The Constant Threat to the Swedish Welfare State

Our land as we know it was born in 1936. Before then we had been a vassal state, a warrior state and most recently a poor peasant state. It had been a few rough years since the socialists and liberals pushed through the law for every man and woman's right to vote in 1921, but now was Sweden finally facing some political stability with a single party with majority in the parliament. The idea of "folkhemmet", a place where every citizen was welcome and taken care for was for the first time presented to the masses by the new Swedish minister of state, Per Albin Hansson. The thought of a Swedish welfare state had been discussed among the socialists in Sweden since the beginning of the 20th century, but the economy and the political power of the Social democrats had been to weak. These politics could now be set in to action, and was carried out, even during World War II, until a dark day in September 1976 when Sd looses 1,3% of the votes and the parliament once again gets a right wing majority.

Oh, the pity. Later that year was the Swedish income tax lowered and the old agreement between the trade unions confederation (LO) and the employers confederation (SAF) from 1938 abruptly broken up. The set back in economy during the following 70s and 80s ended in a major economic crisis in the beginning of the 90s, and people even questioned if the old welfare-state was to blame.

But now, six years into the new millennium, after 12 years of the social democrats in power, things are finally looking bright again. Our fragile economy isn't as dazzling as it once was in 1968, when Sweden was on top of its game and the "Swedish model" was adored around the world, but it's promising. The state's economy has going from downsizing to spending money on things such as digital media and alternative fuel, and locally Цrebro Municipality's budget has gone from a 14 million deficit in 2003 to a ca 170 million surplus in 2005.

So why do we strive towards the right wing agenda again? Why do we want a more individual community were every man takes care of himself and his family, where school and healthcare is privatised and the state doesn't care about wages or rents?

First of all, we believe that we are poor. There has been an international economic depression after 9/11 2001, and we have had to deal with that. Privatisation has also taken its toll on schools, hospitals and day-care, but were still on top of the game. We do hear tales about long cues to medical help and enormous classes, but it has being dealt with ever since the economy recovered. The media is partly to blame, even though their behaviour is logical -people aren't that interested in sunshine stories about happy pensioners as to horror stories about Martha, 94, drowning in her own faeces in the nursing home from hell. Our society isn't perfect, there are people who suffer, but ironically it is those who will be treated worst under a right wing government, the homeless, the persons looking for asylum and the unemployed -all will suffer in a nation who doesn't pay welfare and have a small public sector.

In addition to this, some people also believe that our military forces are weak and out of date and couldn't fight down an attacking force from any of our old enemies like Russia. What these people don't know is that this threat, even though you can say that it's non-existing, has been there since we lost Finland in the peace of Fredrikshamn in 1809, and suddenly became a nation with a few million citizens. It doesn't matter how many jet planes or cannons we buy, due to our small amount of people who can fire them, we wouldn't have a chance anyway. We have instead more wisely developed our current