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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (3392)	5/26/2004 8:57:58 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

Also there is the important fact - "Sweden has dropped from fourth to 14th place in 2002 among the OECD countries (i.e., affluent industrialized countries) in terms of GDP per capita since 1970." washingtontimes.com Most of that drop was before 1995, things are a better now but it hardly shows Sweden as a good long term economic success story since Sweden started to greatly increase the role of the government in its economy in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Sweden's socialistic tendencies where leading it in to major economic problems. In the 80s and early 90s it developed inflation, growing unemployment and a budget deficit that as a percentage of GDP was far higher then America's today or under Reagan. "With 10% of industrial output in the hands of the government, high taxes, and an extensive welfare state they are rather socialist. Would I outright call their system socialist? Probably not but they have a very large component of socialism which puts a drag on their economy." Ten percent does not make for a large component of socialism. 10% of industrial production is directly socialist. The rest is highly taxed and regulated. As far as services government provides an extensive array of services. Tim, they have a balanced budget and low unemployment rate. If their purchasing power is not on parity with ours.....so what? There may be reasons for the discrepancy such as the difference in public benefits.......we don't know for sure that we are comparing apples to apples. However it would appear that the Swedes are happy with their econ. model and it looks to be functioning well. If they don't like it, they can certainly vote to change it. Let's look at crime rates.........one or all the articles says that Sweden has a worst crime rate than the US. You looked at serious assault and murder rates. For other crimes Sweden's rate is higher. "Serious assault and murder" is perhaps the worst crime category, but its rate isn't the same as the crime rate. I saw a page listing other crimes where Sweden has higher rates than the US; its in areas that I would call white collar crime......bribery is one of them. I am not sure why the crime rates are higher for this category of crimes than in the US. However, with street crimes or home burglaries which we normally think of when we think of crime, Sweden's rates are lower than ours. More information - Ownership of household appliances Average Poorest Swede fifth of Americans 48% 60% VCR 37% 60% Microwave 31% 20% Dishwasher 18% 50% Dryer Source US. Bureau of census, 1992, Euromonitor, 1991. (US figures rounded to nearest 10% because of lack of accuracy) It turns out that Sweden is richer then Mississippi but is poorer then Alabama vodkapundit.com Dang, Tim, this is the site where you're getting your info. The guy sounds like a crackpot or maybe into vodka a little too much: " UPDATE: Oops! I cut'n'pasted the wrong number from the BEA. $23,471 is much more like it -- and still richer than Sweden."