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Sweden hardly a ‘socialist nightmare’ As Obama tries to rein in Wall Street and raise taxes on the wealthy, critics say he is trying to turn America into Sweden. Meanwhile, in Sweden, it’s full-speed ahead for capitalism. There is a long tradition of using Sweden as a socialist model to highlight social shortcomings in the United States. Recent tax change proposals by the Obama administration, for instance, had conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly asking his viewers, “Do we really want to change America into Sweden?” Yet if the Scandinavian model were shipped across the Atlantic, the changes would have little to do with socialism, say analysts here. In fact, some believe it should be held up as a bastion of market capitalism. Last week, the country’s center-right government began selling off state-owned pharmacies, one of the country’s few remaining nationalized companies, as part of an ambitious program of liberal economic reforms started in 2006. In the same week, a study by the Swedish Unemployment Insurance Board revealed that almost half of the country’s jobless lacked full unemployment benefits. Many opted out of the state scheme when the cost of membership was raised last year; others were ineligible. State pensions, schools, healthcare, public transport, and post offices have been fully or partly privatized over the last decade, making Sweden one of the most free market orientated economies in the world, analysts say. |
La Suède est social-démocrate et de plus en plus centriste.
Va falloir que Léo-Paul Lauzon se trouve un autre modèle de socialisme LOL Cuba peut-être 😉
Un autre passage de cet article:
« Neoliberal reforms have gone much further here in some sectors than in the US. Sweden has become a sort of laboratory for privatization in a way that the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute could only dream of. »
Dire qu’au Québec la gaugauche parle toujours du modèle suédois. La Suède est plus à droite que l’ADQ ou Stephen Harper (sur les questions d’économie)
Wow! En Suède les gens ont le droit de se retirer des programmes d’assurance chômage. Je suis jaloux.
Imaginez si Harper proposait la même chose au Canada, on le qualifierait sûrement d’être la réincarnation d’Hitler.
Mais si ce genre de mesure existait, la gouvernement fédéral serait beaucoup plus prudent quand viendrait le temps de piger dans les surplus de la caisse.
« La fin du mythe scandinave »
Un jour, je l’écrirai ce livre.