[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

As usual you confuse power with leadership.
Just like the weak leader who had to gas people to go make a political statement and demonstrate his power.

I have no idea of what you're talking about. I wasn't referring to either power or leadership.

All is not perfect in Sweden, though I’m surprised that your example of good behavior is a country with national healthcare, a generous safety net to support those who fell ill and guaranteed income. Perhaps that influenced their people to do the voluntary isolation.

Who said it was perfect? Is perfection your measure of success? I don't know what influenced the people. I just posted an article that showed an example of a country handling the virus without a lockdown.

Since you want to slip in other issues than I presented with the article . . . as well as national health care and generous safety net, Sweden is a thriving capitalist country very friendly to business with a corporate tax rate of just over 21% and scheduled to decrease one percent next year.

And its income tax rate is flatter than ours. "Sweden has a large, broad, and flat tax base . . . Sweden takes a bigger slug out of your income and imposes top tax rates at a much lower income than the United States does, and imposes a high value added tax on consumption."

As the Tax Foundation says:

"Scandinavian countries provide a broader scope of public services—such as universal healthcare and higher education—than the United States. However, such programs necessitate higher levels of taxation, which is reflected in Scandinavia’s relatively high tax-to-GDP ratios. Adopting such public services in the United States would naturally require higher levels of taxation. If the U.S. were to raise taxes in a way that mirrors Scandinavian countries, taxes—especially on the middle class—would increase through a new VAT and higher social security contributions and personal income taxes. Business and capital taxes would not necessarily need to be increased if policymakers were following the Scandinavian model. In fact, the corporate income tax rate would decline."

"It is important to note that the Swedish tax system is much more regressive than America’s. To impose policies that “closely resemble” those of Sweden, [we] would have to significantly increase taxes on the middle class, not by purely on raising taxes on the very rich. In essence, under the Swedish system, citizens prepay for health and social services. This is very different from the “free” model of health and social services that AOC and her colleagues’ rhetoric implies."

Swedish’s top epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said in an interview with Swedish Radio that the country made some mistakes. “If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” he said.

Somewhere in the middle would be far less draconian that the lockdowns most countries have imposed.

In any case, the most instructive phase of Sweden’s approach may lie ahead: “It will be interesting to find out whether they can respond now, or whether they’re going to keep going with a strategy that seems like it’s not working,” says Schneider.

I don't know who Schneider is, but the author of the article I posted believes the Swedish strategy is working very well.