SWEDEN: AN EXAMPLE FOR CONSERVATIVES

American conservatives should be shouting the Swedish experience from the rooftops

What would American conservatives say of a country that NOT ONLY has an extensive system of government-paid vouchers for private schooling but also has an extensive system of government-paid vouchers for private hospitalization? And what if the same country had ALREADY made big cutbacks in the size of government? A dream for the distant future? Not quite. That country does already exist. It is Sweden. Probably because the mainstream media turn a blind eye to it, most people seem totally unaware that Sweden is moving steadily AWAY FROM the "Swedish model". In the early 90s, the Swedish government was spending nearly three quarters of the national income. That is now down to about half.

Sweden still has a long way to go of course. After their big economic meltdown in the early 90's (huge unemployment and welfare benefits that could no longer be paid for) they undertook an exemplary program of privatizations and made big cuts to both taxes and welfare benefits but there are still huge disincentives to work in Sweden. Incomes are kept pretty uniform regardless of what you do -- meaning that there is little incentive either to improve one's skills or to work hard -- and the sickness benefit side of the welfare system is still a huge racket. People on sickness benefits no longer get a higher income than they would by working but the benefits are still close to wages and access to the system is very easy. So huge numbers of Swedes have declared themselves too ill to work.

As a consequence, average Swedish incomes have fallen well behind American standards -- as indexed by the most objective criterion we have: GDP per capita. When purchasing power is taken into account, the picture is even worse. A cup of coffee, for instance, is likely to cost you three times as much in Sweden as in the USA. Individual Swedes do however manage their money well so there is little visible sign in Sweden of their lower incomes. Visible poverty in any modern society mainly reflects bad decisions rather than lack of income. Money now buys options rather than survival.

So Leftists who advocate high taxes and pervasive welfare need to be told that the country that went furthest in that direction hit a rock years ago and has been paddling in reverse ever since.

More here (PDF)

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ELSEWHERE

Britain's proposed new terrorism laws sound like a form of terrorism themselves. The UK: Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has called for new terrorism measures which include: "create a new offence of "inappropriate internet usage" and "have powers to "attack identified websites""

London bombing a product of British self-hate: "No, the real answer to why Britain spawned people fuelled with maniacal hate for their country is that Britain hates itself. In hating Britain, these British suicide bombers were as British as a police warning for flying the union flag. Britain's self-loathing is deep, pervasive and lethally dangerous. We get bombed, and we say it's all our own fault. Schools refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud, and use it instead as a means of instilling liberal guilt. The government and the BBC gush over `the other', but recoil at the merest hint of British culture. The only thing we are licensed to be proud of is London's internationalism - in other words, that there is little British left about it... But self-loathing in a nation, like self-loathing in an individual, is alienating. Someone who despises himself inspires greater contempt than affection, and a country that hates itself cannot expect its newcomers to want to belong".

Terrorism about values: "Recent terrorist attacks were part of a war against western values rather than a response to the military operation in Iraq, Defence Minister Robert Hill said today. After a second wave of bombings in London overnight, Senator Hill said there had been terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists before the operations in Iraq began. Senator Hill was speaking a day after Australian bomb casualty Louise Barry asked Prime Minister John Howard, who visited her in a London hospital, if the terror attacks were linked to the Iraq war. "I can understand why someone would ask that question, but this is a war against the values we hold rather than any specific operations we're involved in," the minister told ABC radio".

Islamic ignorance prevents polio eradication: "A worldwide campaign begun in 1988 to eradicate the polio infection was on the verge of success when, early in 2003, a conspiracy theory took hold of the Muslim population in northern Nigeria. That conspiracy theory has single-handedly returned polio to epidemic proportions. The theory's source seems to be a physician and the president of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Shari'a Law, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 68. Dr. Ahmed, an Islamist, accuses Americans of lacing the vaccine with an anti-fertility agent that sterilizes children (or, in an alternate theory, it infects them with AIDS) and considers them, according to John Murphy of the Baltimore Sun, "the worst criminals on Earth . Even Hitler was not as evil as that." This fear of polio vaccines caught on because of the war in Iraq, explained a doctor with the World Health Organization. "If America is fighting people in the Middle East," goes the Islamist logic, "the conclusion is that they are fighting Muslims." Local imams repeated and spread the sterilization theory, which won wide acceptance despite vocal assurances to the contrary from the WHO, the Nigerian government, and many Nigerian doctors and scientists.... The common element, the New York Times notes, is that incidents of polio are now located "almost exclusively in Muslim countries or regions."

There is a marvellously Anglophilic speech here from Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India. Excerpt: "Our Constitution remains a testimony to the enduring interplay between what is essentially Indian and what is very British in our intellectual heritage. The idea of India as an inclusive and plural society, draws on both these traditions. The success of our experiment of building a democracy within the framework of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society will encourage all societies to walk the path we have trodden. In this journey, both Britain and India have learnt from each other and have much to teach the world. This is perhaps the most enduring aspect of the Indo-British encounter.... But, if there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English speaking people, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component. Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system. That is, if you leave out cricket!

The Jamestown Foundation website is a good source of info on terrorism that endeavours to avoid bias, filter, or agenda. The Foundation has a new book out Unmasking Terror (2004) that is qualitatively ahead of all the pop and academic books on the subject as it depends on primary and indigenous sources in each country around the world. The Jamestown Foundation is leading source of info on totalitarian societies.

I have just put up here an interesting email from a reader which says that Leftists romanticise collectives because they are so bad at them: Their big egos are a serious barrier to real-life collective effort.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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The anti-business policies and practically all economic policies advocated by the Left are impoverishing. They waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so make the country poorer. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch

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