Worse unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed, higher unemployment, eroded welfare resources and tax cuts that have greatly benefited high-income earners. A new report from Katalys examines what the institute describes as the Sweden Democrats' betrayal of the workers, unemployed and low-income earners who helped the party to power. The SD received 29 percent of the workers' votes in the 2022 election and 27 percent among LO members….
Category: The Swedish model
The red-green ones are best for the disabled according to disability website
For people with disabilities, the 2026 election could determine whether the money is enough for rent, food, medicine and assistive devices. HejaOlika's review places V and MP most clearly at the top for financial security. Both want to strengthen sickness and activity compensation and let society bear the additional costs of disability. MP has also allocated 500 million kronor in its budget for increased sick-…
When did the Social Democrats stop being “patriots”?
As the Social Democrats' political communication increasingly revolves around security, values and national cohesion, new tensions arise in the party's organization and ideological direction. When the future is described as a preservation of the present, communication risks becoming both exclusionary and visionless. A simplistic view of security and nationalistic communication shifts social democracy away from equality, global responsibility...
Strikes, knowledge and demonstrations drive society
History shows that almost all major reforms have started with ordinary people rising up. Kjell Östberg's book People in Motion describes how the right to vote, the eight-hour day and welfare did not come from above but grew out of strikes, demonstrations and union struggles. Workers, women, students and soldiers in uniform took to the streets together and demanded dignity,…
Work for all provides a more stable, state-regulated mixed economy
Work for all is the goal society must have. Brilliant text on the benefits of full employment and its positive side effects. Niklas Blomqvist questions the idea that the market itself can create full employment. For example, Blomqvist points out that attempts to follow this path in the last thirty years have not produced the desired results. He emphasizes that work for…
The truth about immigration
Integration is an investment – not a cost. Although it sometimes takes up to 5-8 years for refugee immigrants to get a firm grip on the labor market, it is significantly shorter than for many native Swedes without higher education. Young Swedes often try their luck in their 20s and 30s between temporary jobs, unemployment, and studies before they…
He who is in debt is not free - the untrue myth about Göran Persson and his heroic glory
"He who is in debt is not free." Göran Persson's trip to New York to ask for a loan and implement cutbacks has become a destructive and untrue myth in Swedish politics. But the story about the crisis in the 1990s and the need for budget consolidation is not correct. This is written by researchers Niklas Altermark, Max Jerneck and Elisabeth...
How to save equality and the environment/nature all over the world
Global equality and the environment - how do we save these? Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic theory that proposes that governments with their own currency have the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on desirable sectors of the economy. Sustainably productive investments increase budget space According to MMT, government spending is limited by inflation and not by public debt....
The red-greens must protect freedom and solidarity
Almost as many die in workplace accidents as in gang crime. Hundreds of workers, especially men, kill themselves every year because of the hard working life. The welfare increases of 2014-18 were too weak if wonderful and the slaughter of LAS and the attack on the low rent system and the tax cuts for the rich 2018-2022 horrible. Those who were hit hardest by the…
The left party for welfare, climate and industry
First: the public sector must take back control of welfare from the market. It is when politics takes responsibility that we can have functioning care, school and care, full employment and secure jobs. Ever since the 1990s, both s and m governments have privatized and introduced market systems. The Left Party stopped the latest such attempts when they dropped the proposal to…