A Swede's Look At Obama: Special Guest Post

Today, I received an open letter from a dear family friend regarding Obama and his Swedish model of government. He has so graciously allowed me to publish it here on Neocon Blonde.

A Swede’s Look At Obama


Sweden is by many looked upon as a model for other countries to follow. There are certainly many things that other countries, including USA, could learn from Sweden. Health care is however not one of them.

I am a Swede, who moved to this country in 1978, and it is now interesting for me to see how the present administration is using the same pattern as the Swedish socialists used for 50 years to drive the tax burden for the average Swede to over 70%.

My grandfather had started a small company in Sweden around 1920. I had been running that company for 20 years and owned 56% of the shares, when my father died. We had about 1000 employees in four different factories in Sweden, one factory and were exporting our products all over the world.

My income tax was 85 % on an income of less than $150.000! The death tax and gift tax were both 50 %. That tax structure meant that for every 1.5 million that had to be paid in death tax when my father died, 10 million would be have to be taken out of the company, as that was my only source of income. Even if the Swedish government gave me an offer to borrow funds to pay the tax, such a burden on the company would have stymied our growth for years. To save the company’s future, it was sold to a conglomerate and has since then been sold a number of times. It is now owned by an American company and the number of employees is now about one hundred.

That is only my story. The same happened to most family companies in Sweden.
Finally the socialist government realized that it had to save the companies that were creating 90 % of all new jobs and not drive them and their creative owners out of Sweden. The socialist government decided to eliminate both the death tax and the gift tax! Since then a lot of Swedish capital, which was moved out of Sweden for tax reasons, has now returned and is available for Swedish investors. With the present centrist government, the Swedish economy is one of the strongest in Europe in spite of the recession. Maybe this is something for Obama to think about...

Sweden began its move in socialistic direction right after the war. As Sweden had managed to stay out of the war, our production facilities were intact. We could sell everything we could produce! Business and the economy were booming. As the labor unions got stronger (and forced upon all companies by law), they put more and more pressure on the government for all kinds of favors. It culminated in a law that forced all companies to have a profit sharing plan, where the unions were the beneficiaries. Not the local union in which the people working for you were organized – no the profit sharing went to the central union - like AFL-CIO here. This was done so that all the people working for the government (about 50% of the economy) would also get their share of the private companies “unreasonable” profits. Doing away with the secret voting on unionization (card check) looks like a first step in that direction.

Of course the result of all this was that most successful companies moved their headquarters out of Sweden, Therefore that law was eventually eliminated.

Radio and TV was state owned and controlled. A lady thought that she had found a loop-hole in the law and started a radio station on a ship from international waters between Denmark and Sweden. The station only transmitted popular music. She ended up in jail!!!
The Fairness Doctrine?!!

The government started their own bank and there were serious ambitions by the socialists to nationalize all banks. However, common sense stopped this idea. Imagine just having ONE bank with no competition.

Of course the health care was nationalized. If anybody thinks that the cost of healthcare gets lower when it is government run – stop dreaming! They claim that you can keep whatever insurance you have, but private insurance companies can not compete with a government run tax subsidized (non-profit!) insurance company. Politicians say that you will be allowed to keep your present insurance. That is true, but the insurance companies will drop out of the health insurance business and we will all be stuck with be a government run health insurance monopoly! No choice!

What about the service? Just one example! Our daughter who lives in Sweden found a lump in her breast. Her grandmother and great grandmother both had breast cancer. The hospital told her in May that she could come back in October for a biopsy. When she told the physician that she then would go to her parents in USA to have it done there next week, she finally got a time for the biopsy in July!! She still had to go from May to July, not knowing.

When the cost of health care exploded, the socialists targeted the drug companies (and their unreasonable profits), so the government got into the drug business to create “fair competition”. The result was that the major drug companies were sold and the headquarters moved out of Sweden.

As mentioned above, the tax for the average Swede today is about 70 % including the 25%.Value Added Tax. The average tax for Americans is less than 25%. That means that the Swede has to work half a year more for the government than the average American. In other words, if everyone in the US took half his or her salary and put it into a private health and retirement insurance; they could afford true luxury health care and retire at 60!! Do we know of anything the government runs well and at lower cost?

With unemployment in most European countries well over 10% for years, the Swedes and most European countries are now turning to the right and away from those very expensive and inefficient socialist ideas. One could hope that we can change course here too, before it is too late.

One final point! As an immigrant from Europe myself, I know why people stand in line to come to this country. It is the country of freedom and opportunity for everyone who really wants to.


Len Borgstrom

For those fishing enthusiasts, ABU [later ABU Garcia] reels is the small family owned business to which Lennart refers in his letter. I think his perspective demonstrates the importance of taking a realistic look at the dying European socialist models that are being pushed by our current administration.

Even my 22 year old German former nanny bemoaned the lack of freedom of opportunity in her homeland and said unequivocally that she would never return home because all doors here are open for those willing to work for it.