It’s depicted as ‘nationalism,’ and maybe; but it’s not expansionist or aggressive. ’Of course we all want to help people, and we realize we are lucky. But keeping Sweden a good place to live means protecting its wealth and culture.’
Wretchard has lately been employing a shipwreck metaphor. He mixes it a bit, but there are good insights there.
1. It's relatively easy to have socialism when everyone looks like second cousins to you. Just fact.
ReplyDelete2. What America does is far harder, because we have to overcome the rather natural insularity of humans in order to be open-handed and generous. We have been getting along with people who don't look like us for decades.
3. Sweden embraced a mild socialism during the worldwide depression of the 30's, retooled major industries in the 50's with the money they didn't spend on WWII, and continued that until 1970.
4. They went hard socialist from 1970-1990, and dropped from fifth-wealthiest to 11th-wealthiest nation.
5. They reversed course in the 1990's, and while still providing a significant social safety net, have been free-market tigers in dealing with other nations. They also have incentive packages that the US doesn't, such as school vouchers.
6. They no longer have the unity of support for the safety net now that they have admitted large (by European standards) numbers of people who are not as hardworking and honest as they are - which admittedly, is just about everyone.