“You shouldn’t boast, but Stockholm is the world’s most beautiful city,” said mayor Kristina Axén Olin .
- Personally I (and probably Hannibal Lecter too) would say Florence, Italy is even more beautiful than Stockholm, but let’s forget about sheer beauty and environmenal issues for a while. Instead, lets have a look at something that Reader’s Digest perhaps didn’t dare to bring up; Swedish standard of living. Reader’s Digest is one of many publications that for long have printed articles about the ‘doomed’ Swedish/Scandinavian Model of Society. I have actually come across Reader’s Digest articles from the 1950’s predicting that the economy of the ‘Socialist’ Scandinavian countries soon would collapse. Today, more than five decades later, Scandinavia is THE richest part of the world - and the gap to other rich countries is widening.
Personally, I hate Socialism, but I love Scandinavia. To me, Scandinavian economy is about Volvo, Nokia, Ericsson, IKEA, Electrolux, Lego, Carlsberg, SAAB, not Socialism. Scandinavia is one of the best examples of CAPITALIST success on this earth.
Scandinavians (although not Scandinavian companies) might suffer from higher taxes than US citizens. However, their wages are higher and they also get something in return for the taxes they pay. Scandinavians have choosen one way of organizing society and US Americans another. As long as we all believe in freedom, democracy, free markets and hard work there’s no reason for mud throwing between our different parts of the world. Let’s leave that activity to our spoiled, internet abusing youngsters.
Like said above, the standard of living in Sweden is indeed a very high one. Poverty is extinct. Whether one looks at building standards, private consumtion, leisure activities, public environments, income levels, one has to admit few other nations can compete.
Stockholm is just like NYC, Paris, Milan and London in the sense that lots of the inhabitants chose to live in apartments/condos instead of nice single houses, even if they easily could afford to do so. Still, there are a lot of nice houses in the suburbs of Stockholm. An area like Djursholm (one of the richest in the whole of Scandinavia) is worth a trip in itself.
Anyhow, to give you some kind of idea of how life in Stockholm is like in the case of ordinary Stockholm residents who do not wish to live in small, expensive apartments in the inner parts of the city:
An average Stockholm couple together earning around $ 110 000 yearly could afford these things in life (something most Europeans could not)
- A house like this (not big, but I think it’s a nice house for this kind of money):
- A summer house (very common in Sweden) like this:
- A car like this (Volvo V70 is the best selling car in Sweden):
http://www.volvocars.se/All-Cars-MY08/Volvo-V70-new/
(The all new V70 and XC70 will soon be for sale in the US)
So, would I like to live in Stockholm?
Nope. I prefer Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. But that’s another story.
I have to say, I’m quite miffed not to see Little Rock on the list.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
What the hell has happened to the Readers Digest?
Milton Friedman appreciated your point. A Swede once boasted to him that "We have no poverty in Sweden." Friedman said "That’s very interesting. In America we have no poverty among Swedes either."
I have it on good authority that the most beautiful city in the world is Prague...
This may be, but Stockholm is no where near the California Coastline, so it is a stupid point to begin with.
there’s only
4 hours of sunlight
on december 21st.