Interesting Charts from Sweden - Non-Child-Friendly Ending (You have been warned)

The Economist, which, by now, as I've been saying, should be in every aspiring economists' subscription list, came out with a very fascinating article on Sweden.

Now as I've said before, I'm impressed with the Scandinavian and Nordic countries' abilities to maintain not only high standards of living for their people, but do so without deficit spending and all of this in the face of high taxes.

I opined this had to do with their cultures being more mature and "adult" enough to handle something like socialism and not take advantage of the welfare net and use it as a hammock (I additionally forecasted that human nature would override this cultural trait in the long run and they'd start to look more and more like Italy).

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

For Sweden seems to have been massaging their unemployment figures and things may not be that great to begin with.

First, the majority, practically ALL of the jobs growth in the past 40 years has come from the public sector.



Immediately I'm sceptical because the public sector responds to political demands, not the demands of a free people through a free market. The result is what one can expect from make work, government jobs;

No wealth production;



Now there are many other aspects to the article that I haven't addressed here, but one thing that was scary and inevitably all European countries AND America will face is that everybody in Sweden is in one way or another dependent upon the government for some of the butter which their bread is buttered with. Thusly, they are somewhat loth to vote in reforms that would shrink the size of the government no matter how inefficient it may be.



Democrat readers no doubt are having a wet dream right now.