Mamma Mia

I'm quite interested in Sweden at the moment in light of the riots going on. I'd like to pull out some of the inconsistencies on this Scandinavia Country that the Left have spun and continue to spin.

Till very recently the only way has been Scandinavian for the Left. Sweden is apparently one of the few countries in the world where growth is high, the economy is always booming, everyone loves immigration and the government is so big that everyone receives a massive pile of cash in welfare. In short a Social Democratic utopia where everything is rosy. In Sweden this utopia is thanks mostly to the Swedish Social Democratic Party being in government since 1930 to 1991 and the Centre Right Party changing few policies when ever in power.  

Utopian riots in the Swedish Capital.

That above paragraph could have been written by a Guardian journalist. A Few Years ago the Guardian wrote this article saying how the 'Tories can learn from the centre right Swedish Government'. It said that "For three generations universal, efficient health care, access to education, child care, generous funding for arts and cultural activities have been simply assumed in the conduct of people's lives. The result has not been, as was once alleged, an ant-like conformity, but its opposite: a degree of individuality and autonomy that is becoming its major cultural challenge." (if you want to see even more recent Guardian Sweden love see the recent videos they published in February about how Sweden has bucked the economic trend).

Interesting stuff from the Guardian. Looks like a social utopia. But now they are saying "After decades of practising the Swedish model of generous welfare benefits, Stockholm has reduced the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy. […] successive governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst." So a complete turnaround. Why is that?

I'm surprised the Guardian hasn't been recategorised in all Libraries as fiction rather than a newspaper.

Well it's because people would realise that what they had said before about Sweden was one massive Porkie. Sweden has never had this left wing utopia. The reason why it can spend so much on welfare is because it has one of the smallest states in the world. There is no minimum wage in Sweden, taxes are low and the people are free to do what they want. Welfare consequently is able to be very high in Sweden, they get in more tax with a bigger economy that has low tax than a small one with high tax. Thatcher did it in the 1980s, don't you know people from the Guardian.

So why is Stockholm on fire every night? Well the same reasons why there was problems in London, it's almost a copy. Unlike what the Guardian has said above its nothing to do with reducing the role of the state and how now there is no welfare and so everyone is in poverty. It's to do with the open door immigration policy and its effect on the Swedes jobs market.

Swedes have a big history of emigration as well as immigration.

As it stood in 2010, 14.3% of the population are immigrants more than 2/3rds of these were born outside of the EU.  In a country where the population is just shy of 10 million, that's a lot of people. Most of these immigrants as with the UK live in major cities so you get a large proportion of immigrants living in certain districts. The problem is probably as acute as a cultural divide as in Oldham, Luton or Tower Hamlets, to give a rough scale of what is going on.

The vast majority of immigrants have come over for jobs and most are employed. Sweden has a long history of migrations doing low skilled jobs and coming over to fill the positions. Thus they under cut most of the low skilled workers already living in Sweden. These workers then rely on a substantial welfare state to rely on, a classic situation of a large proportion trapped on welfare. The Swedes are stuck in catch 22 position of being unable to move socio-economically because welfare pays best but unable to leave because work pays worst. Thus the Swedes are not a happy bunch abandoned by their government on welfare and blaming immigrants for it.

So there you are. Sweden far from being a left wing Utopia is stuck in a benefits trap.