Don G. Dinsdale Loc: El Cajon, CA (San Diego County)

Sweden Isn't Socialist

By John Stossel ~ Townhall ~ Jan 1, 2019

image.pngFor years, I've heard American l*****ts say Sweden is proof that socialism works, that it doesn't have to turn out as badly as the Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela did.

But that's not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says in a new documentary and Stossel TV video.

"Sweden is not socialist -- because the government doesn't own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea," says Norberg."We did have a period in the 1970s and 1980s when we had something that resembled socialism: a big government that taxed and spent heavily. And that's the period in Swedish history when our economy was going south."

Per capita GDP fell. Sweden's growth fell behind other countries. Inflation increased.

Even socialistic Swedes complained about the high taxes.

Astrid Lindgren, the author of the popular Pippi Longstocking children's books, discovered that she was losing money by being popular. She had to pay a tax of 102 percent on any new book she sold."She wrote this angry essay about a witch who was mean and vicious -- but not as vicious as the Swedish tax authorities," says Norberg.

Yet even those high taxes did not bring in enough money to fund Sweden's big welfare state.

"People couldn't get the pension that they thought they depended on for the future," recounts Norberg. "At that point the Swedish population just said, enough, we can't do this."

Sweden then reduced the government's role.

They cut public spending, privatized the national rail network, abolished certain government monopolies, eliminated inheritance taxes and sold state-owned businesses like the maker of Absolut vodka.

They also reduced pension promises "so that it wasn't as unsustainable," adds Norberg.

As a result, says Norberg, his "impoverished peasant nation developed into one of the world's richest countries."

He acknowledges that Sweden, in some areas, has a big government: "We do have a bigger welfare state than the U.S., higher taxes than the U.S., but in other areas, when it comes to free markets, when it comes to competition, when it comes to free trade, Sweden is actually more free market."

Sweden's free market is not burdened by the U.S.'s excessive regulations, special-interest subsidies and crony bailouts. That allows it to fund Sweden's big welfare programs.

"Today our taxes pay for pensions -- you (in the U.S.) call it Social Security -- for 18-month paid parental leave, government-paid childcare for working families," says Norberg.

But Sweden's government doesn't run all those programs. "Having the government manage all of these things didn't work well."

So they privatized.

"We realized in Sweden that with these government monopolies, we don't get the innovation that we get when we have competition," says Norberg.

Sweden switched to a school voucher system. That allows parents to pick their kids' school and forced schools to compete for the voucher money.

"One result that we've seen is not just that the private schools are better," says Norberg, "but even public schools in the vicinity of private schools often improve, because they have to."

Sweden also partially privatized its retirement system. In America, the Cato Institute proposed something similar. President George W. Bush supported the idea but didn't explain it well. He dropped the idea when politicians complained that privatizing Social Security scared v**ers.

Swedes were frightened by the idea at first, too, says Norberg, "But when they realized that the alternative was that the whole pension system would collapse, they thought that this was much better than doing nothing."

So Sweden supports its welfare state with private pensions, school choice, and fewer regulations, and in international economic-freedom comparisons, Sweden often earns a higher ranking than the U.S.

Next time you hear democratic socialists talk about how socialist Sweden is, remind them that the big welfare state is funded by Swedes' free market practices, not their socialist ones.

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2019/01/01/sweden-isnt-socialist-n2538301

bahmer

Very interesting Don thanks a lot for the information.

MarvinSussman

LET’S PREPARE OUR DEFENSE WITH A MAXIMUM EFFORT !!

A nation can be in only one of three possible states of affairs.

First, a nation can be at war, in an existential struggle, depending upon its infrastructure.

To survive such an embattled state of affairs, a nation must continually prepare its defense.

Next, a nation can be preparing its defense with a maximum effort by using all of its idle resources to increase and to improve its infrastructure and its most important resource, its people, whose health and education are essential and can be improved most surely by providing free healthcare for all and free, expense-paid education for all. Such pr********n of defense needs maximum Congressional spending, which needs a maximum effort to prevent inflation, which needs adequate taxation of disposable income but without taxation of non-disposable income, which needs adequate and steeply progressive federal income tax rates.

Such a provident nation would be well-prepared to survive an embattled state of affairs.

Finally, a nation can be preparing its defense but WITHOUT a maximum effort to increase and improve its infrastructure, NOT providing free health care for all and free, expense-paid education for all, being more concerned with budget deficits and tax relief for the rich and their heirs while mired in idleness, poverty, trafficking, addiction, crime, and mass incarceration.

Such an improvident nation (ours!) is ill-prepared to survive an embattled state of affairs.

Citizens who oppose free healthcare and expense-paid education for all, including free trade schools, will v**e for inflation due to sk**led labor shortages, for medical bill bankruptcies, and for military recruiting shortages due to poor health and education. V**es against maximum Congressional spending will spawn deficient infrastructure and destructive poverty, yielding a sub-optimal defense that risks our failure to survive an embattled state of affairs.

V**ers who win a provident nation will get not only the most prepared nation but also the most prosperous nation because its Congressional spending would generate the largest annual federal budget deficits, which is exactly equal to the sum of our annual trade deficit plus our annual private net savings. That sum represents our nation’s consumption of foreign goods plus its private after-tax earnings, a necessary source of investment for growth. Therefore, that sum is directly proportional to our prosperity, that which trumps all taxes, sustains our social health, and encourages our youth, perhaps the most important element of our defense.

So, preparing our defense with maximum effort is also our best economic policy, as proven by the decades of post-war prosperity created by our huge World War II deficit spending on salaries that were saved as “War Bonds” that were eventually cashed in for homes, cars, and kids, creating the prosperous suburbs that since exist all over America. Ask Granny for details!

All citizens intelligent enough to understand the above will v**e for the provident nation!

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