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  1. #1
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    Default Adios Sweden

    Goodbye Sweden

    June 2, 2015June 2, 2015 The Sweden Report

    The Socialist Victory In Sweden

    This is the last post on this blog. I am leaving Sweden for good shortly, and will no longer be following its descent from what was once the third most prosperous country in the world. Frankly, it’s just too damn depressing.
    I was born and raised in Sweden, which leaves a cultural mark even though I moved to USA in the 1990s and have spent the better part of my adult life as an American. Coming back for a few years has been a shocking experience.
    When I was a child, Sweden was a dull yet very safe place to live. Yes, there was a heavy blanket of socialism and collectivist values covering everything, but there was a core of pragmatism beneath the redness. The intention and goal was always to benefit the citizens, even though they went about things in a backwards manner.

    Prime minister Löfven
    Today, it’s as if the inmates are running the asylum. The politicians are participating in a chicken race of “goodness” where everybody tries to one-up each other in caring for the citizens of OTHER countries while Swedish retirees, school children, handicapped and other vulnerable categories of people are thorougly ignored. Violence is exploding. Jihadist Trojan horses are flowing through the porous border along with the tens of thousands ID-less refugees.
    But what makes me the most pessimistic about Sweden’s future is how the social fabric itself has been undermined.
    Now, to be clear, it is my opinion that modest immigration is healthy for society and beneficial for trade, cultural development and so forth. Protectionism as a concept is counter-productive, while free trade and the ability for skilled labor to go where they’re in demand is beneficial for everyone.
    Having said that, what Sweden is doing is something completely different. The once homogenous population has been forever altered by a rapid and massive addition of people from vastly different cultures and value-systems. 26,8% of the population is now foreign-born or with at least one foreign-born parent, and the national census bureau estimates that some 150 000 per year will arrive to the country of just 9,8 million residents.
    There simply is no possible way to absorb and assimilate such volumes of people, period. Then you are merely creating ethnic enclaves, which due to incompatible language, culture and job skills become ghettos, which in turns brews crime, misery and extremism. Once the inflow has exceeded the capacity for absorbtion, further immigration only makes the problem worse.
    It’s like someone having read that a cup of green tea per day is healthy, so they make it a policy to chug four gallons per day, every day. It’s a good thing overdone to the extreme until it becomes toxic.
    Then you have the Swedish school system. There really is no nice way to put it; it’s a complete disaster. The minister of education is a man-boy who spends his time making Youtube-videos showing heart-signs with his hands to boost school results, while university-level students can’t read and comprehend the course literature.

    Education minister Gustav Fridolin
    Since there is a delay in the changes in the school system, it is only in recent years the full impact of the knowledge-averse “progressive” school system is starting to be felt. Hard facts are largely irrelevant; the important thing is to sit in a group and discuss things until a consensus is reached. But with no hard facts to base the conclusions on, it becomes an exercise in futility because it’s all random assumptions and opinions. As a university-level history student (!) was quoted as saying in newspaper Svenska Dagbladet the other day: “Why would all these dates matter? Who cares in what order things happened?”
    That’s not exactly fertile soil for creating the researchers and engineers of the future.
    Financially, Sweden is an oddity in that it never had its real estate correction when Lehman Bros went belly-up and the housing market everywhere in the West crashed. Sweden just kept steaming ahead, which means housing is ridiculously overinflated. In Stockholm, the real estate prices increased 19% and in Gothenburg 24% in the last 12 months alone — from an already sky-high level.

    Tear-down abandoned house from 1932 with small, unremarkable lot in the outskirts of Stockholm. Current bid: 7,5 million SEK, or close to $900,000.
    As a result, personal debt of the Swedish population is at an all-time high. To keep all this afloat the normal mortgage interest rates are at 2% with central bank Riksbanken at -0,25%, and yet a significant portion of the borrowers are hanging by a thread. If and when foreign banks and investors decide it’s time to turn their backs on Sweden (as happened in the early 1990s) there’s going to be a lot of pain.
    Then you have the financial obligations going forward. Like much of the western world, there is a demographic change where fewer tax-paying adults are to support a glut of retirees. What makes it especially dire for Sweden is that in addition to the old Swedes, there’s also a ton of elderly immigrants that are granted “family visas” based on younger relatives having been granted asylum. They’ve never paid a dime in taxes, yet enter the system with full benefits from day one. In theory, this would be made up for by the younger relatives working and paying taxes. Sadly, this is not the case; while ethnical Swedes have a 82% employment rate, immigrants only have 57% with non-Europeans coming in at just 51%.
    If Sweden was a person, it’d be like the guy with three mortgages, seven maxed-out credit cards and four collection agencies chasing him that just signed a lease for a brand new BMW X6. Simply put, there’s a lot of red ink in the future; it just hasn’t been fully realized yet.
    Finally, there’s the sorry state of the Swedish defense. After decades of constant slashing of the defense budget, the extent of Swedish ambition is to stall an invader for a week in a limited area. This with war raging in Europe, Russian missiles pointed at Sweden in Kaliningrad, and Russian submarines and bomber jets openly thumbing their nose at Sweden as they intrude on Swedish territory on a regular basis. The power vacuum in Scandinavia is so tangible you can almost hear a sucking sound as you fly over it. This, too, will require massive investments when the penny finally drops amongst Swedish politicians.
    So while I can’t claim to be any kind of authority on macroeconomics or social predictive models, I see red lights across the board.
    In some ways, I’d compare the country to a farm. Previously, Sweden acted like a sensible farmer and planted wheat here, carrots there, potatoes over there et cetera, by implementing free schooling, sound infrastructure investments, state-financed research and so forth. A few decades later, they reaped the rewards and climbed the prosperity ladder.
    In the late 1960s, this pragmatic line was abandoned as leftist idealist Olof Palme took over. But there was plenty to harvest from previous years, so Sweden continued to be the land of milk and honey for a good long while. Then things started drying up, and the process has been one of gradual erosion and decline since the 1990s.
    The famous Swedish health care system is a good example. 120 000 hospital beds in the late 1960s became 20 000 today. Cancer patients are put on waiting lists for months. Entire emergency wards shut down for summer. The crumbling Swedish railroad system is another symptom I examined in-depth last year. The aforementioned defense that now consist of about three fat generals and a rusty rifle (bullets withheld for budgetary reasons).
    A sensible farmer would see the problems for what they are and hurry to plant new seeds, so as to return to bountiful harvests of wheat, carrots, potatoes etc. Instead, the Swedish politicians goes by dogma and plants what they think SHOULD grow. So they plant M & Ms, hot dogs and pretzels. The results won’t be fully evident for a few years yet, but as the last reserves of the old harvests are depleted, things will get… Interesting.
    From what I can see, there simply is no plausible scenario where these social tensions and future financial committments will not lead to a downward spiral of hardship and strife. I hope I’m wrong. I really do, because I have friends and family I care about that will remain here to see it all play out.
    But I won’t. I’ll be back in the US being mad at Obama for being a lying *******. Every country has its problems. USA has its corrupt yokel in office, just as Sweden has Stefan Löfven.
    I’d like to thank you for having followed this blog and your many insightful comments. It’s been a wild ride at times with heated debates, but it’s been fun — even when I got hatemail from both left-wingers and right-wingers over the same article. :)
    So thank you, and good luck whereever you are.
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



  2. #2
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    Interesting article.

    Thanks for posting.
    "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. ...those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
    C.S. Lewis



  3. #3
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    To think that this is the seed of the Vkings
    Plato once said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools, because they have to say something.”

    "Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." "Men willingly believe what they wish to believe."
    Julius Caesar

    There's no natural calamity that government can't make worse.
    Bill Bonner

  4. #4
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    This from the country that gave us the term, "Military Science," Gustavus Adolphus," and at least half the Vikings who toured Europe and Eurasia with their heavy metal shows.
    What a shame. Must be that all the good folks (like my grandfather and grandmother) left.
    ---------------------------------------------------
    And, it's gone!

  5. #5
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    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



  6. #6
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    Sweden is low hanging fruit and the bear is on the prowl.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Davy Crockett View Post
    To think that this is the seed of the Vkings
    Swedes are neither Norse, nor Danes.

    Those were the Vikings.

  8. #8
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    Sweden: so much for socialism as capitalists use the system in refugee crisis to rake in the bucks

    Posted by Ann Corcoran on October 19, 2015
    Invasion of Europe news…..

    I love this stuff, do-gooder socialists foiled by what?—a desire by some to make money! Making money off of the refugee flow is nothing new—just ask the US refugee resettlement contractors!
    Prime Minister Stefan Löfven: Hey, we are welcoming tens of thousands of Syrians and other Middle Easterners here. How dare you make gobs of money from the crisis?

    From The Guardian (hat tip: Jon):
    Sweden is in the grip of a row over housing for refugees, with private accommodation providers accused of making fat profits while the country struggles to find beds for tens of thousands of asylum seekers before winter.
    Housing is so limited for record numbers of arrivals – 9,000 are arriving in Sweden every week – that the authorities are using heated tents to put people up.
    But at the same time, private companies have been accused of charging exorbitant amounts to help the government find accommodation for more than 80,000 people who have made it to Sweden this year.
    “We are living hand to mouth,” said Tolle Furegård, head of refugee accommodation at Sweden’s migration board, who said the service relies a heavily on the private sector in this situation. “They are not doing this to be nice to us… It is a big sector, a chance to earn lot of money quickly, and it’s safe, because the government pays its bills.”
    The board had lowered its standards to attract more offers of accommodation, and is seeking 30,000 more beds by the end of the year – “a huge number”, Furegård said.
    The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has asked company bosses whether it “feels good when you look in the mirror” to be making big profits at a time when the country is pulling together over the refugee crisis.
    More here of the classic supply and demand story. Sweden is learning the hard way, just hope it isn’t too late for them.
    And, click here for our entire ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive. We have been following Sweden’s death spiral for years, go here for more.
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



  9. #9
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    Gatestone: Sweden close to collapse

    Posted by Ann Corcoran on October 20, 2015
    More on the Invasion of Europe today….
    The colonizers. Coming to a town near you? Photo at Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/sw...ke-this-before

    We mentioned Sweden yesterday, and Germany today. Here is more news on the Islamic colonization of Europe.
    From Ingrid Carlqvist at Gatestone (hat tip: Dick):
    Sweden is fast approaching a complete collapse. More and more municipalities are raising the alarm that if the migrants keep coming at this pace, the government can no longer guarantee normal service to its citizens. In addition, ominous statements from government officials have left Swedes in fear of what tomorrow may bring. If the migrant wave keeps coming, in 10-15 years, Swedes will be a minority in their own country.
    At a press conference October 9, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said that Sweden is in a state of crisis. However, when asked to clarify what he meant by this, Löfven was unable to produce a single coherent sentence.
    Three ministers appeared by the Prime Minister’s side at the hastily summoned press conference, which came on the heels of an extraordinary government meeting. The purpose of the press conference seems to have been to convey two messages:
    To explain to the world and the Swedish people that Sweden is facing “one of the largest humanitarian efforts in Swedish history.”
    That there is no more housing available, and migrants should be prepared to live in tents.
    During the question period after the ministers’ speeches, journalist Tomas Ramberg of Ekot Public Radio asked: “You say that Sweden is preparing for a crisis situation, what do you mean by those dramatic words?”
    Continue reading here!
    We have followed the foolish Swedish government for years and have predicted that Sweden would fall first to the colonizers demanding social services from the ‘welcoming’ socialist government. Come on Swedish people, please fight for your country and your culture!
    See all of our previous posts on Sweden by clicking here
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



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