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notices and features - Date published:
8:44 am, April 24th, 2009 - 12 comments
Categories: economy, humour, International, public services, workers' rights, youtube -
Tags: recession
If you’ve been watching your Fox News, you know that the US is turning socialist. It’s going to be Sweden any day apparently. The Daily Show went to Sweden to get a taste of the fate that awaits Americans.
The tunes they play while visiting Robyn’s apartment… They’re great songs but do they suddenly seem to also reveal some kind of deep illness in US society?
UPDATE: Part two over at No Right Turn.
High taxes, yes, but (a highly subjective selection from Wikipedia):
Sweden is a world leader in privatized pensions
Sweden’s energy market is largely privatized. The Nordic energy market is one of the first liberalized energy markets in Europe
The rail transport market is privatized
According to OECD, deregulation, globalization, and technology sector growth have been key productivity drivers.
Deregulation-induced competition helped Sweden to halt the economic decline and restore strong growth rates in the 2000s. The current Swedish government is continuing the trend to pursue moderate reforms. Growth has been higher than in many other EU-15 countries.
The Swedish government treats public and independent schools equally by introducing education vouchers in 1992 as one of the first countries in the world after The Netherlands. Anyone can establish a for-profit school and the municipality must pay new schools the same amount as municipal schools get.
Does that sound like rampant socialism?! I’m thinking not really.
Ask any National Party member whether they would like to switch to Sweden’s tax system.
The Nordic economies are the model for how to organize a society. Everything else seems to suck.
Wow, it sounds like the really have got the best of both political worlds. The place sounds great!
we have a day of it, methinks… huh..?
“have-been”s and once was’s..
Given the thread’s subject matter the US data received here was from polling under 30-yr olds.. so the results relate to them (doh!).. and it appears a threeway split.. approx. 30 percent for socialism, 30 percent for capitalism, and 30 percent undecided… a small conclusion to suggest that the future could be very interesting indeed..!
Now Stephen writes of “have-been” the attainments/achievements of Sweden. One suspects that Stephen is quite young and/or unaware of Sweden’s prior proud socialism… [ great learnings are to be had from South Americans and their reliance on such as a euro-centered haven and for why ] also, I’ll aver, wholly unaware of what caused a change from that.. the force majeure so to say.. a force spent already.. and in need of replacement. Yes, replacement since renewal would amount to more of the same failure regimen..
As to the politics, we might wish the Swedish peoples well in their deserved endeavors.. instead of attempting bolster our own presuppositions..
Funnily enough, I just saw a rather wild-eyed Rodney Hide in Queen Street, wearing a sandwich board proclaiming: “THE END OF SWEDEN (and France) IS NIGH!”
Gosh Sweden sounds like a terrible place. So many blondes, so little time.
I must confess to having absolutely no idea what rippo is on about.
Uhhh… neither actually.
with time on your side.. you will..
Actually I wonder if ‘The Standard’ would prefer to live in the US, Sweden sounds like Roger Douglas is PM 😉
before Sweden twas Iceland such a claim was made about.. though hardly within the aforementioned commenters’ earshot..
shows does it not..!
afterthought: ripp0, they see you as a critic – questioners are critics! – not as a marksman.. well not among the very best of them, a marksman able to drop the vertical crosshair upon the horizontal for accurate targeting..