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Maybe the high taxes and homogenous society (for now) works for them. Does Sweden have a less corrupt govt than the US fed? Regardless, it isn't happening here.
Well it is starting to not work and getting push back from many of the productive there as their government, for whatever reason, has decided to import Muslim refugees, many whom are hostile to the native Swedish. However, the Muslims want their "free" stuff even though they HATE who provides it.
Maybe the high taxes and homogenous society (for now) works for them.
Absolutely good points.
I can imagine how it will work in Vermont (for example).
But I can't imagine Scandinavian socialism in Harlem, Baltimore or Kansas (for examples)
I thought kids wanted to grow up and make their own money so they don't have to ask their parents for what they want and need. Think of something you really needed or wanted but your parents said no. Is this what you want for the rest of your life? Some stranger thinking they know what you need?
Hey Werdywerd, in "my opinion" I need the money but who in the elite socialist gov't gets to determine if in their opinion that I need the money and what rules will those decisions be based on. Will I have to be starving to be approved for the money I need?
Do you really think that any gov't gives a damn about what I want and think I need. Why do you want someone else to make those decision.
Is Sweden socialist? No. Is Sweden democratically socialist? No.
Capitalist, free market economy based on open trade and a fair amount of government redistribution.
Sweden had a 20 year period where they experimented hard with socialism, and it was a spectacular failure, but this is the twenty year period that you all seem to remember. What happened was in 1970s, Sweden was one of the richest countries on the planet because of a 100 year period of very competitive businesses, always exposed to foreign competition, and always very low taxes...lower than in the United States. Then we said let's redistribute everything, let's regulate business and even experiment with government ownership of business. We doubled the size of the government consumption of GDP, we increased taxes and regulated everything. This is what the rest of the world remembers.
It's like the old joke "how do you make a small fortune? Well, you start with a large fortune and waste most of it." And that's what Sweden did for twenty years.
That's when we pulled ourselves back from the brink. One prominent politician said "look, this experiment with Democrat Socialism has failed. The policies were perverse, unsustainable and absurd"(Minister of Finance Kjell-Olaf Feldt)
Then, with a broad consensus from the left and the right, they opened up the Swedish economy again, they shrank the size of government, they reduced taxes, they deregulated the product market, and opened up Sweden for business again. And now...we're back on track.
Second speaker:
When you think of a welfare state, you think of a system that taxes the rich and gives to the poor. That's not the case in Sweden. You pay taxes when you are working, but you get money when you are not working. And most of your taxes are redistributed over your life cycle. They are not handed to the lazy or the poor, they are given back to yourself, later in life.
The biggest problem with a marginal tax rate around 90% is the amount of tax planning ANYONE will do to avoid paying those high taxes. Very few rich firms paid those taxes, but rather moved their incomes or shipped them to other countries. Which meant the high taxes created tax planning, not tax revenues.
Host:
I remember ABBA wore those outrageous outfits to get a tax deduction.
First Speaker:
The dirty little secret about the Swedish model is that we don't squeeze the rich, we squeeze the poor. We take most of the money from the poor and the middle classes because they are loyal taxpayers. They don't move to Monaco, they don't have tax lawyers, or anything like that.
Most of the taxes are from a payroll tax (30%) and local regional income tax (30%), and those are flat taxes. They are not progressive taxes. Then we also have a sales tax (VAT, 25%).
We realized that we can have big government, or we can have the rich pay for it all, but we can't have both.
In the period where we chased away business, we didn't create a single net job in the private sector for 30 years.
Third speaker:
Public healthcare had problems. It didn't function as good as it should have. We had long queues, we had waiting times to get access to healthcare. Patients didn't get their operations on time, and you couldn't reach your doctor.
There was public pressure, and something needed to be done. Therefore, the politicians opened up the entire sector. Now you can choose, as an individual. You can choose to go to one provider, which is private, or you can choose the public provider.
For 25-30 years, there was no choice because public was the only option.
The majority of those with the private option are low and middle income, and they often work in small businesses. For the small business owner, it's a way of improving conditions for your employees to have this kind (private) of insurance.
Fourth speaker:
There is no such thing as a free education, not in any country.
Answering host's question about how Sweden's student debt compares to the US: Actually, I think we are worse. That's a strange thing about Sweden, we have a very generous system for student aid, but we still have the one of the highest debts in the world among students.
A huge amount of debt when we graduate.
One of the other consequences is that we don't have the return on investment, which is quite low in Sweden, compared to other countries, and I think it's because we have the model of the welfare system, so in some occupations, you will never get a return on the investment. It will be negative.
Answering host wondering about debt if school is publicly funded: They don't pay any fees, but they borrow money to live during the time they actually study. On average, a Swedish student spends 6 years for a 4 year education program.
Fifth speaker:
40% of electrical generation in Sweden is nuclear. That is an absolutely an important part of the Swedish electricity system.
First speaker:
If the US wanted to be like Sweden, they would need to deregulate markets, abolish occupational licensing, have more free trade, reform social security, privatize pensions, equalize school funding (with vouchers), and abolish taxes on property, gifts, and inheritance. It's not your grandfather's socialism.
Sweden is not a democrat socialist country. They are just barely a Fabian socialist welfare state. And their taxes are flat and what Americans would consider horribly regressive. And while they rank high on tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (44%), they rank 7th in most competitive tax systems, to whit:
Quote:
The corporate tax rate in Sweden is 22 percent, below the OECD average of 23.9 percent. The tax code also allows companies to be taxed on their average profitability by allowing net operating losses to be carried forward indefinitely. Paired together, these make for both a competitive and neutral approach to taxing corporate income.
Bottom line, the country is super business friendly and pays for the welfare state with flat, regressive taxes that make the poor and middle class pay the lion's share of the burden. Basically, it's what a country would look like if Reagan era Republicans ran a country according to their stated platform circa 1984.
Socialism gets votes from the young with no money who just want the free stuff while trading away their human rights.......and they could care less what happens to the rest of us..........and apparently can't figure out what goes on in Venezuela and Cuba.........
ABBA moved to United States because of socialism and thats why they were here.
Its also easy to manage a country when a population is homogenous and with its healthcare offerings and only the population size as Connecticut. Sweden has been in economic turmoil for the last 25 years with mass migration to Norway for work. Swedish are basically Norways Mexicans.
Anyone that supports these countries and stuff, which is great, but have you stopped to consider that the only reason countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway etc can be the way they are is because of the US? What will happen to the them and rest of Europe when our Military is so weak that we can't really support or respond to aggression? You think the UN can fight off Russia? This money that the socialist want to spend for their one payer system, st loan relief, etc, has to come from somewhere and it will not all come increased taxes, some of it will for sure but a lot of it will come from cutting programs. They aren't cutting Medicare, SS or any other entitlement programs, so that leaves education and the military. Guess which one of those will lose the most funding. Our military will be completely out of date and regulated to stacking sandbags at home by the end of Bernies first term. But hey, I am sure Russia and Iran all about that, they can finally do whatever they want with no one to oppose them.
Does Sweden have a less corrupt govt than the US fed?
Not just the fed, the US is scarily corrupt on so many levels of government.
But as the subject was brought up: The Nordic countries, in general, do not overly suffer from corruption. Which is one reason the system works - you can disagree with how tax money is spent (many do, loudly and vehemently), but it is very rare to see cases where tax funds are out-and-out stolen. The condemnation is pretty much universal. Same goes for bribery. It was excised from the public sector centuries ago - a close personal friend of the king was sent to prison for life, and that changed the culture pretty much overnight.
Heck, a few years back when a Danish bank was busted doing illegal transactions on a large scale, the Queen saw fit to mention her disappointment in her New Year's speech. (Imagine being called out in a SOTU speech, except the Queen is above politics.)
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. Werdywerd, I don't want to do anything for you, but get to work so you can make the money I NEED you to GIVE ME.
