One thing that IS noticeable between Sweden and a poor US state (like Mississippi): Sweden has a much better infrastructure than MS. There are no dreadfully poor people in sweden like there are in MS, and the government provides a much better standard of medical care. I have been in rural MS, and the poverty is shocking-you see kids with missing teeth, untreated childhood disease (yes, malaria and hookworm are around).
It is impossible to make a direct comparison between the two countries, but you are probably better off being poor in Sweden. as for the rich: there are rich people in sweden, how they manage to hold onto their wealth is another story.
Well, whatever one might feel about whether prostitution should be legal, I doubt you are going to get a whole lot of sympathy in regards to the government trying to intrude on the bodies and sex lives of the citizenry from those of us living in the U.S., where perhaps one vote on the Supreme Court is all that separates us from considerably more regulation in this regard.
Frankly, this is a really silly statistic, which is why it is the one you always see on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The problem with such a measure is that it convolves inequality with rate of taxation. The reason the wealthy in the U.S. carry such a disproportionate share of the tax burden in the U.S. is primarily because they get such a disproportionate share of the income. And, in fact, the entire reason that the share of the tax burden of, say, the top 1% in the U.S. has risen so dramatically in the last ~25 years is because their share of the income has risen so dramatically. So, what you are really seeing is a measure that is predominantly telling you how unequal the income distribution is in the U.S. To the extent that the tax system is progressive, this then raises the tax burden more on the wealthy but it accounts for a much smaller factor of the disproportionality in tax burden than is accounted for by the inequality.
You might want to back up this argument about “social climbing.” I’ve seen several articles in the last few years that say that the flattening of the middle class in the US over the last two decades has had a dramatic impact on social mobility, so much so that children of Americans are more likely to have the same standard of living as their parents as compared to the children of Germans, Canadians, or even – gasp – Swedes. Cite.
And for as much as I hear about incomes, so long as we’re talking about high-income countries, I’m not seeing that increases in income have a direct relation with quality of life. Look at virtually any quality of life index, and the US will be somewhere around number two or three in per capita income, but the quality of life is pretty consistently lower . For most lists I’ve seen, New Zealand, which has a per capita income roughly a third lower than the US, has a nearly identical quality of life as we. Cite.
I find this really hard to believe. Literally everyone I know who works in Europe and enjoys longer vacations that Americans – and I include my American friends working there – find the ability to take time off of work as much more rewarding than increased pay. If I were to guess, I’d think that most Swedes (and most Europeans in general) have a slight envy for American sized incomes, but think we’re crazy for working as much as we do. I hear many wondering how Americans can spend any time with our families at all when we’re constantly working overtime and not allowed to take more than two weeks of vacation a year. This is clearly a difference in culture, not an outcome of different tax schemes; in other words, just because you like working, doesn’t mean that everyone else in the world aspires to work as much as you.
Oooooookay. A law against prostitution wasn’t quite what it seemed like you were talking about.
No, because of indications that thousands of prostitutes would be shipped in to Germany to cover the increased demand.
Gudrun Schyman hasn’t been a member of any party since December of 2004 and proposed those things after leaving the party. No matter if or how the social democrats retain power after the election, she won’t be involved.
Cite?
Sweden cooperated with the allies as well. Anyway, this is probably for another thread, but I agree with the decision to allow German troops to move through Sweden.
Good to hear. It’s a point against racism that comes up once in a while, and it sounds reasonable. Australians are famed to be quite likeable people too, so it doesn’t sound strange that the Norwegian-Americans behave better now than before.
xtisme: The point I was making is that Norwegian salaries are sufficiently high to compencate for the taxes. We’re not exactly poor here.
duffer: Sweet. Can’t exactly claim to know any details about your system, but I’d rather pay taxes than worry about not having money for health care, should I need it. It might not be much cheaper here though. Someone with more knowledge should compare the two.
You know, there are a lot of things that can be argued about as regards the political history of World War II (I’ve always wanted to see what we in GD would do with the Darlan Deal), but I think that that arch-Hitler-apologist Winston Churchill summarized Sweden’s position best:
Preserving democratic ideals, the Swedes supplied Nazi Germany with raw materials as the price of preserving their freedom, both parties reckoning that Germany would benefit more from trade with a free Sweden than from a dominated puppet state. (Paraphrased but very close to his published analysis)
Sweden’s Wiki page says the April 30, 2006 estimate of the country’s population is 9,072,269, making it more populated than New York City by about a million, or about the population of just over three Chicagos or four and a half Houstons, or just under nine Dallases. Sweden is also less populated than the state of Georgia (9th-most populated) by about 300 people, or 9 million Swedes. The Swedish population is also comparable to about 18 Wyomings (Wyoming is the least populated state).
Just thought I’d provide some reference.
So does most of the rest of the developed world AFAIK, notably including 49 of the 50 United States.
There are overblown nutjobs everywhere, and you’ve listed two individuals who you said are leaders of equal-rights organizations. Frankly, equal-rights leaders sometimes have to say extreme things to get noticed. Even if that’s not what they’re doing, equality is their passion and they can get overly worked up about it. In a population of 9 million–again, comparable to New York City, where you could probably find many more than two people to agree with you on anything and at least two people who enjoy any dubious sexual fetish–I’m not surprised that two people who haven’t been elected by the nation’s populace to any particularly important post have made statements that seem a little extreme.
Cite?
Is this based on their refusal to officially apologize? I don’t know anything about that, so I can’t really debate you on that point.
With all due respect to your background, Denmark was an occupied country; Sweden was neutral.
If Denmark should be considered part of the Nazi Axis, then surely they would have passed some anti-Jewish legislation or laws. Actually, they were the only occupied country that didn’t! The Jews in Denmark were not even required to wear Stars-of-David. (The story about King Christian X is a myth.)
The Danish Resistance was so strong that some German soldiers assisted.
What more could you ask of a small country surrounded on three sides by the sea? They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, part of the Axis powers!
It was occupied, but it was a very “light” occupation, and the Danes did create a Waffen-SS unit…the Frikorps Danmark, not to mention the Nordland Regiment, which was made up of combined Danes and Norwegians, and a lot more Danes were killed fighting for the Germans than were killed fighting the Germans. The Danes joined the anti-Cominterm pact, and were even able to keep their own government until 1943. So, while they might not have been part of the Axis by choice, for the early part of the occupation, they were satisfied with it.
From all I’ve read, whatever their relative numbers might be, poor people in the U.S. have a harder life than poor people anywhere in Western Europe. True or false?
Come to think of it . . . if there’s antisemitism in Sweden, that might be in part because Sweden was never occupied, so it is probably the only country between Britain and Russia that still has a significant Jewish population. Is that true?
So? In how many countries is prostitution legal? The Netherlands is the only example I can think of, and are the Dutch any less socialistic than the Swedes?
[QUOTE=Rune]
The Swedish minister for equal rights, proposed that the Swedish football team should boycott the World Cup (…actually not a bad idea considering the performance of the Swedish team) because Germany doesn’t have similar laws.
Prostitution is legal in Germany? Cite?
I think prostitution should be legal everywhere – but closely watched to keep it from turning into white slavery. Which is now widely practiced in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, according to many news reports I’ve seen. It is a real social problem to that extent and no state should ignore it.
Actually there were ethnic crime gangs in the Midwest in the early 20th Century, and Norwegians were no cleaner than any. Some gangs were Jewish, which stirred up antisemitism. See Minnesota Rag, the story of the landmark Supreme Court case of Near v. Minnesota – which struck down a Minnesota “gag law” that had forced a racist and antisemitic scandalmonger to shut down his newspaper.
Apropos of nothing, I once heard Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion, eulogizing the late (and Jewish) Senator Paul Wellstone, mention that “The Norwegians voted for him because he wasn’t Swedish.” [laughter sweeps the hall]
The Swedish population is also comparable to about 18 Wyomings (Wyoming is the least populated state).
Prostitution is legal in Germany? Cite?