Swedish riots rage for fourth night (long-term unemployment and poverty)

[HiPointDem]

63. you mean this one?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2897062

"I really do get the sense that Sweden aspires to be like the USA in terms of material wealth."

I don't understand what you mean by 'aspires'. Sweden has been a capitalist country for a long time, it has a long-standing capitalist elite linked by blood and marriage, and it has a higher per capita GDP than the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita

Alfred Nobel was a capitalist tycoon, with business interests all over the world. There were plenty others like him. Like these guys (who are still big players):

The Wallenberg sphere, an international banking- and industry group under the control of Wallenberg family through the holding company Investor AB, based in Stockholm, Sweden, is today Europe's largest family-controlled business empire. In Sweden alone, the sphere was estimated to indirectly control about a third of the national GDP in 1990.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallenberg_family

Not despite but because of persistent Social Democratic political influence since the Great Reversal in 1932 have a few families and banks controlled the largest listed firms in Sweden. The Social Democrats have de facto been the guarantor rather than the terminator of private capitalism since the political and corporate incumbencies have been united by strong common interests. Incumbent owners need the political support to legitimize that their corporate power rests on extensive use of dual-class shares and pyramiding.

While the Social Democrats only get the necessary resources and indirect support for their social and economic policies from the private sector if the largest firms remain under Swedish control so that capital does not migrate.

The extensive use of mechanisms to separate votes from capital however drives a significant wedge between the costs of internal and external capital that causes an enhanced (political) pecking order of financing where new external equity is strongly avoided. By not encouraging outsiders to create new firms and fortunes, and by not fully activating the primary equity markets, the heavy politicized system has redistributed incomes but not property rights and wealth.

The result is an ageing economy with an unusually large proportion of very old and very large firms with well-defined owners in control. 31 of the 50 largest listed firms in 2000 were founded before 1914, only 8 in the post-war period and none after 1970.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w10641

The Swedish welfare state was a capital-labor truce that came out of the Depression, similar to the New Deal. Big capital gave labor a measure of income security and a relatively equal distribution of income in exchange for relative labor peace, while keeping the economy relatively closed to foreign capital and even aspiring domestic capital.

The neoliberal turn in Sweden represents an opening to foreign capital and globalism, and as such wages are being pushed down, public goods are being privatized, and labor protections, social benefits are being cut back. Also, unions are under attack, and its been going on for a while:

Sweden's Assault on Labor
by Samantha Sparks

STOCKHOLM - There are many reasons for trade unionists in the rest of the world to envy their counterparts here. Swedish unions boast an average 81 percent membership rate...

Seen from within Sweden, however, things could hardly look worse. A new coalition government, elected last October 1, clearly favors employers over labor. The leading Moderate Party has strong ties to the Swedish Employers Confederation (SAF), and has already initiated a number of significant changes in labor legislation based upon SAF position papers. In a move that holds uncertain consequences for unions, the government has also launched a drive to smash the public sector's monopoly on welfare services. For its part, after years of growing hostility to cooperation with labor, SAF has seized the opportunities opened by the new government to launch what looks like an all- out counterattack...

"I don't know why, but they [SAF] are trying to make life worse in Sweden," says Lars Nyberg, of the steering committee of the blue-collar Swedish Trade Union Confederation.

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1992/05/mm0592_10.html

Not that the big Swedish capitalists weren't always globalists, but the home market was relatively closed to foreign entrants that might aspire to control it.

Also, the unemployment rate in Sweden is currently higher than that in the US. If that's your standard for a 'good' employment picture, all i can say is that i have a different standard.