Posted on 05/04/2002 3:41:42 PM PDT by l33t
STOCKHOLM - Swedes, usually perceived in Europe as a comfortable, middle class lot, are poorer than African Americans, the most economically-deprived group in the United States, a Swedish study showed yesterday.
The study by a retail trade lobby, published in the liberal Dagens Nyheter newspaper 19 weeks before the next general election, echoed the center-right opposition's criticism of the weak state of Sweden's economy, following decades of almost uninterrupted Social Democratic rule.
The Swedish Research Institute of Trade (HUI) said it had compared official U.S. and Swedish statistics on household income, as well as gross domestic product, private consumption and retail spending per capita between 1980 and 1999.
Using fixed prices and purchasing power parity adjusted data, the median household income in Sweden at the end of the 1990s was the equivalent of $26,800, compared with a median of $39,400 for U.S. households, HUI's study showed.
"Weak growth means that Sweden has lost greatly in prosperity compared with the United States," HUI's president, Fredrik Bergstrom, and chief economist, Robert Gidehag, said.
International Monetary Fund data from 2001 show that U.S. GDP per capita in dollar terms was 56 percent higher than in Sweden, while in 1980, Swedish GDP per capita was 20 percent higher.
"Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household," the HUI economists said.
If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest, measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said.
They said they had chosen that measure for their comparison to get around the differences in taxation and welfare structures. Capital gains such as income from securities were not included.
The median income of African American households was about 70 percent of the median for all U.S. households, while Swedish households earned 68 percent of the overall U.S. median level.
This means that Swedes stood "below groups, which, in the Swedish debate, are usually regarded as poor and losers in the American economy," Bergstrom and Gidehag said.
Between 1980 and 1999, the gross income of Sweden's poorest households increased by just over 6 percent, while the poorest in the United States enjoyed a three times higher increase, HUI said.
If the trend persists, "things that are commonplace in the United States will be regarded as the utmost luxury in Sweden," the authors said. "We are not quite there yet, but the trend is clear."
According to HUI figures, during the period 1998-1999, U.S. GDP per capita was 40 percent higher than in Sweden, while U.S. private consumption and retail sales per capita exceeded Swedish levels by more than 80 percent.
The HUI economists attributed the much bigger difference in consumption and sales mainly to the fact that U.S. households pay themselves for education and health care, services that are tax-financed and come for free or at low user charges in Sweden.
According to recent opinion polls Sweden's Social Democrats are comfortably ahead of the center-right opposition in the run-up to the September 15 elections.
Let me tell you, this study is really going to rankle the Swedes. One big reason, Europeans feel (not think) they are morally superior to us, is how they look down at how "we" treat Blacks in America. The Euros imagine them pounded down into poverty by greedy white capitalists. To have Black Americans wealthier than the Swedes is going to bug them, if the word gets out.
This study could help turn around the situation in the home of Social Democracy.
Curiously, the life expectancy in Sweeden is higher than in the United States (despite Sweeden's socialism).
And if People in Sweeden are living longer, they must be pretty healthy.
And if they're so healthy, let them work longer. No problem.
Clinton's economic adviser, Dr. Laura Tyson, went to Romania to study their system in the 1980's and reported how wonderful it was there. Facts won't distract them from their Marxist dream worlds.
Perfumed.
Maybe yes, maybe not. But the decline started after free-market reforms in the 1980's same was as in Soviet block in the 1990's. The prosperity in Sweden coincided with the social-democratic rule.
Ha HA
If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest, measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said.
Ha HA
If the trend persists, "things that are commonplace in the United States will be regarded as the utmost luxury in Sweden," the authors said.
So much for the socialist, Godless, pro-abort, open marriage paradigm.
Not only all of that but of every three dollars of gov't dole-outs, one of them is borrowed!
(according to P. J. O'Rourke, "Eat The Rich")
Really? Well, your high brown approach is also ill suited for this forum. You'd obviously be surprised at the wealth of knowledge and the collective degrees of FReepers. Give us your best shot.
Norway is so safe that Norwegians leave kids in strollers on the sidewalk while the parents enter restaurants for a meal, and no one thinks anything of it.
That kind of peace of mind is a greater luxury than $200 sneakers.
And speaking of luxury items, what about Sweedish blondes? Nothing wrong with them babes an attitude adjustment wouldn't fix.
As for the French, they have one of the top tax rates for the EU and among the lowest per capita income.
As a matter of fact, I just witnessed Chirac saying what I posted above live.
Even he admits it although I do not think he actually will fix it if he gets re elected.
It is much like the people in South Dakota who are Conservative in general but vote for Daschle anyway. They REALLY think he wont take thier guns away... LOL!
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