Liberals voted out in Sweden...

[6SpeedTA95]

This is an interesting turn of events and its important to note that moderate-right over there would probably be a moderate democrat or even a slightly liberal democrat over here...

Article1
BBC NEWS | Europe | New Swedish bloc poised for power

Originally Posted by article

New Swedish bloc poised for power

Sweden's centre-right leader Fredrik Reinfeldt has begun talks on forming a new government after his coalition narrowly won Sunday's elections.
The leader of the Moderate Party declared victory as near-complete results gave him a 1% lead.

Mr Reinfeldt, 41, has pledged to trim welfare spending and cut taxes.

His coalition's victory ended 12 years of Social Democrat rule. Prime Minister Goran Persson accepted defeat, saying his government would resign.

His centre-left party has led Sweden for all but 10 of the past 89 years.

'New moderates'

Mr Reinfeldt, who promised to reform Sweden's cradle-to-grave welfare state, took to the stage in Stockholm in front of supporters with his arms raised late on Sunday.

"We ran in the election as the New Moderates, we have won the election as the New Moderates and we will also together with our Alliance friends govern Sweden as the New Moderates," he said.

"Tomorrow we will wake up to a new Sweden," he promised.

Mr Persson told his supporters he would step down as party leader in March 2007.

"We have lost the election but we are not a beaten party," he said. "We will never accept the right's change of system - we will hit back!"

Key issues in the election included whether Sweden's generous welfare model must reform for it to survive in the global economy.

Opinion polls had put the centre-right alliance consistently neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats.

Trading accusations

The opposition says changes to Sweden's rigid labour market and high-cost welfare system are long overdue, and promises to cut both employer taxes and unemployment benefits.

It also wants to cut the large public sector, which employs 30% of the Swedish workforce.

Mr Reinfeldt has accused the government of disregarding the high unemployment rate and of failing to make Sweden internationally competitive.

The government maintains the unemployment rate is 6%, while the opposition says it is around 10%, taking into account the many people on sick leave and job training schemes.

Mr Persson has accused the opposition of wanting to destroy job security and make dangerous cuts to the welfare state.

He said this would undermine Sweden's unique social model - a cradle to grave welfare system and strong economic growth.

Article 2
BBC NEWS | Europe | Beauty of Swedish model disputed

Originally Posted by article2

Lagom - meaning "in moderation" - is a concept dear to most Swedes, and appropriately the centre-right Moderate Party is a strong contender in the 17 September general election.


It is spearheading the opposition to the Social Democrats, who have ruled Sweden for most of the last 70 years.

The Social Democrats see no reason to change a system that has delivered strong economic growth along with public sector benefits.

In the second quarter of 2006 growth reached 5.6% - the best rate for six years.

On top of that, the nine million Swedes enjoy high-quality public services and generous welfare benefits - funded largely by high levels of income tax, which ranges from 30% to 55%.

The large public sector accounts for 30% of all employees.

Battle for centre

According to Fredric Karen, senior editor at the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, "voters are not much concerned about taxes, but they want changes - to make more of their own choices about daycare centres, schools, hospitals".

We need to deregulate the labour market. We need to accept that some people have success and get rich

Tore Robertsson, president, Skydds AB
Recognising that the lagom tradition runs deep, the centre-right alliance is not planning to impose an Anglo-Saxon model of tax cuts and large-scale privatisations.

Unlike the last election in 2002, the Moderates have downplayed the issue of tax cuts and have advocated more support for schools and the elderly.

But the need to create more jobs tops the agenda in this election and the centre-right alliance insists that labour market reform is long overdue.

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, a body representing about 55,000 Swedish companies, argues that "the Swedish model is capsizing" and asks "who will right it?"

It says it is too easy for trade unions to strike and that the very threat of labour unrest makes employers take short-term measures to avert a conflict - measures that can undermine their competitiveness.


Consensus rules

Centralised wage negotiations and strong trade unions are traditional features of the Swedish economy.


Swedish voters in Malmo give their views.


In pictures


The tradition of consensus goes back as far as the 1938 Saltsjoebaden Agreement, which regulated relations between employers and unions. Nearly 80% of Swedish workers are currently union members.

The Moderate Party argues that, with an ageing population, Sweden - like its European neighbours - needs a more dynamic labour market.

The party wants to reduce unemployment benefit, saying "there has to be a bigger difference between working and not working".

There has been fierce argument about the true unemployment figure in the run-up to the election, with the opposition accusing the government of massaging the statistics.

The official rate in the first half of 2006 was 5.7%, but another 2.7% who were on job training programmes were not included.

According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute think-tank this year, the unemployment rate is actually about 15%.

Structural change

Henrik Brors, political editor of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, notes that in addition "the sick leave figures are very high - it is said Sweden has the healthiest people but the longest sick queues in the world".


The Feminist Initiative party says sex discrimination is still rife
Tore Robertsson, president of a Malmo-based defence firm called Skydds, told BBC News that "there won't be a liberal revolution in Scandinavia - we won't come close to the Anglo-Saxon idea - but we might change a bit, so that we encourage more people to start companies, to start working".

"We need to deregulate the labour market. We need to accept that some people have success and get rich."

Such talk does not go down well with the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), representing nearly two million "blue collar" workers.

Lena Westelund, an LO economist, told BBC News that "cutting unemployment benefit would lead to a downward spiral in demand - the unemployed would have less money and that could affect confidence".

Such cuts would also increase workers' resistance to structural change in the economy, she warns.

She believes the Swedish model is well adapted for tough international competition and can continue delivering growth.

"Collectively agreed wages have flexibility - the wages are adjustable," she said.

"The individual worker needs to have good security so he doesn't resist social change. There are opportunities for retraining in the way our model is designed. We're not protecting jobs, we're protecting individuals."

Swedish tolerance has been strained in this election campaign, marred by a scandal involving some opposition Liberal Party activists who hacked into the Social Democrats' computer system.

Despite the Liberals' crisis many observers still expect the race to be uncomfortably close for the Social Democrats, and a German-style "grand coalition" is a real possibility.

I found these to be pretty good articles, there's a host of articles on the bbc and on other sites right now regarding the moderate take over in sweden.

I'm awaiting their plans and hoping they do some real good. Things have been fairly bad over there according to a friend of mine that lived there for awhile. He was calling for reform years ago he'll probably be stoked about this

[PetriW]

Well, I've voted for the Moderates since like forever so I'm slightly biased here but...
I think the Moderates won because:
a) It's very hard to win an election on past merits, the social democrats only had new welfare stuff, no real reforms to help Sweden grow.
b) The welfare state won, the Moderates have accepted it and promised they will protect it, not dismantle it. None of the changes they make are drastic, but they focus on getting people jobs. The reasoning for this is: more jobs = more welfare for all.
c) The scandal might have hurt the Liberal Party but the Social Democrates exaggerated it horrendously (comparing it to rape for example) and took pot shots at the Liberal Party members (not very smart in Sweden), this probably hurt the Social Democrates more than it did the alliance, members who were disappointed with the Liberal Party simply voted for the Moderates instead.
d) There was a clear stable alternative to the past government, an alternative that was united, that enjoyed each others company and that had the good stuff from 4 parties. The government party (which led as a minority leader) and it's two helper parties did not present a clear unified front, instead there was some conflicts on how the new government should be formed, which might have scared some away.
e) For 8 years the Swedish public have been again and again reminded that the Social Democrates hide the unemployed in special activities and early pensions. Some 26% of those with an early pension say they can work fulltime, 25% say they can work part time. (Early pension is for people with disabilities or similar which make them unable to work, however the social democrates started pensioning people who could not find work in 2+ years.)
f) None of the base protection net is touched by the new alliance government, only the systems before you reach that. Heck, you have to be unemployed for 200 days before your welfare is lowered. However, after 300 days you fall to the early pensions compensation level. (Essentially, one year of work guarantees you 80% of your previous salary for 200 days.)
g) The Moderates have moved to the left in the politics, aka, toward the "middle".

Remember, in the beginning the changes won't be drastic, I think Sweden may adopt a more liberal view of things over time if we see the benefits of it. Remember that many here are willing to pay more taxes for welfare if needed... Yes, they're willing to pay more with 67% taxes already (40% employers before you even see your salary, 30% income tax on the actual salary after that, then 25% vat).

It should also be noticed that if the Moderates was an US party it'd probably be labeled as communist. All Swedish parties are left of the main british ones and the US Democrates would be impossibly far to the right here making them essentially unsupportable.

[PetriW]

Oh yeah, liberals were not voted out in sweden, the left was voted out and the "liberals+right" was voted in.
The Enviroment Party is often labeled a middle party but some of their ideas about the economy are so super wacky I consider them the most left party of the big seven. (They believe most jobs will disappear in the future and that we should change society to accomodate now. Aka, they work to adjust Sweden to a society where most people don't work.)

[6SpeedTA95]

Hey! Thanks for the insight on this.

I've read about a half dozen articles that show they want to cut personal income taxes and drastically cut taxes on business do you think that will happen? It definately seems like a winner to me.

[PetriW]

It depends on how you see it, this time around they've promised to "lower taxes within reason". The changes are not "drastic", they noticeable but not drastic. Mainly because the larger changes are for employing the unemployed and moving black market jobs to become normal jobs.
In the past the Moderates wanted to dramatically drop taxes which made most of Swedes simply not vote for them because the cut would mean too large a change in the society (indeed, many political commentators considered the tax cuts so large it'd result in a massive deficit).

This time around the idea is to balance the budget and keep paying off on the state debt, I even read through the social party propaganda page on why not to vote on the Moderates and while they lower taxes I still spotted nothing large enough to be drastic, or well, some may be drastic but read above.

Let's see, the major economic changes are as follows:
- Everyone gets about $120 less in taxes, however, you also need to pay more for car insurance, the unemployment insurance and union membership. This lowers the actual tax cut to like $20-$80 a month.
- Freezing the house tax, essentially you paid a tax based on the value on your house (swedens oldest tax). This tax has been increasing rapidly lately and is becoming more and more unpopular. They want to remove this tax but it has quite large implications making it hard to remove.
- Wealth tax, essentially if you had a lot of money you had to pay extra taxes, this meant rich people hid their money in other countries to avoid taxes. They hope this will bring money back to Sweden so it's invested here, creating more jobs and so on.
- Unemployment insurance, after 200 days of unemployment the compensation is lowered form 80% to 70%, at 300 days it's lowered to 65%. (Was 80% the whole time before.)
- State companies worth some $25 billion will be sold to pay off about a quarter of the state debt.
- Service sector jobs (haircuts, cleaning, repair shops, restaurants) will get a 50% reduction in employers fees to fight black market workers. (Remember, the employers fees account for 32% of the salary.)
- If you hire someone who's been unemployed over a year the employers fee will be nulled for the same length of time as the person has been unemployed for a maximum of 5 years. If the person is above 55 the time is doubled.


Well, that's some examples.