Posted on 10/01/2012 5:07:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sweden, like Norway, is often held up as a country which is "socialist and successful." For example, Sweden has high taxes yet also has had healthy economic growth recently. In this century so far, Sweden's total tax bite amounted to 52% of GDP, while the U.S.'s was 32%. Yet Sweden's real GDP grew 2.3% per year from 2001 to 2011, and ours grew only 1.6% per year.
Prima facie evidence that high taxes don't kill an economy, right?
In July I deconstructed the Norwegian "Miracle," the other "socialist and successful" country. It's Sweden's turn now.
Sweden, like Norway, consists of a small, not very diverse, mostly white and Christian people. Its population is 9.1 million -- a bit less than North Carolina's. (There are 13 cities in the world with bigger populations.) Not only are native Swedes white, but so are most of Sweden's immigrants. The CIA World Factbook lists its immigrants as "Finns, Yugoslavs, Danes, Norwegians, Greeks, Turks." And 85% of that population is Lutheran; 85% live in cities -- 22% in the Stockholm area itself.
But unlike Norway, which is swimming in oil, Sweden is not richer than the U.S. On a GDP per capita basis (Purchasing Power Parity), the U.S. is 20% richer than Sweden. So Sweden has enjoyed somewhat faster growth than the U.S., at least over some cherry-picked periods of time, but it has not caught up to us in over three decades.
In 1980, Sweden was 81% as rich as us; 31 years later, 83%. That's not much movement on Sweden's part. In fact, even that 2% difference all came in the last year, 2011 (the last year of available data), not exactly a banner year for the U.S.
The real story of Sweden is the exact opposite of a "socialist success story."
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Swedish model works because they are Swedes!
People of high moral virtue and a strong work ethic.
It cannot work in a country composed of people of non Swedish values.
bm
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