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What happens when a predominantly white, Christian country with generous social welfare benefits open the doors to dark-skinned, Muslim refugees? Sweden is learning about the limits of its collectivist spirit. My story nytimes.com/2019/07/11/bus…
Not for nothing, economists have long admired Sweden for its ability to spur innovation and growth while also maintaining social harmony. People high taxes and they get generous benefits — health care, education, child care, housing
as @AdamPosen put it to me: ‘When you’re born in Sweden, you’ve won life.” But central to the benefits is the understanding that everyone has to work. The government ensures the skills, and people get jobs
The influx of refugees in recent years poses a central test, because many are low-skilled, making them unsuitable for the high-skilled pursuits that are at the center of Sweden’s economy.
some — especially supporters of the surging right wing Sweden Democrat party — now depict refugees as parasites, a depiction laced with rejection of multiculturalism
in the end, i came to Sweden (and the Nordic model) as less about collective spirit, and more as a kind of dues paying club. you pay in, you get benefits. if you don’t pay, you’re a freeloader
and it’s impossible to dismiss the importance of race here. Sweden Democrats reject the prayers call at the mosque, the sound of non-Swedish languages. they accuse people who risked their lives to get here from Syria and Afghanistan of a lack of drive
reporting this story reminded me of a piece i did nearly a decade ago in tennessee, where public buses did not connect unemployed african american men to jobs in the suburbs.
a city manager outside chattanooga told me that after integration and white flight, white families no longer saw taxes sent on city buses as a good use of money. It struck me that if Rosa Parks was around today, she could in theory sit anywhere she liked except there’s no bus
The Nordic model has been strong, underpinning great economic success, but we are about to find out whether people in Sweden and elsewhere will be willing to keep paying high taxes for generous services when recipients are foreign-born, dark-skinned and Muslim
