Sweden has some of the world's highest taxes, so why is the taxman so popular with the Swedes?

Sweden is infamous for having some of the highest taxes in the world, and yet the country’s tax agency is still one of Sweden’s most trusted institutions.

The Swedish attitude towards tax contrasts sharply with many countries where taxes can be a deeply divisive issue. We investigate what this says about Swedish society and how the popularity of the welfare state might survive growing challenges in the future.

  • @[email protected]English
    55•7 months ago

    It’s because we get so little for those taxes. If we actually had functional services, I would feel like it’s worth it.

    • Flying SquidMEnglish
      32•7 months ago

      It still wouldn’t for the vast number of brainwashed people who don’t think beyond “the government is taking some of my paycheck!”

      Because a lot of those people are the same people who say things like, “why should I have to pay for universal health care when I’m healthy?”

    • magic_lobster_party
      16•7 months ago

      We’re losing that in Sweden though. Public healthcare is becoming more and more under funded. Doctors barely have time to treat patients, so they’re often sending patients home with prescribed paracetamol.

      The only way to get proper healthcare nowadays is through private healthcare, if you can afford it. I know many who haven’t gotten proper healthcare until they sought private healthcare. It sucks, because it used to be great.

      • @PloppEnglish
        8•7 months ago

        And people vote for that shit because politicians dangle tax cuts in front of their faces. It’s really sad to see swedes fall for the lower taxes scam, when our entire thing is built on taxes.

        • IcebladeEnglish
          3•7 months ago

          Naw, the issue is more with corruption creeping into the public system. Swedish society used to have a high degree of trust within the system due to a rather homogenous culture and relatively short social hierarchy, and as such structures of enforcement were rather unneccessary.

          It’s become a lot more pressured as time goes on though, inefficiencies, abuse of public funds, straight up corruption which has created huge hole in the public purse - in addition to a sharp rise in organized crime and tax evasion among small businesses such as restaurants and shops.

          • @PloppEnglish
            3•7 months ago

            Corruption is absolutely on the rise. And many opportunistic assholes are utilizing privatization as a vector to abuse the system. However, people still vote for lower taxes and that is a huge problem, especially when we find ourselves in a situation where so many institutions need more tax funding.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•7 months ago

        So, what you’re saying is that you’d want to go to a system akin to what the US has? Hmm.

        I mean, I’ll personally take affordable, universal healthcare that needs some tweaking over a system that will bankrupt me if I break my arm or, God forbid, get seriously ill.

    • @[email protected]English
      14•7 months ago

      “Government doesn’t work, we need less government” said unironically by the person elected to run the government.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•7 months ago

        It’s like how they’ve installed that DeJoy person to dismantle the Postal Service from inside out and then complain that the Postal Service is having issues, so we should privatize donate the business to rich people so their disgusting amounts of wealth can trickle down on our faces or something.

    • @rdyoungEnglish
      13•7 months ago

      We should stop voting for people who promise to dismantle said services. We also really need to move towards a basic income setup instead of having all of the hoops and paperwork for people to prove they are eligible for whatever it is. In the USA people going on disability are always denied even if they are a paraplegic. We would spend so much less money and other resources if we just made it available to everyone with no proof of eligibility needed.

    • @illahEnglish
      6•7 months ago

      Also Sweden’s population is about the size of Los Angeles county. Every time I see Scandinavia held up as something to aspire to folks should remember how small and historically homogenous these countries are.

      Comparing the US to the EU as a whole is a much more accurate way to look at things, with us states being akin to eu member countries.

    • @[email protected]English
      -2•7 months ago

      No you don’t. You pay a little and get a little. Go live in a country where you actually pay a lot and get nothing and then you’ll have a case.

      • @[email protected]English
        5•7 months ago

        I don’t really care if someone has it worse. We should still strive to do better. I don’t think that’s relevant.

        It would be nice to get something for that money. However little or however much it is. Functional services, a social safety net for example. I’d certainly be willing to pay more to have those services. A functioning healthcare system would be nice. I think you would get fewer complaints if the benefits were most obvious.

    • @MagisterEnglish
      -5•7 months ago

      Same in Canada, at least Quebec, 50% of my taxes go in health care system, I have no family doctor, all doctors are millionaires, nurses make 100k+, people dies in ER after 48h waiting

      Education system is a joke. Teachers earn 100k+ too

      Roads are potholes

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        10•7 months ago

        Not many physicians make over a million, and the way provincial governments have set up the bureaucracy around healthcare feeds the high wages, ie: it’s not the nurses caring for patients that are making $100k per year.

          • Cosmic ClericEnglish
            5•7 months ago

            people dies in ER after 48h waiting.

            How often does that happen?

            ooften.And it has happened all across Canada.

            I’m trying to get a feel, as someone who does not live in Canada, as to how often this actually happens. If it’s really an urgent issue, or more hyperbole than anything.

            Could you elaborate further on how often this actually happens?

            Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

            • @[email protected]OPEnglish
              7•7 months ago

              Because Canada’s universal healthcare is funded by the feds and provinces, but administered by the provinces, numbers are not available. But I did find an educated guesstimate from this source put together by two Canadian physicians.

              “The extra deaths caused by emergency department crowding are so rarely counted because it’s hard to pinpoint the crowding as the proximate cause of the death. But when you look at populations and population-level data, you clearly see excess hospital deaths when emergency department crowding is worse,” he said.

              He and colleague Dr. Paul Atkinson from the department of emergency medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax tried to put a number on what they called a “hidden pandemic” of harm.

              They used a formula devised by the U.K. Royal College of Emergency Medicine and The Economist to assess the increased delays in moving patients out of the ERs into the hospital beds in that country.

              The U.K. data suggested that between 260 and 500 patients a week may be dying in excess of what would be expected when ERs are crowded.

              “If you do simple multiplication based on our population, you would find that over a year, somewhere between 8,000 and 15,000 patients are dying in Canada because of emergency department crowding,” Worrall said.