Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
To be honest, I'm surprised to hear such distaste for your government, as I've been under the impression for years that Sweden has topped the charts in studies for quality of life, healthcare, equality, environmentalism, so on and so forth.
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I've seen a lot of charts depicting all these factors and more, and yes indeed, Sweden has been lurking around the top on most of them (although WHO ranked Sweden no. 23 on the general healthcare list around 2000) but that's not really implying anything at all. First one has to look at every specific definition of all these factors; what constitutes good healthcare and how do we measure it, for instance. Secondly, we have to look at the reasons why Sweden has been pushed up to the top on such charts, and more importantly, wether or not it could have been pushed up even more if we had had a different approach to all these issues (and if the analysts had taken all relevant factors into consideration).
Regarding the healthcare for instance, it is well-known that the public sector in general, and the healthcare in particular (to which over 80 % of the swedish healthcare spendings are allocated), is ineffective. The employees therein have relatively low salaries which indicates a likewise relatively low governmental spending. In addition, a considerable amount of the spending is on pure administration. Did you know you actually have to make an appointment even to
get on the phone with your local doctor if you have a non-urgent issue, and even that during a narrow timespan of the day? Meanwhile it's fairly hard to establish private alternatives, not least due to the general disdain (which is typically formulated in such notions as "
One mustn't earn money on people's healthcare issues" which is akin to say that the doctors should treat people for free, motivated only by their goodwill).
I just caught myself digging into a specific topic, and started trekking the web for examples, but I figured it wouldn't add much to the discussion, not least since a lot of them are in swedish so they wouldn't make sense here. But I will adress one general issue: All those factors are derived from one thing - wealth accumulation, something that occurs not in the public sector but in the civil society. If Sweden is ranked high on such charts as mentioned, it is not
because of the big public sector and the vast governmental control, it's
despite all that.