Hacker News Reader

Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

It can easily bite back. You rely heavily on the state, you bet your welfare on a hope that in 40 years time, there will still be enough cash flowing through the system to support you. Could work, but Sweden is not Norway with its sovereign fund.

Also, world is not binary as you describe it (high taxes&free education vs low taxes&costly education), there are tons of places which don't don't go mental on taxes like Sweden does, and still provide top notch free education.

Great for Sweden, would not be my top choice of residence and raising kids but its a good place nevertheless.

View on HN

It’s funny that this meme of “Sweden has the worlds highest taxes” is prevailing when they in fact barely make the top 10 anymore.

I see what you mean but there isn’t really much choice under a high tax system. My payroll taxes means someone saves for me. If they screw it up I have some backup in private savings, but I don’t have any opportunity of not paying payroll taxes taking home a higher net. In the end I have to hope, but not assume, that the state manages my pension savings at least as well as I would personally. Making a high income and hoping to work to 70, it shouldn’t be a big issue to live after that anyway. The situation is worse for those that struggle to make it to even 65 without wearing out, and can’t put away a lot until then either (that is, blue collar)

>you bet your welfare on a hope that in 40 years time, there will still be enough cash flowing through the system to support you.

Yeah. Finland has a system similar to Sweden in many ways, in general it has worked great. Though during last decade or so without much economic growth and upside down demographic pyramid, some young people who follow the news have started to look at it with some suspicion. Current pension payments from our salary goes to current pensioners, but our retirement age is moving up and estimated future pension payments going down. Then in last year or two the birthrate dropped dramatically, and I updated from "concerned" to "heavily worried".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com