Tiny rant before I go to sleep!
Tack sa myckett,
Sharon Johnson Mason Palmer
Posted on 05/05/2002 11:50:18 PM PDT by bourbon
Reuters Market News Swedes less well off than poorest Americans -study
STOCKHOLM, May 4 (Reuters) - 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 on Saturday.
The study by a retail trade lobby, published in the liberal Dagens Nyheter newspaper 19 weeks before the next general election, echoed the centre-right opposition's criticism of the weak state of Sweden's economy after 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.
AMERICANS CAN BUY MORE
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 meant 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 six 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, in 1998-99 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 which 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 centre-right opposition in the run-up to the September 15 elections.
Tiny rant before I go to sleep!
Tack sa myckett,
Sharon Johnson Mason Palmer
I know but like they all have guns though...that would be kewl, right?
I never saw any follow up information on this or any real news on how the socialist countries are actually doing. I would very much appreciate anyone who could direct me now or in the future to further solid information on this subject.
As I remember it, the Kiwis had their chance back in the 80s, and blew it.
New Zealand is not only the oldest socialist country, but the ONLY one to every significantly roll back their socialism Non-Violently.
How it happened (as best I can recall, without rooting around on the hard drive) - back in the 80s, the Kiwi government piled up SO MANY LAWS AND REGULATIONS on commerce, that they actually brought the entire national economy to a STANDSTILL.
Regulation-Constipation.
Severe economic double-plus-ungoodness.
The President/Prime Minister (whatever - the head leftist goof) went on national TV and delivered a weepy, drunken, resignation speech that stands in history as New Zealand's greatest humiliation.
Many of the brainless laws were rolled back. But global economic conditions (and stupidity) caused the Kiwis to go back to their socialist ways after several years. (the exact time frame eludes me at present)
Within the past three years I remember reading an article that said that the Auckland area had the highest suicide rate among teenagers (or people under 25 - I don't remember exactly) in the WORLD.
It is tragic, but New Zealand appears to be (for the time-being) hopeless - as far as moving AWAY from socialism is concerned.
Feel free to correct me on the details here - this is the best I can do at 4:42AM without further research.
And don't they have that transexual person as their Head Goof down there now? At the swearing-in ceremony the parliment sang: "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow".
I kid you not.
Horrible, horrible...
That's not an economy, it's a nightmare!
One thing bugs me, though. Is it true that blacks are the most economically deprived group in the US? How about Native Americans? Mexican Americans? African Americans have made great strides into the middle class in the last 20 years.
I just can't help but think that the writer of the piece assumes that blacks here are all still poor, and everyone else is white and rich. I hope at least the researchers did their homework.
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