The 4.4 million or so Americans with Swedish origins are considerably richer than average Americans, as are other immigrant groups from Scandinavia. If Americans with Swedish ancestry were to form their own country, their per capita GDP would be $56,900, more than $10,000 above the income of the average American. This is also far above Swedish GDP per capita, at $36,600. Swedes living in the USA are thus approximately 53 per cent more wealthy than Swedes (excluding immigrants) in their native country (OECD, 2009; US Census database). It should be noted that those Swedes who migrated to the USA, predominately in the nineteenth century, were anything but the elite. Rather, it was often those escaping poverty and famine. …A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’. Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7 per cent: half the US average (US Census).
I’ve long tried to make the case that one of the advantages of the American system over other nations is that opportunities are greater here. An average person can get pretty wealthy here, and the experience of Swedish immigrants in the US is pretty demonstrative of that.
But what I wonder, is it really the welfare state that holds Sweden back, or is it geography? The Swedish community in the US had a long time to accumulate wealth in relative peace and prosperity. Sweden didn’t get involved in any major wars in the same period, but was always living in a pretty tough neighborhood up until fairly recently. Should we expect Swedish Swedes to close the gap with American Swedes over time, or will the wealth gap continue to grow? And if there is a problem in Sweden, is it the welfare state or something else?
I don’t see the relationship between the difference in per capita GDP of Swedish-Americans among all Americans vs. all Swedes. Why do you expect the Swedes to compare themselves as a group to their American cousins, and not America as a whole?
The US has more immigration, and thus more people starting out from a lower base, with less human capital. So you don’t get an apples to apples comparison.
The US imports more than twice as many people as percentage of our population as Sweden, which makes comparisons of the countries as a whole difficult. Sweden is practically a gated community compared to the US.
You have already been told to refrain from behavior that looks exactly like the behavior of a troll.
Nothing in this thread, prior to your little example of threadshitting, was partisan in nature. While a discussion of the relative merits of socialism vs captialism, in or not in their extreme forms, could well become a focal point of this thread, no one has posted anything that could be construed as “liberal” or “conservative” and certainly nothing could yet be construed as a lie.
This is a Warning to stop this sort of nonsense or you will lose your right to post, here.
Those studies don’t compare apples to apples either. They use income quintiles or quartiles. The problem with that is that Sweden’s top quintile is very low. If you make $80,000 in Sweden, you are comparatively rich, specifically in the top 10%. That’s a pretty low bar to achieve. The lowest 10% is also better off than in the US, making about $12,000/yr. If one group of people has to gain $20,000 in income or so to move up a quintile while the other group has to gain $40,000, of course the former group will appear to be more mobile.
How many people get really rich in Sweden vs. the US? Somehow I don’t think Swedes earn in the high five figures and then think “Hey, I’ve made it.”
40K year in Sweden comes with a ton of social bennies you don’t get in the US without opening your wallet. Comparing incomes without factoring in access to services provided by the society is meaningless.
Even adding in the value of those services, Swedes come out way behind their Swedish-American counterparts, as well as Americans in general.
Now we can argue that Swedes enjoy a higher overall standard of living, but I’m not sure that’s true given that the US scores slightly higher on the Human development index. And in any case, this thread is exploring income differences. Are Swedes accepting a lot less money as the price for superior government services? Are they aware that tradeoff is being made, if so?
About that, you might want to be careful about touting the accuracy of that index in predicting relative development. When that human development index list is adjusted for relative social inequality and normed across the entire population Sweden pops up to 3 and we fall to 23rd.
No question Sweden has greater equality, but also lower average human development. It’s not the just the rich that see drops in living standards because of a policy geared towards increasing equality. the middle class has to come down as well, and they do.
That’s interesting, and I’m not saying your wrong, but satisfaction doesn’t correlate perfectly with higher living standards. Something which can be noticed with but a glance at the chart. The French are way down the list, for example. But that’s because French people are such pessimists.
Could it simply be that people who still have ties with their ethnic community some 100 years after the end of large-scale immigration are generally from more stable backgrounds than Euro-American mutts such as myself?
Any American who is more than a 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant, is still full-blooded, and still identifies with their country of origin is unusual. It could just be that people who still identify as any full-blooded ethnic group that stopped immigrating decades ago will tend to be people from unusually stable families that have stayed in communities for generations.
I think a case can be made that happiness is the ultimate thing a people strive for, but it’s not something that can be addressed through public policy. Whereas income and living standards can be.
What I’m interested in is what public policies can Sweden pursue to close the income disparity between Swedes and Swedish-Americans.
Sure it can, and Sweden does it a lot better than America does.
I suppose the answer you are looking for is that it could could abolish its welfare state, or reduce it to minimalist American levels, thus dooming a large proportion of its population (as in America) to poverty, disease, crime, and hopelessness, but at the same time enriching others so that they can afford to buy healthcare, and to own three Rolls-Royces or Ferraris, two or three houses, a private jet and a yacht, instead of the Volvo and one house the poor things currently have to scrape by on. Possibly this might result in the Swedish GDP and the average income of Swedes being slightly raised. Congratulations, a higher GDP per capita must mean that you have made the world a better place! :rolleyes:
