> one of the rigged votes that socialists are so famous for
What socialists are famous for rigged votes? The Soviet Union was famous, but they weren't socialist. Is Sweden famous for rigged votes?
The Soviet union was quasi-socialist. It had elements of social ownership of means of production, but wasn't democratic, so means of production weren't actually in the hands of workers.
Sweden was social democratic. This is not socialism, although it's sort of supposed to be: However, Sweden's social democracy failed to achieve any kind of true worker influence, in fact, it created the illusion of social equality when in fact Sweden has extreme capital concentration (Sweden is one among four countries with wealth GINI above 85-- the club is Russia, the US, Sweden and the Netherlands). Essentially the Swedish economy is controlled by a very small number of multi-billionaires.
What you see in Sweden is instead redistribution from ordinary workers to slightly poorer ordinary workers and to the unemployed, so the high taxes are not actually a progressive or pro-worker policy, but a regressive policy where resources taken from successful workers are used to reduce the dissatisfaction of the poorest with the economic system.
This could perhaps be acceptable if it led to high wages but this has not been the result-- with economic power comes political power, and in my assessment the the desire by the capital-owning class to keep Swedish exports competitive have led to use of low central bank interests rates, intended to reduce the value of wages, as well as a surprising political support for immigration which has existed in the political parties which has no mirror in the views of ordinary people. It has been so successful that it's not unusual to see programmers working on quite hard stuff get paid 45 000-50 000 USD per annum before taxes. At present the wage share of GDP in Sweden extraordinary low, 55%, to be compared to 59% in the US-- so Swedish workers are actually more exploited than US workers.
And it leads to a more classist society with even higher wealth concentration, and real struggles with motivating people to actually perform, because of the lack of opportunity and glass ceiling.
Sweden probably has the poorest middle class of all of the western nations, and way poorer even than many asian and south american countries.
I really can't see how sweden could stay competitive, I think there will be some significant brain drain with the younger generations that can speak fluent english.
I recall chatting with some highly-placed dude in Deutsche Post a few years back. He had come in from the tech industry to unfuck their... well, tech, and was amazed at the level of opulence available to him as a highly-placed public servant.
A full-spec Mercedes S-class limousine with a chauffeur for his exclusive use was just the start. It was nuts.
The marketing is fantastic. Let's all chip in to help each other out, take care of the poor, all that jazz. But sweet baby Jesus doesn't that machine just grease the hell out of its own wheels.
What they were saying is that the Swedish system is very friendly to wealthy individuals operating in the private sector, while letting the middle class bear the brunt of subsidizing costs for those with lower income, which is true.
Sweden achieves great outcomes for its population, and the people there seem happy with it. They are all deceived and you know their business better than they do?
The wealth GINI data can be found here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...). What the page is based on is an excellent analysis by Credit Suisse which takes care to estimate also the largest fortunes, which in these countries are of course particularly important. As you see the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and the US are on top.
With regard to what I've said about wages, there's a Swedish labour union (in Sweden basically who doesn't run their own company is part of a union, even managers), Unionen, which has made a list of typical wage intervals for the wages of 'systemutvecklare', a term that essentially refers to programmers. It can be found here (https://www.unionen.se/rad-och-stod/om-lon/marknadsloner/sys...).
They divide programmers into three difficulty levels, the lowest for which they suggest the wage interval 41231-54190 USD, the middle 47122-61204 USD and the highest 55319-72974 USD. This doesn't count a payroll tax called arbetsgivaravgift, which is 31.42%, so we have to multiply all these numbers by 1.3142 to get the actual pre-tax compensation:
Thus we obtain 54185-71216 USD for the lowest level, 61927-80434 USD for the middle level and 72700-95902 USD for the highest level.
They characterize levels as follows: for level 1 they write 'Analyserar och bedömer programförutsättningar, specificerar program samt programmerar. Testar och dokumenterar program' 'analyses and judges what is required for a program, specifies programs and programs. Tests and documents programs', level 2 'Medverkar i utveckling av IT-projekt eller förvaltar existerande IT-system och svarar för utveckling och förvaltning av delsystem. Leder delprojekt eller mindre projekt. 'participates in development of IT projects or maintenance of IT systems, being responsible for development and maintenance of subsystems. Leads subprojects or smaller projects' with level being ' Leder utveckling av nya eller förvaltning av existerande system ifråga om omfattande och komplicerade system, från framtagning av förstudie och kravspecifikation till att systemets tagits i drift hos användare.' 'Leads development of new or the maintainance of existing systems involving large and complex systems, from pre-studies and requirements specifications to when the system is made available to the user', so level 2 and 3 are for engineering managers, and even the top level has its top below 100 000 USD p.a.
With regard to outcomes, in my assessment we have very severe problems of several kinds, and simultaneously; and I find the view that we have great outcomes as quite strange, although some severe outcomes for individuals are avoided. A critical aspect of our current state of society is that schools are very ill-functioning. That alone is cause for great fear.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wasn't socialist? Just famous? What?
A Socialist society is one in which True Equity has been achieved. The State sort of just fades out of existence, as it is no longer needed to ensure cooperation.
This has never happened, because it will never happen, ergo cue the cries of "True Communism has never been tried!"
The fact that every attempt has made the Nazis look like a troop of Jainist Girl Scouts is immaterial. Slaughtering a hundred million people while redefining the depths of human misery is fine and dandy, as long the goals are noble. Can't make that omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Authoritarians — regardless of their purported economic philosophy — always leave the streets red.
This is just Nazi revisionism. The Soviets were horrible, so were the Nazis.
> Slaughtering a hundred million people while redefining the depths of human misery is fine and dandy, as long the goals are noble. Can't make that omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Same goes for the fascists, all over the world. The problem is extremists (and their great empowerers, Western apologists).