While Bernie Sanders is getting national attention for his campaign to make the U.S. more like Scandinavia, Scandinavia – Sweden especially - is apparently changing the very system Bernie admires – to become more like us.
I’m just back from a vacation in Sweden with my family. We hadn’t been there in four years and it was great to be back in Stockholm, where new construction and packed outdoor cafes are booming.
Indeed, a lot has changed since I lived there more than 20 years ago. And I found some pretty disturbing, or rather, un-Swedish trends happening, leaving me to wonder if it’s still a good model for us.
First, let me state that many things are still great in Sweden. But some changes suggest a negative, and even – you might say - American influence.
In its social welfare heyday, all Swedes went to similar schools and learned similar things no matter where they lived. The result was one of the best education systems in the world; the Swedes consistently achieved top scores in reading and math. But in the early 2000s, Sweden shifted to a voucher system and ever since, Sweden has suffered a steep drop in test scores, ranking below even the U.S. and the U.K. Less affluent cities and counties have less successful schools and less capable teachers while more affluent counties have precisely the opposite. Sounds just like the U.S.
I’ve always thought my wife and I would retire in Sweden, where elder care services used to be among the best and most egalitarian in the world. But since 2000, national health care spending has been severely reduced, and the burden has been shifted to Swedish counties. Now, the level and quality of the care you get is totally dependent on where you live.
Sweden is still one of the most equitable countries around, but over the past 15 years, amongst the 34 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Sweden has seen the steepest increase in inequality, with disparities rising at four times the pace of the U.S.
True, there was a time when Swedes actually made SAABs and Volvos, Swedish bands produced rock classics like “Dancing Queen” and “Hooked on a Feeling,” and it was impossible to beat Bjorn Borg or Ingmar Stenmark.
Today, Scandinavian countries still have a lot to offer us, like parental leave, mandatory five-week vacations, and funny snaps songs. But ironically, while we might be trying to become more like them, it seems they’re doing their best to become more like us.
