If there is a nation to which supporters of lavish welfare programs point as a “success story,” it would have to be Sweden. They mention Sweden’s relatively high standard of living and its generous provision of a range of welfare benefits to its citizens.
So it may come as a shock to some to learn that quite a few Swedes these days wish their country’s “gravy train” would “leave the station.”
Here is the problem, according to a recent article in The New York Times: “Sweden’s liberal policies have become costly. In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Sweden, which had more manufacturing jobs than citizens to fill them, invited immigrants in. They worked and paid taxes. When those jobs disappeared, Sweden stopped the flow of immigrant labor, but not the flow of refugees.”
Now, in some areas of the country, unemployment among immigrants is roughly 80 percent. That is particularly alarming when you consider that almost one-fourth of the population of Sweden is made up of people who were born in other countries or who have at least one foreign-born parent.
Immigrants’ “children need schooling, and they have elderly parents who need health care,” the newspaper reported.
But even wealthy Sweden is discovering that it cannot afford all the spending to which it has become accustomed. So its citizens are dealing with that painful reality by scrambling to elect at least a few politicians who oppose the country’s acceptance of high numbers of immigrants and its unsustainable welfare policies.
A nation can, for a time, provide extensive benefits to high percentages of its citizens. But there is just no getting around the fact that somebody has to pay the bills, sooner or later.