While the United States is edging into deep left field with government takeovers in the auto and banking industries, and plans for a national health care plan, another nation that's been there is leaning more toward encouraging more individualism via tax cuts.
OK. Hate to say it. Sweden was seriously messed up for years, and a couple of decades ago started looking towar the American model. But now, that American model is not here, but ... in Sweden.
According to the Breibart web site:
... 99 percent of full-time employees will have had their taxes reduced by a total of 1,000 kronor per month, while 75 percent will have had reductions of 1,500 kronor, the government said ... "The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees" ...
And according to the Power Line blog:
... it's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything ...
Some time ago I read Ira Magaziner's The Silent War, which is kind of dated (written in 1989), but gave a look at where Sweden was and where it was going at the time:
"Workers who don't work enough, cradle-to-grave welfare, high taxes, high wages and benefits, strong unions, big government debt -- it was a recipe, the business press, for economic failure," Magaziner wrote.
That was before Sweden began putting more emphasis on training, research and development, and developing a policy where dying industries were no longer propped up by government dollars.
I got this from the WizBang blog, and the article does stick a mirror in front of at least two countries.
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