How the Welfare State Corrupted Sweden by Per Bylund
Old people in Sweden say that to be Swedish means to supply for your own, to take care of your self, and never be a burden on anyone else’s shoulders. Independence and hard work was the common perception of a decent life, and the common perception of morality. That was less than one hundred years ago.
My late grandmother used to say something had gone wrong with the world. She was proud to never have asked for help, to have always been able to rely on herself and her husband. . . .
My grandmother, born in 1920, was of the last generation to have that special personal pride, of having a firm and deeply rooted morality, of being a sovereign in life no matter what – to be the sole master of one’s fate. The people of her generation experienced and endured one or two world wars (though Sweden never took part) and were raised by poor Swedish farmers and industrial workers. They witnessed and were the driving force behind the Swedish ‘wonder.’
They would gladly offer to help those in need even if they only had little, but were not likely to accept anyone’s help if offered. They felt pride in being competent to take care of themselves; they cherished independence of others, of never having to ask for help. They figured, if they couldn’t make it themselves, they had no right to ask for help.
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[Today] Swedes generally welcome proposals to hand over more power to politicians and they even tend to ask for higher taxes.
Decent morality is long gone. It was completely destroyed in little more than two generations – through public welfare benefits and the concept of welfare rights.
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[M]y parents’ generation went to public schools where they were taught mathematics and languages as well as the superiority of welfare and the morality of the state. They learned the workings of the machinery of the welfare state and gained a totally new (mis)conception of rights: all citizens enjoy a right – only through being citizens – to education, health care, unemployment, and social security.
Being an individual, they were taught, means having a right to support for your individual needs. Everybody has a right to all the resources necessary to pursue one’s own and society’s happiness, they were told. And everybody should enjoy the right to put their children in state daycare centers while working, making it possible for every family to earn two salaries (but not enough time to raise their children). The opportunities for “the good life,” at least financially, must have seemed enormous to the older generations.
This new morality permeated the populace and became the “natural” state of things, at least in their minds. This generation, born during the two or three decades following World War II, became considerably different from their parents’ generation morally and philosophically. They got used to the enormous post-war economic growth (thanks to Sweden never entering the war) and the ever-increasing welfare rights of the rapidly growing state.
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The voting masses, children of the welfare state dependent on its system of logic, supported the tax hikes, which quickly climbed to 50% and higher. And they demanded social benefits at taxpayers’ expense. . . .
Through the powerful labor unions, wage-earning Swedes were awarded raises every year regardless of real productivity, and in time annual raises of salaries became normality. People who didn’t get a raise started considering themselves “punished” by their evil employer, and there were increasing demands for legal help in the struggle against employers. One has a “right” to a better salary next year just as the current salary must be better than last year’s; so the thinking goes. . . .
The children of this generation, born in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s commonly had a “free” upbringing (based on the ideals of 1968), essentially meaning a childhood “free from rules” and “free of responsibility.” For this generation there is no causality whatsoever in social life; whatever you do is not your responsibility – even having children. These are the current younger adults in Swedish society.
I am myself part of this second generation of people raised with and by the welfare state. A significant difference between my generation and the preceding one is that most of us were not raised by our parents at all. We were raised by the authorities in state daycare centers from the time of infancy; then pushed on to public schools, public high schools, and public universities; and later to employment in the public sector and more education via the powerful labor unions and their educational associations. The state is ever-present and is to many the only means of survival – and its welfare benefits the only possible way to gain independence. . . .
On May 14, the national trade workers’ union demanded the state “redistribute” jobs through offering people in their 60s state pensions if they step down and their employers employ young, unemployed people in their stead. In the labor union’s calculations, such a stunt would “create” 55,000 jobs.
What this shows is that the only perceivable way of finding jobs for the young seems to be to “relieve” older people of theirs; job positions are scarce and unemployment is increasing even as demand for goods and services is going up – thanks to heavy state regulation in the marketplace. The welfare state creates problems and conflicts on many levels, forcing people to compete for shares of continuously decreasing wealth. . . .
My mother, a middle school teacher, has had to face her pupils’ parents demanding she do “something” about their stressful family situation. They demand “society” take responsibility for their children’s upbringing since they have already spent “too many years” caring for them. (“Caring” usually means dropping them off at the public daycare center at 7 am and picking them up again at 6 pm.)
They loudly stress their “right” to be relieved from this burden. . . .
What we are now seeing in Sweden is the perfectly logical consequence of the welfare state: when handing out benefits and thereby taking away the individual’s responsibility for his or her own life, a new kind of individual is created – the immature, irresponsible, and dependent. In effect, what the welfare state has created is a population of psychological and moral children – just as parents who never let their children face problems, take responsibility, and come up with solutions themselves, make their offspring needy, spoiled, and utterly demanding. (Read more from mises.org)