How ‘Democratic Socialism’ Wreaked Havoc On My Native Sweden

[Chris]

Anders Ingemarson on How ‘Democratic Socialism’ Wreaked Havoc On My Native Sweden

...As an immigrant from Sweden with 30-plus years of “on-site” experience, my perspective, and that of some of my fellow countrymen who also didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, is different from that of Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, Sanders, and their “democratic socialist” followers.

Stefan Carlsson’s “The Sweden Myth” and Johan Norberg’s “How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich” explain that Sweden is a mixed economy with significant free market elements — private property, private businesses, a functioning banking system, free trade, etc. — coupled with welfare statist programs such as socialized — government financed, operated, and regulated — education and health care.

They explain that the free market elements are responsible for the country’s relative wealth and health. Much of the wealth in real terms was created before and in the early stages of the welfare state, between 1870 and 1960, when Sweden was one of the countries with the lowest levels of regulation and taxation in Europe.

The one period when Sweden practiced what may be considered “democratic socialism” was between 1960 and 1980. During this period, the country nationalized industry and massively expanded the welfare state financed by tax increases and currency devaluations, and it paid a high price. Sweden fell from the top of the list of wealthiest countries in the world to the middle of the pack of industrialized nations, bringing it to the brink of ruin in the 1990s.

Realizing the practical consequences of the disastrous policies, the country cut back on its welfare programs and reduced corporate taxes, leading to somewhat of a comeback in the past two decades. But the experiment with “democratic socialism” resulted in four decades of lost progress.

Also, as welfare statism is still entrenched, with socialized medicine and education, and stifling environmental and other regulations, Swedes continue to pay the price: Economic growth is much lower than it would have been had the country returned to its pre-1960 levels of government involvement in the economy....

[Hoosier8]

Yep, the socialists keep getting the same results but everyone else just did it wrong. LOL

[Chris]

What surprises me is how Democrats keep using Sweden as their model when Swedes keep telling them they full of it.

[Mr.Soxes]

Importing more black and brown people is surly the solution!

[texan]

If socialism were so great why didn’t the founding fathers choose the same when they formed the government? Oh yes I remember now they wanted freedom.

[Dangermouse]

If socialism were so great why didn’t the founding fathers choose the same when they formed the government? Oh yes I remember now they wanted freedom.

That's the myth. What the traitors wanted was to dodge their taxes.

[Chris]

That's the myth. What the traitors wanted was to dodge their taxes.

True, they wanted to dodge taxes, but because they had no representation in how those taxes were used to govern them.

False, texan is correct.

I imagine you one of those who has no use for the history of ideas but ideas, ideology is important when it comes to men planning their government. Hayek was a great historian of ideas. In his "Individualism, true and false," he laid out the diverging of ideas from the Englightenment. One branch, the Scottish/English tradition and the other, the French tradition. He says:

"I can give no better illustration of the prevailing confusion about the meaning of individualism than the fact that the man who to me seems to be one of the greatest representatives of true individualism, Edmund Burke, is commonly (and rightly) represented as the main opponent of the so-called “individualism” of Rousseau, whose theories he feared would rapidly dissolve the commonwealth “into the dust and powder of individuality,” and that the term “individualism” itself was first introduced into the English language through the translation of one of the works of another of the great representatives of true individualism, De Tocqueville, who uses it in his Democracy in America to describe an attitude which he deplores and rejects. Yet there can no doubt that both Burke and De Tocqueville stand in all essentials close to Adam Smith, to whom nobody will deny the title of individualist, and that the “individualism” to which they are opposed is something altogether different from that of Smith."

You see, the founders followed the Scottish/English tradition where government was created to protect the rights of the individual in his or her pursuit of happiness in society free of government regulation.

The Democrats, the Social Democrats, follow the French tradition, from Rousseau through Marx, to today, believing the government not only create rights but frees man from responsibility, from society.

Odd, you fly the flag of Scotland but mouth the words of the French.

[stjames1_53]

That's the myth. What the traitors wanted was to dodge their taxes.

I bet you think you won both wars.............not

[stjames1_53]

True, they wanted to dodge taxes, but because they had no representation in how those taxes were used to govern them.

False, texan is correct.

I imagine you one of those who has no use for the history of ideas but ideas, ideology is important when it comes to men planning their government. Hayek was a great historian of ideas. In his "Individualism, true and false," he laid out the diverging of ideas from the Englightenment. One branch, the Scottish/English tradition and the other, the French tradition. He says:

"I can give no better illustration of the prevailing confusion about the meaning of individualism than the fact that the man who to me seems to be one of the greatest representatives of true individualism, Edmund Burke, is commonly (and rightly) represented as the main opponent of the so-called “individualism” of Rousseau, whose theories he feared would rapidly dissolve the commonwealth “into the dust and powder of individuality,” and that the term “individualism” itself was first introduced into the English language through the translation of one of the works of another of the great representatives of true individualism, De Tocqueville, who uses it in his Democracy in America to describe an attitude which he deplores and rejects. Yet there can no doubt that both Burke and De Tocqueville stand in all essentials close to Adam Smith, to whom nobody will deny the title of individualist, and that the “individualism” to which they are opposed is something altogether different from that of Smith."

You see, the founders followed the Scottish/English tradition where government was created to protect the rights of the individual in his or her pursuit of happiness in society free of government regulation.

The Democrats, the Social Democrats, follow the French tradition, from Rousseau through Marx, to today, believing the government not only create rights but frees man from responsibility, from society.

Odd, you fly the flag of Scotland but mouth the words of the French.

....and is English to boot...........talk about disaffected loyalties