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https://theconversation.com/we-got-lazy-and-complacent-swedish-pensioners-explain-how-abolishing-the-wealth-tax-changed-their-country-272041>
"For much of the 20th century, Sweden enjoyed a justifiable reputation as one
of Europe’s most egalitarian countries. Yet over the past two decades, it has
transformed into what journalist and author Andreas Cervenka calls a “paradise
for the super-rich”.
Today, Sweden has one of the world’s highest ratios of dollar billionaires, and
is home to numerous “unicorn” startup companies worth at least US$1 billion
(£742 million), including the payment platform Klarna and audio streaming
service Spotify.
The abolition of the wealth tax (
förmögenhetsskatten) 20 years ago is part of
this story – along with, in the same year, the introduction of generous tax
deductions for housework and home improvement projects. Two decades on, the
number of Swedish homes that employ cleaners is one marker of it being an
increasingly two-tier country.
As part of my anthropological research into the social relationships that
different tax systems produce, I have been working with pensioners in the
southern suburbs of Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, to learn how they feel about
the decreasing levels of taxation in their later lives.
This trend has been coupled with a gradual shrinking of the welfare state. Many
of my interviewees regret that Sweden no longer has a collective project to
build a more cohesive society.
“Us pensioners can see the destruction of what we built, what was started when
we were small children,” Kjerstin, 74, explained. “I was born after the end of
the war and built this society through my life, together with my fellow
citizens. [But] with taxes being lowered and the taking away of our social
security … we’re not building anything together now.”
Sweden’s gini coefficient, the most common way to measure inequality, has
reached 0.3 in recent years (with 0 reflecting total equality and 1 total
inequality), up from around 0.2 in the 1980s. The EU as a whole is at 0.29.
“There are now 42 billionaires in Sweden – it’s gone up a lot,” Bengt, 70, told
me. “Where did they come from? This didn’t used to be a country where people
could easily become this rich.”
But like other pensioners I met, Bengt acknowledged his peer group’s role in
this shift. “I belong to a generation that remembers how we built Sweden to
become a welfare state, but so much has changed. The thing is, we didn’t
protest this. We didn’t realise we were becoming this country of rich people.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
