Comment Socialism myth (Score 5, Informative) 752
I'm not sure why there is this weird myth in the US about Sweden being "socialist". We've had a right wing government for the past 8 years. There has also been in the past two decades a sharp turn towards libertarian ideology in Sweden (our right is not socially conservative) and this is also true for the social democrats who have very little of socialism left in them.
Health care isn't free, nor are child care and social services. They are in some cases heavily subsidized, but definitely not free. It is accessible to everyone and it works very well for most people and their needs. It sort of sucks for more advanced medicine: If you are going to have a child for instance, it's superb while if you have say lung cancer, your chances are much better if you have the operation in the US.
The rather dysfunctional medical care system in the US is not a socialist/capitalist thing - it's just a system that doesn't work very well for a lot of people. The insurance model of financing healthcare is for instance very questionable etc.
As for other stuff such as taxes, I could mention stuff like that Sweden has no inheritance taxes, no real estate taxes or that the financial system is orders of magnitude less regulated than the US one etc Sweden is also somewhat of a corporate tax haven - with the right corporate structure you can get away with paying very little taxes. The bottom line is that from a Swedish perspective at least in in some respects the US is far more socialist than Sweden.
Ideologically you could say that the typical Swede is a pragmatic individualist who thinks that the role of the state is to protect, liberate and enable the individual. Unlike a 'pure' socialist system the role of the state is limited to problems it actually can solve. Unlike a 'pure' capitalist system the state has an enabling role as well (positive freedoms) rather than just a protective role (negative freedoms). If you things those concepts are muddled, you are quite right. Hence the pragmatism. And it sort of works. It's far from perfect. It's very disappointing to those that wish to classify it ideologically. There are many small issues and some huge ones (integration into society of immigrants is one example) but on the whole it is a decent society - and much better off than 30 years ago when it was much easier to classify ideologically.