Study discovers Swedes are less well-off than the poorest Americans

Reuters via Haaretz ^ | 5/4/2002 | Reuters

[l33t]

Socialism never worked.

[Lockbox]

Does Sweden still have its regressive tax system?

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Liberals love to claim that socialism is great and that the USSR failed because they didn't go about it right. They hold up socialist countries in Europe, like Sweden and France, as examples. There's just one problem. These European models of socialism keep crashing and burning.

[Moonman62]

These European models of socialism keep crashing and burning.

They must not be doing it right either.

[Moonman62]

I wonder if Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings will cover this story.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I don't know. But I've heard American liberals try to justify high taxes, many times, by saying, "Look at these countries in Europe. They pay a 70% income tax and look at how great they're doing and look at all the wonderful services that their governments are providing."

It's all a big farce.

[FITZ]

It seems we have an awful lot of Socialism. I find it hard to believe there is really more in other places---I don't think our economy can tolerate much more.

[riri]

All part of the big European facade. The place is not the high cultured land of sophistication and opulense that we have been lead to believe. I found it rainy,depressing and basically lacking in most everything-except old beautiful buildings.

[wimpycat]

Alabama or Sweden?

[Torie]

The Swedes also have longer holidays. It some ways, a study like this is apples and oranges.

[airedale]

They also have a major population bomb that's getting much closer to exploding and taking their entire system down with them. They already are taxed at close to 90% of their income and a Swede in the top 5% has $5,000 US in the bank and owns their home. The population is growing at less than replacement something like 1.25 to 1.5 per couple and continuing to drop. They have a fairly large population bubble of baby boomers that's just approaching the age that they will be leaving the work force. Since the populations behind them to support them in their old age is much smaller it would require a larger chunch of tax $$ to support them. When you are being taxed at 95% already it doesn't leave room for a tax increase. The only alternative is to cut services or perhaps get the old people to die off more quickly so they aren't a burden on society. If they take in a lot of immigrants to support their older people they loose their culture as the real Swedes become a smaller and smaller minority in their own country over time. No matter which way they go it's a no win situation.

[Cicero]

I went to a meeting of a group of literary scholars not long after the dissolution of the USSR. One of my marxist-inclined colleagues explained, when asked how come the great Soviet experiment had collapsed, contrary to all predictions, by saying that, according to Marx, you can't have true Communism until you first go through capitalism. But Russia, foolishly eager, went straight from Czarist feudalism to Communism instead of taking things slowly in the proper historical order that Marx had predicted.

So, she concluded, Russia needed to have a century or so of capitalist development. Then they could try Communism all over again, and this time it would succeed. She evidently was looking forward to the day.

[Nogbad]

Sweden got rich during WWII
by staying neutral
and selling to both sides.

They remained rich for a while
after the war,
and told the world
their wealth was the result
of their social system.

Many fools believed them
and political 'scientists' went there
to learn about their system.

[Senator Pardek]

The Swedes also have longer holidays. It some ways, a study like this is apples and oranges.

Not quite. Homeless people have the longest vacations of all. One pays for one's vacations with "quality of life".

BTW how are things going at the Pentagon? ;)

[Drango]

How are they compared to the French?

[Snickersnee]

When Sweden adopted Socialism at the end of the XIX Century, they canvassed the population to see who was most likely to be a drag on the system -- the shiftless, the mentally slow, the big families -- and they exported them to North America en masse. I think it amounted to almost ten percent of the whole kingdom emigrating over a few years' time. As we know, these went largely to the Upper Midwest, where they were wildly successful. That's what happens when you have liberty.

On the other hand, they gave us the likes of Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone....

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #10

Longer holiday's benefit might not be big enough to cancel the effect of higher price in just about every consumer commodity on one's pocketbook.

[Torie]

I don't believe any of the three you mentioned are Swedish. Mondale is Norwegian.

[Torie]

Just fine, although we are undergoing some personnel changes. As usual, I'm on top.

[DallasMike]

Homeless people have the longest vacations of all.

Really? How about the benefits? My current job hardly lets me see my home anyway, so I probably wouldn't miss it.