The Swedish model?
By 1980 Sweden had the lowest income and gender inequality in the world. As a result of the neoliberal capitalist reforms from mid-1980s,
"The current Swedish income distribution bears some resemblance to the English one of 1688. The average member of the richest 0.1 per cent has a disposable income, after tax and transfers, 38 times greater than that of the median-income earner. At the time of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, England’s temporal lords had an income 30 times that of urban middleclass merchants and traders." Angust Maddison, Contours of World Economy, 1-2030 AD, Oxford 2007, pp. 278-9
Wealth distribution has worsened even more, resulting in the most uneven pattern to be found in Western Europe, on a par with those of Brazil, South Africa or the USA. In 2002, Sweden’s top 1 per cent owned 18 per cent of all household wealth; by 2017, it had risen to 42 per cent.
The National Education Authority (Skolverket) has found that a quarter of school credits can now be attributed to the social class of a student’s parents, up from 16 per cent in 1998.
According to the European Social Survey, the Nordic countries in general, and Sweden in particular, had the most positive view of immigration anywhere in Europe.
However, since the start of the century, Sweden has also become part of the ‘manufacture of refugees’ through its participation in US and NATO wars on the home countries of asylum seekers—though more as a pledge of allegiance to imperial power than as a major force of destruction. Swedish forces joined the occupation of Afghanistan from 2002, and NATO's war on Libya in 2011. In spite of the Saudi–UAE war on Yemen, Sweden still sells weapons to the invaders.
Source: Göran Therborn, Twilight of Swedish Democracy, NLR113
By 1980 Sweden had the lowest income and gender inequality in the world. As a result of the neoliberal capitalist reforms from mid-1980s,
"The current Swedish income distribution bears some resemblance to the English one of 1688. The average member of the richest 0.1 per cent has a disposable income, after tax and transfers, 38 times greater than that of the median-income earner. At the time of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, England’s temporal lords had an income 30 times that of urban middleclass merchants and traders." Angust Maddison, Contours of World Economy, 1-2030 AD, Oxford 2007, pp. 278-9
Wealth distribution has worsened even more, resulting in the most uneven pattern to be found in Western Europe, on a par with those of Brazil, South Africa or the USA. In 2002, Sweden’s top 1 per cent owned 18 per cent of all household wealth; by 2017, it had risen to 42 per cent.
The National Education Authority (Skolverket) has found that a quarter of school credits can now be attributed to the social class of a student’s parents, up from 16 per cent in 1998.
According to the European Social Survey, the Nordic countries in general, and Sweden in particular, had the most positive view of immigration anywhere in Europe.
However, since the start of the century, Sweden has also become part of the ‘manufacture of refugees’ through its participation in US and NATO wars on the home countries of asylum seekers—though more as a pledge of allegiance to imperial power than as a major force of destruction. Swedish forces joined the occupation of Afghanistan from 2002, and NATO's war on Libya in 2011. In spite of the Saudi–UAE war on Yemen, Sweden still sells weapons to the invaders.
Source: Göran Therborn, Twilight of Swedish Democracy, NLR113