I can only spend so much time looking into the tax system for Sweden but I found nothing that describes the system of a zero rate of federal income tax. Can you please link me to a citation that describes the current system of taxation. So if I understand you correctly, Swedes pay nothing but get a lot from government? Or do they pay a lot to get a lot but it is not income tax as we know it? Swedes pay a lot of taxes, it happens that their FEDERAL tax is zero because they do not have FEDERAL government.
The Swedish example shows that picking one type of tax can lead to absurdity. You need to add ALL government taxes all together, whether federal, state, local, whether of on wages, profit, dividends, property, sales, inheritance, services, sales etc ... Then you can reason honestly about it.
BTW, the best way is to add all budgets of all governments and compare them with GDP. (when the budget is larger than taxes it tax the future of out children, when it is smaller it is an investment). I did it once a few years ago and I found that Sweden has total tax as a percentage of GDP a little smaller than US (both were above 50%).
I thought you were too cute in your original assertion that they pay zero federal income taxes so I did check it out. See this:
http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/BasicFactsheet____3927.aspx
They may not call it a federal tax but if one is comparing a "national" income tax to a federal one, they sure do pay one and it is steep. They also have all sorts of broad based taxes that any good capitalistic nation must avoid to remain free. For this reason, I live in NH, a land of few broad based means to tax the earners or consumers, and so do many people who have made money in CT, NY,NY, and MA, who choose to live here.
There overall tax take as a percentage is higher than ours but they do get something for it, a nanny state government, less freedom, and more socialism.