Let's make Polly happy - be more like Sweden

Polly Tornbee has, for decades, been insisting that Britain should be more like Sweden. To which we say great, let’s do that:

If Bernie Sanders and AOC wants to imitate actually existing Sweden today, they would have to liberalize markets in many ways, reform Social Security, introduce school vouchers, get rid of the minimum wage and most occupational licensing, and abolish taxes on inheritance and property.

Sweden still has a bigger welfare state than the United States, but the receivers pay for it themselves. The tax burden falls heavily on low‐ and middle‐​income households in Sweden, making the tax system much less progressive than in the United States and almost all other rich countries.

The lesson Swedes took from the 1970s was that you can have a big government or you can make the rich pay for it all, but you can’t have both.

We’d perhaps suggest an improvement. If it’s the poor that pay all those high taxes to support the poor, why not lower those high taxes and enable the poor to keep their own money in the first place? The only people who would be worse off are the bureaucrats who do the collecting and distributing and really, who cares about them?

Yes, go on, let’s make Polly happy. Be not just like Sweden, be better.