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.
I would disagree. Immense amounts of effort are expended in Silicon Valley to shelter income and assets in Nevada. Where the Federal brackets fall now for income and capital gains is probably right around the maximum and perhaps a little high. When states like California tack another 10% on top of that, people start to look for tax dodges. People who are perfectly sheltered in Nevada, on the other hand, seem to be far less concerned with the amount of tax they pay. Personally, I find the California tax system egregious, but I can work with the Federal system, no matter how much I detest it. The dozens of well-off friends I have in Silicon Valley agree with me, almost all of whom are sheltered to one extent or another in Nevada. Nevada, in its wisdom, has chosen to reap the benefits of Silicon Valley money indirectly rather than through punitive taxation. As long as California continues its hideous tax system, it will lose revenue through the wholesale sheltering of assets and income in Nevada.
If I had to pull a number out of the air for the maximum aggregate tax rate that will not evoke massive sheltering, it would be around 20-30%. Anything more than this and people will start doing things with their money that will eliminate revenue for the government. And rightly so.
Nah, there wouldn't have been any room. All those eggheads would be busy trying to explain why Sweden has such a great economic model that it is sure to outpace the US in the near future in per capita GDP, and that importing the worlds criminals and creating slums for them is a good idea, too.
Then they would have to leave right when class ends to go sip cappucino with you.
That's thinking small. You should assert that you loaned him the pencil. Or, better yet, that you bought him the french fries that gave him greasy fingers that caused him to reach for the napkin, which inspired him to grasp his moment in history.
LOL.. . Stop me when you get the punchline.
No, not of itself.
A toddler is probably safer on a Norwegian street than sitting with his parents inside many American restaurants.
Yep and for those that can't afford to go away for their holiday, they have that bitchin' heroin program. LOL
You wanna discuss MONEY, you better be on the 'literalism' thread.
You apparently are not aware of how many companies in Silicon Valley have divisions in Reno and Las Vegas. Damn near all of them. Why? So their employees and they themselves do not have to pay California taxes if they so choose. It is a bloody selling point when trying to get employees. The corporations (e.g. Oracle, Sun, and other major players) all have Nevada tax shelters and are set up in such a way that their employees can take advantage of it as well. You'd be surprised how many major tech companies have "offices" in Reno or Lake Tahoe. It is SOP in the Silicon Valley; maybe it is different where you live. And the State of Nevada encourages it.
"Living in Nevada" is a pretty easy trick to accomplish, despite the fact that California has tried to clamp down on it. I know lots of people that "live in Nevada", either figuratively, technically, or literally that nominally work in Silicon Valley. Not being a California resident is encouraged in Silicon Valley from the top down in a great many companies, and the entire private infrastructure actively supports this dodge. I own lots of property in Nevada, and have lived there at various times, and so I have a pretty good idea of what's involved. Any moron can move their residency if the company they work at is tacitly supporting it.
BTW, you may substitute "Wisconsin" for "California" in your quote. At this time, WIs D of Rev is suing a well-known Wisconsin based retail chain for $800K in tax, penalty, and interest, for establishing an asset-rich income-earning operation in Nevada to which the Wisconsin company sends all its Wisconsin earnings in payment for 'trademark rights.'
The dodge was put together by Deloitte at a cost of around $600K and INFURIATES the rapacious Wisconsin tax men.
You're not a Torie, You're a Marxist.
That's common ground, I guess.
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