Nordic Countries Increasingly Giving Welfare State the Cold Shoulder

As Reason’s J.D. Tuccille
noted earlier today, putatitively socialist Swedes are
increasingly turning to private insurance to reduce long wait times
and rationed health care services. It’s not simply in medicine that
Sweden is moving toward market-based models. As Johnny Munkhammar
detailed in 2005’s European Dawn: After the Social
Model, the country started cutting government spending as
a percentage of GDP in the 1990s and that has proceeded apace.

Nor is it only Sweden that is giving a cold shoulder to the
welfare state. AFP reports that throughout the Nordic countries,
the size and scope of government is being cut as “nations find
themselves cash-strapped.” Consider, for example, Denmark, whose
leader is best known to Americans for taking a selfie with Barack
Obama at Nelson Mandela’s funeral:

When her Social Democratic government took
power in 2011, there was little to suggest Prime Minister Helle
Thorning-Schmidt would make any dramatic changes to the country’s
cherished welfare state — funded by the world’s highest tax
burden.

After a centre-right government had raised the retirement age
and reduced the unemployment benefits period from four to two
years, “Gucci Helle” — as she is known among her detractors —
went on to cut corporate taxes to 22 percent from 25 percent.

Other reforms have included requiring young people on
benefits to undertake training, and withdrawing student aid to
those taking too long to finish their studies.

Finland is moving to trim similar sorts of programs as well.
According to AFP, only Norway is likely not to tackle serious
entitlement reform because of its vast oil wealth and because,
ironically, it’s got a conservative government: “New centre-right
Prime Minister Erna Solberg has pledged to preserve the welfare
state.”

Read the whole thing here.

Back in 2010, Reason TV surveyed Sweden’s powerful moves to rein
in government spending and liked what we saw. Watch “Sweden: A Supermodel for
America?”: