Sweden Welfare State: Now Even Swedes Are Questioning the Welfare State > Paying some of the world’s highest income-tax rates has been the cornerstone of Scandinavia’s social contract, with the political consensus in Sweden to save money for when the economy is less healthy. > Yet the country is showing strains all too familiar in other parts of Europe with nationalists gaining support and Swedes increasingly questioning the sustainability of their fabled cradle-to-grave welfare system. > Resentment has built over the influx of more than 600,000 immigrants over the past five years, many from war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan and Syria, a huge number for a country of 10 million people. > There are also soaring crime rates, gang violence, complaints about education and pregnant mothers even being turned away from maternity wards due to a lack of capacity. The number of people waiting longer than 90 days for an operation or specialist treatment has tripled over the past four years. > “The Swedish social contract needs to be reformed,” a dozen entrepreneurs including Nordea Bank AB Chairman Bjorn Wahlroos and Kreab Founder Peje Emilsson wrote in an op-ed in the Dagens Industri newspaper on May 31. “Despite high taxes, politics isn’t delivering its part of the contract in important areas. We get poor value for money.” > There are warning signs across Europe of what can happen if disillusionment goes unaddressed. In Britain, popular anger over rising immigration and creaking public services fueled the vote to leave the European Union. Nationalist parties, on the march across continent, just swept to power in Italy. > Unless the system is protected, Sweden risks ending up joining them and ushering in populist groups, said Leif Ostling, the former chairman of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise who quit in November after revelations of his tax affairs.
Why are they running with cocaine Mitch? Mitch McConnell got court-martialed for sodomy in 1967 is much better (and true)
Grayson Cruz
>MUH SEAT THEFT Oh, fuck off. Scalia was murdered for that seat. As much as I find Turtleman annoying he deserves a ton of credit for the gamble that he took.
> But with immigration and healthcare topping surveys as the biggest issues facing the country, a party with neo-Nazi roots, the Sweden Democrats, has surged and may hamper any efforts to form a functioning government. In some polls, the Sweden Democrats have even overtaken the Social Democrats as the country’s biggest party, with backing from more than 25 percent of voters. > Sweden provides heavily subsidized health care, free education and more than a year of paid parental leave. If people get sick or lose their jobs, the premium they have paid into the welfare system via their taxes is returned in benefits. > Most Swedes are comfortable with what they pay and what they get, though a survey by pollster Demoskop published in February showed that the proportion of respondents who thought taxes were too high jumped to 45 percent, up from just 27 percent in 2014. > “I don’t trust welfare at all, I need to build my own capital,” Bothen said while sipping his cappuccino at the NK department store in central Stockholm. “The problem with immigration is that our welfare state is not quite dimensioned for it. Of course we should help people, and we have a good situation here in Sweden, but we can’t handle an unlimited amount of people.” > That sentiment is amplified in more remote parts of the country. More than 400 kilometers north in Solleftea, midwife Hedvall said the local municipality raised taxes just before the maternity ward closed. She said politicians don’t care anymore once they come into power. The closure saved 16 million kronor ($1.8 million) a year. > In the southern part of Lapland, one police car covers an area almost the size of Denmark. That might have been enough in the past, but store-owner Camilla Appelqvist in the village of Dorotea said times have changed. She had three break-ins since February, the intruders clearing out the tobacco and snuff from the store.
> Money isn’t the issue. Sweden’s finances are in enviable shape by European standards. The economy grew 3.3 percent on an annual basis in the first quarter, among the fastest in western Europe. > The Social Democrat-led government reversed some income-tax cuts instigated by the previous leadership. That enabled it to post surpluses every year since it came to power. > The total tax burden in Sweden rose to 44.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2016, from 42.6 percent at the end of the previous government’s tenure in 2014. That’s the fifth-highest level among 35 OECD countries. > “An important priority we’ll make is that we won’t lower taxes in the coming years, precisely because of the need to finance welfare,” Fredrik Olovsson, a leading Social Democrat and chairman of the parliament’s finance committee, said at a seminar in Stockholm. “I don’t think the level of taxes we have today is the absolutely highest we can have.” > In Vasternorrland, a region of sprawling pine forests where Solleftea is situated, the ruling Social Democrats have lost significantly in the polls compared to the last election. In 2014, they won 48 percent, while a Sifo poll in April showed that support had fallen to 32 percent. A new local party championing health care polled 8 percent. bloombergquint.com/politics/2018/06/26/now-even-swedes-are-questioning-the-welfare-state
Brayden Adams
GUATEMALA, HONDURAS AND EL SALVADOR ON SUICIDE WATCH.
Maybe even Mexico and Belize for bonus salt and brown tears.
Justin Edwards
>adds 3 million votes to California, Mew York, and Chicago >still loses Electoral College
WOMP WOMP
Samuel Phillips
Can we get a Kennedy retirement announcement
Connor Perez
Commit suicide now, leftists. Make it easy on yourselves.
>wow badass fantasy I'll be sure to get it 30K likes!
Fuck Twatter
Should force him to name a great Muslim American hardmode: no Muhammad Ali
This was the stupidest shit and you know Harley is run by 100% Boomers who don't know how business works anymore. Image and sentiment is everything now, bottom line, costs numbers, doesn't matter anymore. They should have just raised the cost of choppers 2500 dollars because I guarantee that guy in Berlin who wants to get pussy on his American Chopper is going to pay, whereas any normie Euro is still going to buy BMW or Ducati anyway.
Harley is all about the rebel image, going with Trump is the rebel move, should have been Harley's move.
Carter Morales
Who? Pence? Haley? >Kamala Harris! Pffft, if you think The Ugandan Giant is getting elected anything outside of CA, i have a bridge I want to sell you
