%. In Sweden, the average is up 29.3% and the bottom decile by a mere 9.7%.”

From the rosy picture given by Stiglitz, you might imagine that Sweden has a low unemployment rate. And indeed it does if you take the Swedish government’s official statistic. However, Sweden has chosen to measure it differently from everyone else. If you compare like with like, Sweden suffers from 10.3% unemployment - higher than in France.

What is more, Swedish public expenditure has been bigger than income most years since 1970. This is hardly prudent economic management.

Should we blame globalisation for the failure of the Swedish welfare system? Are global forces conspiring to push down the Swedish safety net, leading to a global race to the bottom?

I would say that the failure of Swedish welfare is caused internally not externally. The country’s dismal economic record is to do with spending what it cannot afford and discouraging work rather than because of a downward pressure from outside.

The idea that globalisation makes welfare states unaffordable sometimes appeals to right-wingers, but I am not sure the evidence is there. In fact, richer, more actively trading economies have better welfare systems, in general. Richer countries have better infrastructure, better business environments and better productivity which results in better pay and therefore a greater amount available for governments to tax.

If governments choose to tax so highly that it discourages effort or choose to give benefits so generous that they discourage work, the resulting problems are caused by unwise government, not by a global race to the bottom.