Sweden doesn’t have a lot of socialist tendencies? I know they’ve moved more towards free market at a big financial gain... who is our socialist utopia?
@Machinehead
This is not a joke, you cannot run for office without promising higher taxes in Sweden.
The last time the right wing party won the election, they promised to match every proposed tax increase by the social democrats.
Seriously though, disaster often leads to something good, and I think largely that has saved Sweden's bacon. We lost half our country in 1809 after an delusional war started by a King with more or less absolute power. We were very lucky to not lose 2/3 of the country. That was a major trauma. It took a while, but they kicked out the king, brought in a French dude to be a marionette as new king and started to rebuild the country. The aristocrats needed support towards the monarchy and cooperated with the farmers and workers. The French revolution in 1789 seems like its such an extreme long time ago, but it really isn't. It was just 20 years before 1809, and for the first half of the 1800's it felt very fresh for many. Just like WWII did in the up untill the 90s at least since the cold war was connected to it. So when the communist revolutions spilled over in more or less all countries around the globe -- to different degrees, but still -- Swedes where gunshy and when things where at the boiling point, everyone came to their senses instead and reached agreements at the last second. That meant that Sweden missed WWI. When WWII started Sweden (the monarchy) had much stronger ties to Germany and the Nazis, but no army so we wheren't part of that either. And after WWII we could sell iron ore and provide services to countries ruined by WWII and became one of the top 5-10 richest countries in the world.
My point is just, its easy to distribute wealth when you have wealth to distribute. I don't think Sweden should be seen as a utopia or someone that has done things right while others haven't. Of course there is some logic to the notion that free school and healthcare and a security net 'pays for itself', education is an investment, and in that sense of course something that should be thrived towards. But at the same time -- its a costly reform to put in place if you don't have it.
Sweden is also a very rich country on natural resources. A river like every 40th mile or whatever that is perfect for power dams along 1/3 of the coast. A lot of iron ore etc. Sweden just have about 5% of the woods that are well suited for the forrest industry, but used to produce like 40% of the goods from that industry. Russia on the other hand has like 40-50% of the natural resources but just 5% of the gods. The reason for that is simple, you can't utilize your forrests effectively unless you have a ton of small roads and bridges over every effin little river. Sweden could build those roads and bridges cheap after WWII when Russia couldn't.
I think that article linked makes many good points, I don't think Sweden have done a very good job, it at least had very good conditions.