How do you respond to Sweden?

[hellsingfan]

When someone brings up Sweden, a country with very high taxation across the board, a national healthcare system (better than US) and still a growing economy. How do you respond to that given that we're asking for exactly the opposite.

 

[Rosenzweig]

Mises.org has EVERYTHING!

http://mises.org/daily/2259

 

[Working Poor]

Sweden is a much smaller country than the USA

 

[wannaberocker]

i also read an article which suggested that sweeden is facing some future problems with population benefits and the shrinking amount of workers. They pointed out that in order to keep the benefits sweden's only hope is to immigrate large number of workers from other countries. Their hope being that the new workers can keep working to pay the benefits of those who will retied.

 

[dannno]

If you have a small amount of herb on you they throw you in jail for like 2 years. If you are drunk they give you a hand-up and make sure you stay safe.

 

[_b_]

Mises.org has EVERYTHING!

http://mises.org/daily/2259

Another daily piece from Mises on Sweden, fairly recent: http://mises.org/daily/4936/Stagnating-Socialist-Sweden


And of course, while Sweden's welfare state will eventually fail, it has been able to survive as long as it has since they only have half of the problem. They have done a better job of avoiding the warfare state than some other countries who go invading and empire building all around the world.

 

[talkingpointes]

Even Sweden knows the gravy train is coming to an end.

Liberal No More: The Far Right Gains in Sweden's Election
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2020349,00.html#ixzz1YN9RCMMQ
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2020349,00.html

That seems to be the case for most of Europe anyways. However:
Something most people never bring up when talking about Sweden and most of Europe is the fact that the US provides practically most of the spending for weapons and defense (through NATO as well) and troops with our grand vision of being the world police. Europe either way without all of the US doing the military spending and deployment isn't hindering them being up shits creek without a paddle.

Debt:
US - 13,980,000,000,000
Europe - 13,720,000,000,000

 

[Czolgosz]

It'll fail. You can't centralize power and prevent the abuse of aforementioned power. They're getting their money from somewhere or they're spending accumulated wealth. Eventually it'll run out.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

When someone brings up Sweden, a country with very high taxation across the board, a national healthcare system (better than US) and still a growing economy. How do you respond to that given that we're asking for exactly the opposite.

Who says that it is really so good there? Socialists pushing their cause?

The failure of socialism is greed, fraud, corruption, cronyism, and abuse of power. Any society that has a strong moral repulsion to that kind of corruption will last longer with socialism, before the inevitable fall. The Swedes are more moral in that regard than the rest of the world. Don't expect that to make socialism work in the long run.

 

[Danke]

We have a member here (doesn't post much anymore, "GreenCardSeeker"?) that absolutely hate the oppression he experiences in Sweden.

Look up his posts and blogs. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/search.php?searchid=3052484

Here is an example: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/entry....e-means-of-production-today-it-s-the-children

 

[Icymudpuppy]

I've always said that there's one situation in which socialism works. In a small culturally homogenous community in which people actually know one another personally. Tribes, extended families, clans, co-ops, etc are all examples of such socialistic groups. It works at that level because people who drag on the system are pressured into contributing or face disownership by their family, or banishing by their clan or boycotting by the co-op. It doesn't work on a national level because there is no way to get rid of the dead weight unless you go with the methods of Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin etc.

Although it may work in very small communities here in the USA, even our small communities are rarely culturally homogenous. The Amish are about the only communities in the USA that actually pull this off effectively.

Sweden has a population of 9 million. That's less than New York City. They are all from the same genetic, cultural, and religious stock.

 

[wannaberocker]

This is not an economic piece on sweden. But i still thought it was very cool of Yngwie to explain the swedish mentality.

 

[Acala]

Comparing a pure socialist health care system like Sweden to our crypto-fascist system says nothing whatsoever about the health care a true free market would produce. It is like comparing apples to oranges and then claiming you now know that pineapples are no good.

For one specific point, how much innovation is the Swedish system producing? Socialism kills innovation. Of course a socialist system can look to a profit-based system and take advantage of the innovation produced by that system and incorporate it. But it is very bad at producing innovation itself.

 

[JackieDan]

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the central bank in sweden lowered its rates to record lows. As a result, the "economy grew" while your's started to fall. Swedes are now the most indebted people. House prices sky-rocked during that period. We're seeing some effects of these policies right now. The housing market is starting to loose value (-10 % last month). The economy will be back in a recession. Sweden hates businesses, they are over-taxed and regulated to the roof. One thing is clear: Industries in sweden are now fading away. We've already seen that with SAAB and Volvo.

The only sector in the Swedish economy that is doing very well is Information Technology, but that's because it has been heavily subsidized. Internet access have become one of the goals of the swedish government to ensure every one shall have access to... But this is a bubble and will normalize.

The Swedish model was doomed to fail and it did in 1991 when the swedish currency failed which led to our central bank to raise interests rates by 500 % to save it. The service sector has been growing immense since then but unemployment rate and government welfare are still very very high which is one of the problems why we have so much taxation, regulations and inflation in this country.

Here're some facts as of 2011,

Population: 9.4 million.
Unemployment rate: 7.4 %.
Youth unemployment: 23 %.
Working hours: Regulated to 40 hours per week.

Government debt: 40 % of GDP.
Burden of taxation: 45.8 % of GDP.
Disposable income: $26000.
Inflation: 3.4 %
Interest rate: 2 %.

VAT = 25 %.
Corporate tax: 26.3 %.
Capital Gains Tax: 30 %.
Income tax (average): 31.55 %.
Employment tax (average): 31.42 %.
Marginal tax rate: 56.8 %.

Taxes that was abolished ,
Real estate tax (2008) & Wealth tax (2007). Wealth tax is something that President Obama is proposing right now.

 

[josh b]

Nobody linked this yet?

http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/5616.aspx

There's a bunch of articles and a debate on the topic. It's pretty comprehensive, though I haven't read all of the articles.

 

[amonasro]

It's true that they've done a 'good job' with Socialism. When I visited I talked with many who were happy with it. Free healthcare, free college, good standard of living and good infrastructure. The kicker is that everything is expensive and after you attend state-funded college to learn your state-approved career, you pay fifty percent of everything you make back to the state in the form of income and VAT taxes. So it's not really free college. I talked to one guy who studied to be a family doctor and only went for 4 years.

My theory as to why it's successful is due to Sweden's size and homogenous population. They also opted out of the Euro.

 

[Diurdi]

Sweden, Finland, Denmark etc all rank quite high on the economic freedom scale as well.

This whole discussion depends on what you're measuring anyway.

I can tell you that it works fairly well in Finland, but it's not anything close to the paradise some make it out to be. Most people have very little disposable income (income after taxes and other mandatory payments). The queues for public healthcare are very long, the retirement compensation is very hard to live on and everything is damn expensive. The only positive is that Finland has only a 26% corporate tax rate.

 

[JackieDan]

Sweden, Finland, Denmark etc all rank quite high on the economic freedom scale as well.

This whole discussion depends on what you're measuring anyway.

I can tell you that it works fairly well in Finland, but it's not anything close to the paradise some make it out to be. Most people have very little disposable income (income after taxes and other mandatory payments). The queues for public healthcare are very long, the retirement compensation is very hard to live on and everything is damn expensive. The only positive is that Finland has only a 26% corporate tax rate.

Yeah but when you're taxed to death that means freedom has been soaked..

 

[Acala]

A small, homogenous, literate, prosperous country with lots of resources and a solid work ethic can convert to socialism and make it work for awhile. But what are the trends? Is productivity increasing? Is standard of living increasing? Is there unemployment? Are the variety and quality of available goods and services increasing? Are the services provided by government on a sustainable path or are they getting more and more expensive? Is there flight of capital and
resources?

All of these things should be improving. They would in a free market.

 

[Seraphim]

Ikea - enough said.