Per John Carlton So whats wrong with Sweden?: friend of mine who is more provocateur than progressive posted this link. Here was my response: WTF is wrong with Sweden: 1) One of the highest suicide rates in the world. 2) Swedes pay more taxes and receive less benefits than almost every other civilized nation in the world. The Swedes are not “the happiest people on earth” by any means. They spend more time complaining about “tax fatigue” than we do. Sweden has a 25 percent sales tax imbedded in just about everything people buy. If you look at ALL the taxes Swedes pay, they are MUCH higher than ours and their standard of living is lower. 3) Sweden’s government has a measure of control over the distribution of wealth, but it relies on private business to create that wealth. An American worker doing the same job as a Swedish worked has a lot more take-home pay. 4) The Swede has government-provided health care, but it is rationed. You may have to wait 18 months to get a heart by-pass – if you haven’t already “passed on” by then. Sweden’s health care system is constantly cutting benefits. They are just too expensive. Sweden has a shortage of doctors and nurses. 5) Swedish Education = Part Une: Real education means, above all, helping students learn how to think critically. In a country like Sweden, however, schools and universities are primarily sites of indoctrination whose purpose is to create good socialists. If the Swedish system celebrates kids who are great at sports while all but punishing kids who stand out academically (“Excellence of bodies yes, brains no”), part of the reason is a fanatical devotion to equality of result, and part is an awareness that kids with first-rate minds are potential critics of the system. Hence Sweden’s preference for mediocrity over excellence. 6) Swedish Education - Part Deux: Swedes educate for social sciences over hard sciences. Yes, Sweden awards Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, and medicine, but its educational system discourages an interest in math and science – because experts in these fields end up serving industry, which exploits workers and produces environmentally hazardous waste. For decades, consequently, Sweden has suffered a deficit of scientists, engineers, doctors, and technicians. Students who choose to enter these fields, furthermore, tend to be so ill-prepared that they “need remedial classes.” There’s also a lack of plumbers, construction workers, and other laborers – for just as Sweden’s social engineers distrust science, they look down on vocations involving manual labor. 7) Swedish Education - Part Trois: Home schooling is illegal in Sweden. George Orwell, please call your office. 8) High tax rates in Sweden and other Nordic countries diminish political discourse and choices. The high taxes are necessary, of course, to fund the welfare state. But they serve another purpose. Socialists recognize members of the middle class, who are all too frequently driven by an ambition to better their circumstances, as a potential threat to the authority of socialists, whose machinations make such ambitions harder to fulfill. How to nip this nuisance in the bud? Easy: impose sky-high taxes on them. For people who have been able to accumulate some savings in the bank are better positioned to “stand up against authority” and “rise with self-confidence”; they’re not “as servile as if they had nothing.” Sweden’s tax system, then, is designed to make it extremely hard for Swedes to save money – and it works: compared to other Western countries, “Swedes have unusually small amounts of savings.” And consequently, people who might otherwise be vocal critics of the socialist welfare state are very aware of being dependent on it, knowing that if they get sick or lose their jobs they won’t have their own resources to fall back on. Confiscatory tax, then, serves not only as a means of enriching and expanding the socialist state, but as a form, itself, of socialist control. Dont think it cant happen here in America. 9) Social pressure to conform is a HUGE issue in Sweden. They dont like open dissent on anything. There’s the story of how a frank news report on the Islamization of the city of Malmö led an irate member of Parliament to demand that the Swedish counterpart to the FCC close down the reporting news operation in Sweden. Apparently, they have no respect for freedom of speech. 10) The social system rewards irresponsibility on the part of young unmarried mothers and the men who impregnate them. With a baby, a single parent sidesteps all waiting lines and the child may be the only means to an apartment for decades. 11) As nice as Swedes are perceived to be, they are rank anti-Semites. 12) And in stunning news, apparently Swedish men cant aim. This doesnt bode well for the Swedish military: dailycaller/2012/06/13/separate-and-unequal-swedish-left-party-says-men-should-urinate-sitting-down/ So if someone wants to take advantage of the Swedish educational system, Ill be glad to stamp your exit Visa on the way out. Have a Happy Fourth of July! Im going to add that the things listed in this whats wrong with America are the result of the half assed feel good policies of the Progressive Left here in the US. And the reason The Nordic welfare state model is even sustainable at ANY level is the fact that it relies on energy exports.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 19:16:46 +0000
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