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.
Make that pseueo-intellectual. REAL intellectuals don't talk so much about things they don't understand. Oh, and they are often interesting, and have a sense of humour.
Been there (and to most of the rest of Europe) many of times. Forget it. There's a reason why the migration pattern is almost all one way, to here.
The Swedes have Scandinavian genes, therefore they will live longer (if they don't smoke and drink themselves to death first... {<ggg}).
WAY too many, and it is probably too late to turn it around, considering the low testoserone level of the current Swedes. (I am TOO familiar with the political climate there today.)
Right on! The phrase pu***-whipped comes to mind. The REAL Vikings from all of Scandinavia came to America long ago.
Only a very cursory inspection makes Europe look nice. Anyone who has had to deal with Europe for years gets a much better picture. My own analysis suggests that if you are unmotivated or lazy, Europe is the ticket; they don't reward ingenuity or ambition, but they'll pay the bill if you want to sit on your ass and do nothing as long as you show up. If you are motivated and have an entreprenurial spirit, Europe is pure hell. And quite frankly, who gives a damn if you get an extra two weeks of holidays (or whatever); I applaud the fact that in the US it is entirely possible for Joe Average to retire in style after 30 or 40 years of work if they manage their money wisely. Financial independence is not an even option an Europe except for an infinitesimal minority; in the US it is practically a birthright.
My years of experience in European business has made it very evident that their decrepitude far exceeds their reputation on such matters. Europe won't make it through the 21st century, and it is their own damn fault. I hold no hostility towards Europeans, but they've made their own bed and they'll have to pay dearly for their mistakes.
Let them raise the retirement age, so what?
If not, then the people will have a revolution, redistribute the wealth, learn from the mistakes of the past, and then start over with a system that will work better.
Civilzation progresses in fits and starts.
Either is preferable to the sisyphean solution of immigration.
it is almost completely and totally without merit, and basically nothing but the same hogwash which unions and socialists have spewed since the '30s
just when compensation (whether in general or in a particular industry) should be falling, the lack of highly motivating unemployment causes wages to become even "stickier" on the downside than they would otherwise be (which is already extremely sticky, thanks to unemployment "insurance" and everything else which interferes with the efficient operation of a free labor market)
worse, "share-the-work" schemes usually wind up raising unit costs because while hours may be reduced x%, total labor costs decline less than x% (for various reasons), instantly making the outfit dumb enough to do this even less competetive and hastening the day when none of the employees may have employment
now, perhaps in the extreme situation where all of the employees are incredibly rare and so highly qualified that each would be impossible to replace without great expense, one could make a case for trying anything, no matter how expensive or stupid, to avoid losing any of them
but, that is virtually never the case, and while the silly french and other assorted euro-socialists debate the 30, yes, 30 hour work-week, we can count ourselves lucky to have avoided most of this type of mandated socialist lunacy
of course, anyone who thinks it a good idea is free to do things which will tend to put one out of business
I realize that it's the next day, but I'll try one more time--the fund does own the shares that they vote. You don't. You own shares in the fund. The fund manager has a perfect right to vote the shares. The fact that their intended holding period might be short term makes them no worse than a day trader who happens to own shares. In fact, given the short-short rules and other issues affecting mutual funds, including a desire for tax efficiency, many funds do hold shares for a very long time. There is no workable way to limit the right to vote shares to persons who fit your arbitrary definition of ownership.
To the extent that the fund manager or his employer has other business relationships with a company, there might be a conflict of interest. The management companies try to deal with this through Chinese Walls and other means. If you're not comfortable with their tools, dont' buy funds managed by banks or other large institutions that do other business. If you can prove a breach of fiduciary duty, you can sue the manager. Otherwise, vote with your feet.
>it is almost completely and totally without merit, and basically nothing but the same hogwash which unions and socialists have spewed since the '30s
Right! Underlying EuroSocialism is a "sharing the poverty" mentality. It is a zero-sum game. The idea of planting more to grow more never occurs to them.
Furthur, violation of the Tenth Commandment:
"You shall not covet your neighbor's goods: You shall not covet your neighbour's house. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his bull, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour's."
is a fundamental Socialist sacrament. Daily life for a Socialist consists of seeing how much he can steal from his neighbor so he may "give" it to others. In this stealing he feels holier than his neighbors.
The kind ambitious enough to achieve it. Your envy is showing. One of the best parts of being successful is not having to associate with undesireables. Do you have to associate with undesireables in order to make a living?
Don'cha know when it comes right down it, the US will pay dearly as well for the Europe's mistakes just as we did in WW I and WW II.
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