Poke a needle in a Minnesota liberal, and they’ll likely bleed some combination of Danish and Swedish “social democracy”.
At Reason, Johan Norberg points out that they – and most Americans, really – could learn a lot from the Swedes. Just not much of it goes along with the left’s dogma:
Norberg’s grand tour of his homeland reveals a country steeped in classical liberalism. Americans may be surprised to learn that Sweden’s experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform.
Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it’s also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws.
Podcast? Why sure, you can listen to the whole thing:
PSA: Little Steven and The Disciples of Soul — Friday, November 2nd at 8pm
Location: Ames Center Burnsville, MN
https://www.ames-center.com/littlesteven.html
I dunno.
Anyone trapped for hours in the “one-way” layout of an IKEA store would beg to differ. 🙂
Coincidentally, from today:
The economist Timo Sanadaji explains why the talk about Sweden’s good economy is bluff. The counties are out of money and the per-capita GDP has not grown in 10 years. Sweden has the worst [economic] growth in all of Europe.
Sweden was once the world’s fourth richest country, today it is somewhere between 15 and 19 depending on how many remote oil-states are included. It is still a rich country, but its wealth is on a permanent downswing. Even greater welfare cuts are expected in the next two years. One can imagine that financing problems with the added ethnic-religious conflicts is a poisonous cocktail. When the majority of Swedes realize the crapshoot that’s been played, it won’t be fun to be a Swedish politician.
I translated the above from this website. At that link is also hefty quote from an article by Christopher Caldwell in the Weekly Standard.
I have to laugh at this because Sweden/Norway is always the posterchild for how leftists think our government should operate. Never mind we are much larger in landmass and have literally 100X the population and much more diverse than them too.