Yeah you raise a lot of questions I have pondered too. No apart from the UK we don't really have labour shortage here.

But in many European countries including Norway we have a system called "Permitering," which means people are sort of laid off but still employed. It was thus easier to get back to normal after COVID19 restrictions got reduced.

We also didn't have to scramble to come up with ways of taking care of people, like sending out cheques to everyone. We already had a well functioning welfare system for these kinds of things, which just automatically kicked in.

And working conditions for low skilled labour was already much better so people where less reluctant to come back to work. E.g. my impression is that in the US conditions for a lot of low skill labour such as the meatpackers was so bad that the virus could spread rapidly and employees felt completely ignored and thrown under the bus. I think that made a lot of people not want to come pack to that kind of jobs.

But here very few worked under comparable conditions. Everybody regardless for work have plenty of sick days, vacation days, and employees right to have representation at companies where important decisions are made is actually in the Norwegian constitution. Thus I don't think low skill workers here felt like they got thrown under the bus and sacrificed. Thus there hasn't been any reluctance to go back to work.

I think in many ways the US is going through a lot of the stuff Europeans went through historically. I have wondered for years when American workers would rise up against the inequality which has developed over many years. I guess COIVD19 must have triggered a sort of inflection point.

What still seems a problem in the US however is that there is not way to really express this politically, given the de-facto two-party system which hinders new political movements from gaining ground in any meaningful way.

Over here changes in society has usually let to new parties arising to prominence. We started with two parties similar to the US: A liberal and conservative party. The voting system was similar to the US in that it favored a two party-system since voting was based on a winner-takes-all type of voting.

However that voting system got reformed in the early 1900s I believe, and this opened up for the Social Democrats. Thus industrial workers became a big part of society, the Social Democratic party got big. When people got tired of taxes in the 70s we got a libertarian anti-tax party. With the growth of environmental concern over the last years we got a Green party. All sorts of changes to society and new challenges has led to a total of 10 parties now existing in parliament representing different interests.

That is a problem in the US, there seems to be no clear solution to. Many American seem to be tired of Democrats and Republicans but don't have any other option.