Most Swedes who visit Canada really like the country But to live here? Despite being a rich and blessed country, Canada performs very poorly in most,UN and Oecd(organization for cooperation and development ) studies. One example recently in a UN study we finished 25 of 25 countries ,passing in but one criteria. Sweden # 1 passing in all ten.It was nice that we beat you around that time in the World Junior hockey but... Unfortunately not an isolated measure; we are usually at the bottom of some 25 ind. in poverty,transparency of government, global warming progress..the list goes on. I care and bombared editors with letter as to my thoughts but am more interested in how you Swedes feel. Do you care about such things,do high taxes bother you (probably 50 to 100 % higher than ours),do you feel that your coalition governments do basically work for the betterment of all Swedes etc.We cling to an outmoded system ( only the UK , the U>S(well,does anyone really understand theirs) and Canada maintain it. It is first past the post vs single vote proportional representation basically. The result...last election the Green vote,almost 1 million, resulted in 0 seats in our over 300 seat Parliament. Not too Democratic,I think. But we are a young country.
Most interested in comments and perspectives.
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PS. UN Study was on Child care.
ReplyDeleteI think that people care too little about this kind of things (unless they are personally affected). Back in the 70's politics was a "hot potato" - not so today.
ReplyDeleteI think that our coalition governement works for everybodies best (at least mainly), otherwise I wouldn´t have given them my vote. We really needed a change in governement, If one party stays in power to long, they get to powerful.
ReplyDeleteIt´s a hard balance to have a society that takes care of it´s members without taking over responsibility for their lifes. If you are made to think that someone els should always save you, you get powerless in the end.
About taxes: If to high people don´t feel loyal with them and start to cheat.
I am employed in my own company. The company has to pay about 100 kr, including taxes and social fees, for me to get 33 kr to spend.
Quite a lot compared with most other countires I think.
We had three referendums about proportional representation ( which lends itself to coalition governments, I believe) but all were turned down. It remains easier with our system to continue to govern,much harder to get anything significant accomplished,especially with a minority government..our 4th in a row.The atmosphere in Parliament is so hostile teachers hesitate to send classes there to witness kindergarten behaviour.Seldom good for citizens,mostly petty partisan politics dominate.
ReplyDeleteRecall Bjorn explaining the heavy tax system; keeping only a third from your business seems punitive. Guess we are luckier; I had a business after retirement in my own name. The government then(about 15 years ago) was quite generous in that they did expect it to be profitable by year five but in the meantime one could deduct legitimate expenses(supplies, automotive portion,office costs (could be say one fifth of ones house for a home office) etc.So that alleviated total taxes as expenses were initially higher than income.
That balance you talk about is hard to strike, I agree. Guess my concern here is that with our lower taxes, we cannot be among the top of say 25 countries but we seem very complacent about usually being among the worst performing "Have" countries. Anyway we have had a glorious late summer,thanks for your insights and the best to Bjorn,Lovita,Ella and Larz.
Sounds like Hans needs a change from Leksand from his latest blog. Could Vietnam,Japan, China beckon? Oh, to be young again. On second thought, we were lucky,it is very challenging these days for so many.