The sheer arrogance of Swedes dissing US is also annoying. Go to our new ghettos and inspect the great equity the progressives have established lately.
Source: Heritage foundation's economic freedom index (Sweden does very well: http://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden)
Waste is treated like an benign abstraction here: an assumed given of "bureaucratic overhead" that nothing can be done about except occasionally talk and handwave over.
I'd guess you'd need to have a culture that encourages whistleblowing, snitches, and oversight to make fiscally conservative socialism work. Such a culture doesn't exist here in the US.
There is a huge difference in how you would read that. The interpretation that you should go for is "The socialist being less socialist for the time being". In other words, they toned it down briefly. They're certainly at it again now.
That said, there is plenty of waste and bureaucratic excess/largess in Sweden - and it's very hand-wavy and nothing can apparently be done to reduce it when you start talking about it.
The last part of your comment I did not quite understand. What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
If that is what you mean, we have some of that (whistle blowers) - but we also have way more waste than what covers whatever gets surfaced. They're also few and far between..
> What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
Yes, precisely. The culture of the US still favors lawlessness, and I don't mean that negatively. Unfortunately, for us all to get along in such an unregulated environment, we have to be civil with one another, be fair dealing, and be intolerant of corruption.
But the US system has grown too fat, and too many selfish and corrupt people are taking advantage of the good graces of the rest of the populace. And the corruption is allowed to run unchecked.
Also, the regulations and bureaucracies and debt and corporations have all crept up on us. So the system is no longer operating to spec, and no major redesigns are planned. I just don't see where we go from here. The presidential candidates we've selected are indicative of system failure.