Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

You can't compare the right-wing in Europe and United States. For example in Sweden our right win party SD is much less about the free market and small government policies. Instead I would say the main goal of SD is to preserve Swedens generous welfare society.


view as:

The new right in the US is also more ambivalent on the free market, though; note Trump's attempts at trade wars.

Free trade has always been the position of the elites on the US right (and left) more than the masses.

This is more true than false, but tariffs were popular with US business leaders really until a little while after the post-war period.

I either got it completely wrong or the tariffs were one of the major income sources in US before income tax was implemented.

That makes sense, but US business owners also preferred being insulated from foreign competition.

Thats an odd way of looking at SD. There is a clear macroeconomic consensus that immigration is good for the economy as a whole, the GDP growth Sweden has enjoyed strongly support this. An SD government would be a threat to the Swedish welfare society.

This is a party started not by right leaning nationalists but by actual nazis. Gustav Ekström, one of the founders of the party was a volunteer in the Waffen-SS in 1941. Yes the party has changed but these are the kinds of people running the party when the current leadership joined.

Its overwhelmingly clear the main reason for the party is to turn Sweden into some sort of white nationalist fantasy where anyone with a brown face is not welcome.


Please, enlighten us. How is it good for the economy to take in a massive influx of people who can't read even their own language? What Sweden has, is a huge population of people who's only income is from the state and that is not going to change. If GDP growth is the key to the kind of "economic growth" we want, why are we not just taking tens of millions of said people? Without the welfare state things would be different, people would actually have to be useful/productive and pay for their own lives. Too bad that is not going to happen before the system crashes.

Sweden has done it before very successfully. Also yes there is a limit on how many people you can sustainably take in. The Swedish government put on the brakes when the system couldn't handle more.

When the system cannot handle more it is already too late. And don't compare times when everyone was illiterate with today, it is not the same background and a similar outcome is not likely.

I bet the name "SD" is no accident...

>immigration is good for the economy as a whole

Or migrants will prefer countries which currently have robust economies, so more opportunities for them? Correlation does not imply causation.


SD has a very dark and disturbing history I think we can all agree to that but they have cleaned up and become a different party then before. They are now for example proponents of "open swedishness" where ethnicity have no bearing on if you are Swedish. http://www.lt.se/opinion/debatt/sd-ar-for-en-oppen-svenskhet

"Its overwhelmingly clear the main reason for the party is to turn Sweden into some sort of white nationalist fantasy where anyone with a brown face is not welcome. "do you really believe this?

Maybe it wasn't clear in my original reply but to me it seems SD thinks the way to save the Swedish welfare state is reduced immigration.

Immigration can be good for the economy sure, but in my opinon you can't just state that all immigration is good for the economy as a whole. Just today a report from Konjunkturinstitutet came that said that warns that if more immigrants don't get jobs the taxes will have to be higher. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ekonomi/konjunkturinstitutet-darf...

In the paper Refugee immigration and public finances in Sweden by Ruist, Joakim. The cost is refugee immigration and their family members is calculated to 1 % of BNP in the year 2007.


"Its overwhelmingly clear the main reason for the party is to turn Sweden into some sort of white nationalist fantasy where anyone with a brown face is not welcome. "do you really believe this? - yes. Anecdata, what relatives and other acquaintance tells me who votes for the party say that thats what they want.

You don't have to scratch surface particularly hard to see statements such as Zlatan is not Swedish, or for example what leading members called Soran Ismail during the iron pipe scandal.

SD has also been very open with what kind of society they want when coming into power, they have been studying Hungary and Poland closely, countries which has openly racist policies and are defacto not democracies anymore.

"Maybe it wasn't clear in my original reply but to me it seems SD thinks the way to save the Swedish welfare state is reduced immigration." I am aware of that and its utterly, utterly hogwash. Immigration is the only way to save the welfare states all over western Europe since we face an ageing population.

"immigrants don't get jobs the taxes will have to be higher. " Perhaps some investment is needed to get immigrants up to speed.

Look, Sweden went through a very similar immigration wave in the early nineties from the balkans. Those immigrants and their decedents have mostly stayed in Sweden and have today similar levels of employment as native Swedish people. It took awhile and yes there where real issues but I have a hard time seeing that the end result is no less than an extremely positive outcome.

"In the paper Refugee immigration and public finances in Sweden by Ruist, Joakim. The cost is refugee immigration and their family members is calculated to 1 % of BNP in the year 2007."

Yes some investment is needed, it will pay dividends later. And in the short term there was a very nice correlation between gdp growth and immigrants arriving to Sweden.


> Immigration is the only way to save the welfare states all over western Europe since we face an ageing population.

What's the point of immigration in France where unemployment is ~10% and twice that for the younger generation? How _more_ immigration would be a good thing in that case?


Legal | privacy