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.
As for car, the downpayment of your car will be easily swallowed up by what Swedes will be paying for all expenses from groceries to computers. American big city have definitely high crime rate, Swedes are catching up fast. They have serious youth violence problems as US's. Just they are not reported often here. The only advantange of such country is that it is more or less made up of one enthnic group with common culture and language which has more than a millenium of history. Such conditions acts as a strong glue to keep a country from socially disintegrating fast. It is nothing to do with their economic priorities.
And thanks but no thanks...I'll take the comfort of my SUV, alone with no one but Rush to listen to over the grim, crowded, spray painted, however pretty efficient rails in any European city...Life here is pretty good-light years beyond what Europe has to offer. IMO.
Mind you, this is a question not a statement: In Sweeden, does the increase in crime correspond to an increase in immigration?
A distinction without a difference.
The article I first saw was about increase of violence among local youths. Actually, it was posted here a year or two ago. Recently I ran into another article on Muslim immigrant youths in Sweden, which said that they are becoming a part of crime wave. But as far as I know, the number of muslim immigrants are still small compared with France or Germany.
Of course, since the stinking liberals insist that I turn over my profits BECAUSE I worked my ass off, it kind of kills productivity, dont you think? Here I am, working EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK and they want to take any profit I make. If THEY were in power, why the HELL would I bust my ass to make as much as someone that has three day weekends and seven hour days?
My above statement is WHY the Eu is nothing comapared to us economically. It might not sound "Intellectual," but it is nevertheless the truth of the situation.
You are actually describing (or at least alluding to) different flavors and manifestations of socialism.
Pre-tax or post-tax socialism is still socialism.
I suspect that the study would have shown an even greater disparity if they had included taxes and the Earned Income Credit!!!
Is that simple enough for you? Or, more accurately I might ask.. is that TO simple for you? ;)
It's not mere arbitrary label. It is an ethical category -- who do you owe your labor to. It doesn't matter ethically if it is pre-tax or post-tax -- if society determines who you owe your labor to, that is socialism. If you are free to exchange your labor (and therefore keep its fruits) as you see fit, it is individualistic capitalism.
In the 19th Century half the people in Sweden got on boats and came here. The place did not improve as a consequence.
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