Just a minor note about that diversity claim:
About 14% of the US is black…so how could only 14% be diverse?
Those stats were about first-generation immigrants, not ethnic or social diversity.
Foreign-born is not required for diversity.
I’m not sure what social programs Sweden DOES have that the US doesn’t. I was merely positing on the fact that the two are unique countries with their own sets of reason why they aren’t and cannot be the same with regards to policy implementation.
I’d say UHC is one but like I said, it’s less about that bogey word you’re using (racism) and more about who gets what and then who pays for it. (If it isn’t me but it is me paying etc)
Oh so what. God forbit we have people in this country who are simply mediocre at their jobs.
Besides, your highest paid teacher probably makes less money than some 20-something year old a year out of college in his first job year in the socially conscientious job of investment banker analyst at Goldman Sachs.
The problem with this country (USA) is that so many people are so infatuated by wealth and power. And the wealthy and powerful have created this hyped-up bullshit Ayn Rand inspired narrative that their hard work and ingenuity justify their controlling such a disproportionate amount of wealth. If you aren’t rich, it’s probably because you are lazy, stupid or took some “loser job” like school teacher or social worker.
So now, instead of one “tyrannical” government, we have 500+ tyrants who directly control your livelihood and can dangle “jobs” in front of local municipalities to get their way.
It may not be the “main” issue, but it’s an issue. IMHO, ethnic diversity creates negative attitudes towards socialized services because minority ethic groups are viewed as “others”. People who came from somewhere else to take advantage of American society. Fine if they want to compete in the marketplace. Not so ok if they are receiving benefits that the “locals” have to pay for.
And I feel like I’m repeating myself as well, and to no avail as we are obviously still having a serious disconnect. I’m guessing that our disconnect perhaps has to do with how you are defining ‘ethnicity’ and how I am, though I’ve been pretty clear (for me) about what I mean by that. If it makes no sense to you, ‘literally’ then the disconnect is too great for me to bridge, as to me it makes the most sense. Asking ‘What does diversity have to do with social programs’ is, again, such a huge disconnect that I can’t wrap my head around it…it’s like we are on completely different worlds and speaking in a language that sounds the same but obviously isn’t. And the fact that what I’m saying ‘sounds like total nonsense’ to you sort of underscores the point.
Well, I thought the whole post sounded like nonsense to you. 
Yes, we do have a bar…no doubt about it. But our national bar is set way below that of Sweden…pretty obviously so. And I’m suggesting (IMHO and all) that one of the reasons for this is geographic distance, size of population and, of course, ethnic and cultural heterogeneous population. You seem to want to focus on one of those to the exclusion of all else, but it’s a package deal…and one major factor, that is ‘nonsense’ to you IS the difference between the shared values, history and just connected-ness in a homogeneous population verse the lack of those ties and bindings in society that come from such a diverse heterogeneous population. That we have overcome this, to a pretty good degree IMHO, is a testimony to the good points of our system. But we aren’t Sweden or Japan with a homogeneous population and shared identity that they have that has evolved together and who in general agree more strongly on certain issues, such as the role of government in society and where the bar should and will be set for social programs. As Bump says “So the more homogenous a country is, something’s either a VERY hard sell, or it’s relatively easy.”. I think this nicely sums things up for me.
Obviously you disagree. I’m good with that. Like I said, the disconnect between us is so great on this one that I don’t think there is sufficient common ground to even discuss this rationally. You haven’t laid out your own thoughts on the OP as far as I can tell, just attacked mine, so I think I’ll wander out at this point unless something interesting comes up. No hard feelings on my part. 
I think this underscores a key point in this. What, exactly, is ‘black’? That 14% you are defining as ‘black’ is actually a huge range of different ethnic and cultural mix…and that’s just AMERICAN ‘black’. ‘Black’ people in, say, New York aren’t that similar to those in, say, LA…or Texas…or North Dakota. Then you have the cultural influence on your vague ‘black’ definition that comes from the fact that ‘black’ people in the US come from, literally, every part of Africa. Sure, many are from West Africa, but many are from all the rest of the regions (we won’t even get into ‘black’ people who came here after being transplanted out of Africa originally). Then you have, presumably, the 80 whatever percent you are obviously lumping into ‘white’. Except, those ‘white’ people people come from all over the place too (including Sweden), with a bunch of very different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, traditions and history. And, again, depending on where in the country we are talking about…‘white’ folks in Baltimore and pretty different than ‘white’ people in Seattle. Next we could talk about ‘hispanic’ people, who in some cases are in the ‘white’ category, but in others are in their own separate category. Again…huge difference. A ‘hispanic’ person from, say, Puerto Rico is very different than a ‘hispanic’ person from Mexico…or places in central or south America. Or freaking Spain. ‘Asian’ is the same. That’s why I made a joke (that no one got I’m sure) in my first post about Americans thinking of race in terms of ‘black’ and ‘white’. When you actually think about how truly diverse the US is outside of the blanket terms of ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘hispanic’, ‘Asian’ or ‘other’ it gets to the root of why we aren’t like Sweden or Japan, why we have a more diverse view point on what the government should or shouldn’t do or be or what we, collectively should or shouldn’t do or be. It’s kind of amazing to me sometimes that our system works at all.
Obviously it has benefits to the workers, but everything has trade offs and in this case it is that government workers are not as competent as private sector workers.
It is a big deal that the teacher has been harming students for 30 years with little or no consequences. If it is not a problem that bad teachers are very difficult to get rid of then either teachers are not an important part of education, or education is unimportant. I would agree that education is way overrated but since we force kids to spend 13 years in school at least we could make sure their teachers are not lazy jerks.
I’ll point out the vast majority of Sweden’s diversity has come since 2000. Along with increasing support for their most right wing party.
You’ll find tons of articles about how their diversity used to be Finn’s and most people didn’t consider them foreign.
Tons articles about how immigration is now starting a divide and overall causing the country to lurch to the right.
What changed?
The foreign born started to be from non nordic countries and those outside the EU.
Even articles that could be considered downright racist here, pointing out how 58 percent of rapes were from foreign born immigrants and most if those were from Muslim nation’s and such.
You are correct, my mistake.
Well there is means testing via the progressive tax brackets, also in Australia for example we pay a medicare levy and this rises in % as your pay increases.
Very good points, and true of most of Europe. The mass immigration of the past half century or thereabouts has changed the countries concerned because the societies are no longer cultural and racially homogeneous. The racial aspect is important: all the European countries experienced huge internal migrations as they industrialized, and then came the upheaval of the two world wars. The migrants were often less than welcome, despite being nationals of the same country or a neighboring one.
This process got repeated on another level when immigrants came in, and in recent years, increasingly from the Third World. This has fueled a nationalist and racist backlash in just about every country in Europe, and the problem will only get worse, IMHO.
Sweden has a problem common to all the developed economies; it is too expensive. All the developed countries are frantically looking apound for a new way to generate wealth, and essentially from nothing. The solutions tend to be finance, service industries, IT and high-tech. Or offering very high quality. Then problem is the premium on quality may be too high for most consumers, and in many fields the quality gap between very nice and near crap is closing due to automated manufacturing technologies.
If the economy tanks, then what happens with the social welfare model? Will the immigrants be regarded as fellow Swedes or Johnny come latelies?
FWIW. wealthy countries like Norway, Switzerland and Sweden were dirt poor 200 years ago.
Every country has its ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, it doesn’t matter if if from outside the country they all look like one big group, and sometimes the older a place is, the more time it’s had to elevate what look like no difference at all to outsiders into a major divide.
Take the little Lancashire mill town my Dad grew up in in England; there was an East/West divide, with their own little accent variations, the two sides didn’t mix, short of fighting, and supported different football teams. Within the West side, those who went to Southport during Wakes week looked down on those classless folk who went to Blackpool, who in turn thought the Southport guys were humourless snobs who thought they were better than everyone else.
One town of maybe 30-40,000 inhabitants, all white Protestant Lancashire mill workers, and had been for generations, but still over half the population was people you’d not be allowed to be good friends with or, heaven forbid, date, without getting ostracised.
People who want to find someone to look down on and ‘other’ will always find someone.
This. Look at how XT lists the original extraction of Americans as a source of difference. Swedish, German, Italian etc, after their families have been in the US for a century.
In my opinion, the US has more hostility between the perceived groups, not more diversity. But that does result in higher perceived diversity, so I guess it doesn’t refute the argument.
As would anyone who was aware of what the word ethnicity actually means. Finns and Swedes don’t even speak the same language family.
From a quick Google search:
The majority of Finns who immigrated to Sweden did so in the 16th through the 17th centuries. There was some large immigration in the pre-WWII and post war years with tension and even war between Finland and the USSR, and certainly those populations are completely ethnically separated (and also the reason for a lot of tension between Swedes, the majority of the Swedish Finn population and these new immigrants).
So, yes, I’m familiar with what the term means, and I was speaking mainly tongue in cheek there, since you are right…they WOULD see it as a huge difference. Kind of underscores the point though. And though Swedish Finns make up the largest minority population they don’t even comprise 10%. Roughly, it looks like around 5% or so to me.
What does a cite about Finland Swedes have to do with Sweden Finns, who speak Finnish?
I think it may be instructive to look at individual US states.
USA Today: States with the most government benefits
There’s some diverse states on there but probably more that are rather homogeneous. But the more obvious common denominator looks like being a blue state. From the article:
*though I admit, looking at the last Presidential vote is a little too superficial. But it’s pretty hard to defend that the difference in spending between New York and Florida is because of the difference in their homogeneity.
Um…from your own cite:
Just like in the US in minority communities. The majority of Swedish-Finns speak Swedish, with some speaking both and a small minority speaking only Finish, usually recent immigrants. I’m unsure of what point you were trying to make in all of this in the context of this thread and the discussion that was going on. Could you be more specific as to what you are trying to demonstrate? Is it that Swedes and Finns are distinct ethnic groups? If so, I agree…they are. Is it that Finns and Swedes speak different languages? If so, then I agree…yes they do. But most of the Finns in Sweden have been there for centuries, and while along the border they speak various dialects of Swedish, they still speak Swedish…and in many cases Finish as well. And so…what are you getting at?
Yes. They are, and they are very different.
Make up your mind…