“Sweden’s Quiet Revolution” de Duncan Currie (National Review Online)
During the first half of the 20th century, Sweden benefited enormously from its non-participation in the two world wars, which devastated Europe’s major industrial powers. Blessed with abundant natural resources, it was a staunch defender of property rights and a robust advocate of free trade. Cultural homogeneity, a strong legal framework, and a lack of corruption promoted famously high levels of trust and social cohesion. Sweden had a welfare state, but it also had an open, free-market economy. “As late as 1950,” Norberg observed, “the total tax burden was no more than 21 percent of GDP, lower than in the United States and Western Europe.”
In other words, Sweden became a fantastically rich country before it started greatly boosting taxes, spending, and regulation during the 1970s. Cleveland Fed economist Emre Ergungor has noted that “the marginal income tax rate on full-time workers earning the average hourly wage increased from 35 percent in the second half of the 1960s to 65 percent in 1976.” Soaring taxes funded a dramatic expansion of government: The public sector accounted for 20 percent of total Swedish employment in 1965 and 38 percent in 1985. Continuar a ler