Mark J. Perry is scandalized ("Yikes!") that "Tax Freedom Day" arrived in Sweden only on August 8 (link), making Sweden again one of the (but not "the") most highly taxed country in the Western world.
This is a fairly standard mantra among libertarian groupies. And I can't quarrel with the data. And I'm just as glad I'm not there. And I see no reason for a tax regime in the US that imposes such a burden.
But there's an embarrassing fact for tax critics to gag on: the Swedes don't seem to mind all that much. Nobody suggests that this burden is imposed on them by a foreign imperial power, or gaggle of gangster kleptocrats. Granted that the Social Democrats get about 30 percent less vote than they got 30 years ago, and the (former) right-wing party have taken up a lot of that slack--but the former right-wing party has renamed itself "the Moderate Party" and shows no disposition at all to dismantle the traditional Swedish welfare state--only to "reduction of the public-sector growth rate" (per Wiki) which is one of those political mantras you can't recite without a giggle.
I can think of two or three reasons why the Swedes might be disposed to hang on to their old ways. One is ethnic homogeneity. Granted that the population has changed over the generation, and granted the Sweden has a fair amount of racial tension and outright racial conflict--still it retains a sense of common identity that we've perhaps never enjoyed in the United States.
Another--perhaps a subset of the first--is that Sweden seems to have a long tradition of communal cooperation. Many have noted that the Scandinavians are about the only people have ever run a "socialist" government that anybody else would be willing to live under--think Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas. Going further back--I'm riffing now, but I think I'm onto something--I gather that the tradition of the Viking marauder* was in large measure a communal ethos: local folks built the boat, and manned it, and split up the swag.
And second (or third) Sweden's the kind of environment where a lot of the "taxation" can be thought of as a kind of group buying, where the government organizes the volume purchase of goods and services the taxpayers would buy anyway (think what happens in the US in tightly organized UMC suburbs). This perspective necesarily raises question about which services could be better privatized, and Sweden has a lot of that kind of discussion. But framed in this way, the issues become a lot less poisonous than they might in societies where "taxation" might be seen as wealth transfer --or worse, wealth transfer from locals to strangers.
====
*He's back!
1 comment:
I think you are right. There is a certain kind of rough equality to things in Sweden, an "ordning" if you will, where everyone is basically expected to do the same. The Nordic countries simply do not appear to have the same sort of fascination with accumulating wealth that we do. If you happen to be wealthy in Sweden, and there are many very wealthy Swedes, I expect most would expect you to not be too flashy about it and would find it proper that you share the wealth to some extent.
Also, in addition to homogenaity, I think the Swedes have a history of equality between the sexes, imperfect to be sure. But something I recall from an old book about vikings said that visitors to the north were surprised at how free the women were, to manage money and to marry - to name a few - and how proud they were of their arms - apparently they were shocked at seeing tall blonde women in sleeveless shirts.
You are also pretty right on about the recent shifts in demographics. I'd add one thing. A lot of Swedes don't consider recent arrivals to be "Swedish" - at least not in the cultural / ethnic sense. And there is a certain expectation that guest workers are just that - guests. Who will one day go home. You have to love the simple logic.
So it seems to me that if one of the root gripes about government taxation is that it is taking money from one group and giving it to another is sort of lost in Sweden. The money comes from and goes back to "us".
Post a Comment