mmm... Svedka...
Seems like a lot of double talk. On one hand, taxes are very high compared to US standards. On the other hand, taxes are not high because you get 85% of what you pay back. On one hand, Sweden is the perfect welfare state. On the other hand, very little of the government fisc is paid to the poor.
It’s easy to tell this tale, but does it measure up to reality?
He doesn’t seem to understand the US, either. Doesn’t he understand that we also have social security, medicare, and now Obamacare? Doesn’t he understand that the rich pay the overwhelming bulk of the taxes in the US? Doesn’t he understand that Big Government has run amok in the US? He makes it sound like we are like the Wild West—completely unregulated. In reality, we are one of the most regulated societies on Earth.
I am always suspicious when I see someone compare the US to a country that has fewer than 10 million inhabitants—particularly when the other country has very little demographic variation. Sweden has a population approximately the size of NYC. Sweden is less than 1/30 the size of the US population-wise. Government planning works a lot better when you are planning for 8 million people than when you are planning for 300 million.
I did not find it boring in any respect.
I would like to hear a similar short lecture regarding Spain, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom and the United States.
WC, have you ever read my favorite popular book on economics, P.J. O’Rourke’s Eat The Rich? There’s a very long chapter in the book on Sweden, and O’Rourke concludes that socialism only works in places that have a powerful work ethic, in which people worked as hard as they would in a completely free-market system. The speaker in the video hints at the same thing, but, being Swedish, is too modest to say it out loud.
From there, it would be inevitable that people would want to start being rewarded for their hard work. Putting in long hours so that a family on “benefits” can welcome its sixth child (while you and your wife struggle to support two)—I imagine that gets old at some point.
“My country is one of the most well functioning on Earth. If not the most.”
especially Malmo...
I used to work for Ericsson Radio. I remember when the government was investigating them for ‘excess profits’.