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What can we learn from the Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg?
Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future--and it doesn't work.
As the finance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of a country long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state.
"Like many societies, we went too far in our welfare-state ambitions," say Borg (pronounced "Bor-ee").
These days President Obama is overseeing the largest increase in the U.S. government's share of the economy since it was conducting a world war almost seven decades ago. Economic stimulus, bailouts and expanded health care will all have to be paid for someday with either taxes or inflation. Borg is pushing Sweden in the opposite direction, encouraging the legislature to cut taxes, cap spending and privatize parts of health care.
"If you're working yourselves upwards in taxes and deficits, we're working ourselves downwards," says Borg. (FORBES recently interviewed him in Berlin, where he had delivered a speech.)
But wait a minute! I thought that we were going to spend ourselves to prosperity. Obama said that we have to spend in order to get out of this current economic situation. I thought that I could go out, assume massive debt, with no plan to pay it back, and somehow end up on top. That's what we are being told.
Next year Sweden's government is projected to be on the hook for gross financial liabilities equal to 57% of GDP, which is up from 48% two years ago. The debt of U.S. government entities, by contrast, is expected to nearly equal GDP by next year, versus 63% in 2007, says the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.
As the U.S. takes over some corporations outright, and offers others financial lifelines, Sweden is unloading scores of industries. It is selling state-owned pharmacies and plans to put its remaining 37% stake in telecom incumbent TeliaSonera ( TLSNF.PK - news - people ) on the block when market prices improve. Last spring it unloaded Absolut Vodka. A distillery, Borg notes drily, is not a core function for either a welfare state or a night watchman's state.
Swedish health care is getting a whiff of free marketeering, too. The government's abolition of the "Stop Law" is expected to give a green light to hospital privatization, and starting next year local authorities will have to offer private primary care options.
I wonder why this didn't make the major news in the U.S. This is a big deal! We have a traditionally liberal country coming around to a traditionally "U.S." way of thinking. I wonder why other countries government's are starting to see the flaws inherent in socialist systems? Meanwhile the U.S. government seems hell bent on passing new legislation insuring that we take steps BACKWARDS.
Am I the only one that thinks that this is patently absurd? Do the U.S. politicians have any "real" idea what they are doing? I know the American people do, and the American people want the government to stop. This administration's falling approval numbers are proof of this discontent.
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athrillofhope: If you put everything aside... Then note that the Sweden, looking at the U.S., is wondering why we are moving more towards socialism. That in itself is amazing! 
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