But the Swedes are fine with it, as is the author of the post, because they feel they get their money's worth. The author went into quite a bit of detail about he doesn't have to save much for his childrens' education and some other major expenses since most will be covered by tax-payers.

Assuming of course that the government is fiscally prudent for the many years until your kids start higher education and you are elderly and need a lot of medical care. Given how popular it is around the world to run huge deficits that end up requiring major cuts to services I wouldn't bet my future on it.

We are not fine with it.

It's a bit off topic, but all I can see online about Sweden always sounds so perfect. But in reality it's not. There's a lot of us Swedes that are long from fine paying these taxes and then see our friends/relatives waiting for half a year waiting for treatment for cancer.

And if you'd like private healthcare, Sweden taxes you extra for that.

New car? Triple tax first 3 years.

Yes, this is always the problem. The UK is far from perfect and I have a few friends always talking about Scandinavian countries and how they'd want to move there. What they don't seem to understand is that all countries have their own problems, the UK isn't unique in that regard. A Swedish guy I know gets annoyed when people are talking about Sweden like some heaven on earth and I do understand why.

I don't disagree with that Sweden has problems, but the problems are still on a completely different scale than most other countries.

I was wondering if there are dissenting opinions. What percentage of Swedes do you estimate feel the way you do?

First of all, being a reader of hn in Sweden probably means your monthly salary is in the top 10%, which of course colors your view of society.

It also means that you’re taxed higher. While most people pay 31% in commune tax, the top earners pay an extra 25% adding to the resentment.

I think most people agree that the quality of health care is an issue, but pretty divided on how to go about things. About 50-50 split.

Fun fact, since the election in September the Riksdag still hasn’t been able to elect a prime minister due to being to divided on such issues. The only thing they do agree is to not to collaborate with SD, giving both sides roughly 40% support for their favorite candidate.

Wikipedia had a nice map of the situation. We hn 10%ers tend to live in the more densely populated blue areas, again giving a pretty distorted view of things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Swedish_general_electio...

"I think most people agree that the quality of health care is an issue..."

Really? I thought that good healthcare was one of the major positives of the high taxes paid in Sweden. That was alluded to in the article and I have seen positive comments in the past about it. I guess that is due to the 10%ers being the ones commenting(?). But then I don't understand how there is uneven distribution of quality healthcare.

Not uneven in that regard.

One of the issues being debated is the uneven quality between geographic regions. Not a new issue though, a more contemporary issue the lack of care givers and long waits that seems to be a problem in general.

If I were to guess a combination of the large age group just retiring and an attempt to allow more private health care options from a few years back started a vicious circle of relatively low wages and increasingly stressful working conditions driving competent people to seek out private employers instead.

Apparently it’s not uncommon for nurses to leave an employment, only to come back as contractors for the same job with twice the salary.

If that is the case I’m sure it’s mostly a temporary mess that needs to stabilize into some new configuration.

But the private options seems to be doing a good job, in general the people around me seems to be happy with their service at least. But to access those services you need the typical insurance through your employer, defeating the entire point of a public health care system to begin with.

So any resentment among the 10% probably stems from fear of not having a private option for things like cancer treatments if the current mess in the public system continues.

That said, the public system does an excellent job of all standard physical care I’ve needed so far. Have had some unlucky encounters with incompetent people, but can’t blame the system for that.

The psychiatric care looks like a complete failure though. If you have any anxiety or depression to deal with you’re on your own. The treatment plan is basically for a GP to administer prescription medicine and sick leave. If you do manage to be remitted to a specialist their main function is to evaluate to which degree you’re faking it. (In Sweden your either working or a lazy freeloader, “arbetslinjen” is very strong) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbetslinjen

No enough to vote for a drastic change of the welfare system in any election.

Probably around half.

The half who are working and paying the taxes, amirite?

The state-provided services are similar in Poland - most notably: free healthcare, free education up to university, state pension, disability insurance, some help in case the of financial hardship. Meanwhile, the total income tax burden is around 35% or 20% if you’re self-employed. There’s also plenty of other options, like the UK.

Can the downvoter explain his/her decision? What is wrong with my post?

"It's cool to pay taxes"

- Mona Sahlin, former leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

It is not cool to be at the mercy of the government and their ability to run the state. They already failed with housing and healthcare. While the healthcare is free and accessible it is slow, bureacratic and costs you more at the end of the day than you would be willing to pay with your own money.

And what is better? Healthcare costs a fortune as seen in the US and the system is failing, when you are a humanitarian and think equality to all humans is important.

Same with housing. Rich fools conquering large towns and driving everyone else out. Does that benefit society?

Of course when you support a system that everyone is his own best friend, you'll be happier when all the money you earn goes to you.

At the moment Swedes have less government that most other countries.

A better tagline than "strong and steady" at least

Sweden’s too egalitarian society with a lot of people not being economically active. You are subsidizing unwilling and lazy with insane taxes and you get nothing in return because of equality. You are probably well off compared to them but still cant afford an apartment.

This path of discussion is always fun to watch when it comes up.

Does it work better in America with the lazy people, are they working better just because they make less money? Most people in Sweden can actually live on one job even if it is as a cleaner.

The people that you call lazy is a very small percentage of the population. And just about all of them has some physical or psycical problem preventing them from getting a job. It is not a choice they have to either go work or starve. Noone chooses to starve just because it's fun. This mentality is very upsetting for us that has seen reality and does not live in a glass house.

Nordic countries are maybe the best place on earth if you’re not gifted in any way (academically, dexterity for manual labor etc.) and thus you work as a cleaner or other unskilled labor. For software engineers, on the other hand, there are better options.

Nonsense as Sweden has more per capita billionaires than US and more unicorn startups per capita than most US cities

Talk about arbitrary numbers you used.

These directly refute the claim that Sweden is only a good place for people who lack talent

Most billionaires inherit their wealth?

As for startups, it would be better to see the success ratio (how many people tried to create a startup vs how many succeed) and not just the number of survivors.

We are discussing the claim that talented people can’t succeed in Sweden. Yet, higher per capita number of unicorns in Sweden than in many other places, including US, shows that this claim is false

> We are discussing the claim that talented people can’t succeed in Sweden.

Who made this claim? Certainly not me. I claimed that, for an ordinary software engineer (i.e. not a startup founder), life will be better/easier in many other European countries.

> higher per capita number of unicorns in Sweden than in many other places, including US You can only come to that conclusion by diluting what a "unicorn" means.

Statistics about billionairies or unicorn startup owners are not related to the way a middle class workers (say, software engineers) live.

> Sweden’s too egalitarian society

Any examples of societies that are unequal[1] enough for you?

[1] Not sure about a proper antonym here.