Sweden has received an extremely high number of asylum applications this year. It has and continues to put enormous pressure on the Swedish systems. But it is something that will persist because of climate change. In Syria, it hadn't rained for several years, which was a big reason for the civil war there.
Liberal Johan Norberg and C's Annie Lööf see the solution in maintaining openness for refugees by scrapping Swedish welfare for all or only for some.
Some red-greens see the solution in scrapping the right to asylum in order to maintain welfare for those who are already here.
There is a third way that editorial writer Katrine Marcal suggests Aftonbladet 2015-12-13. That the welfare state is reformed in order to maintain it. I didn't really understand how Marcal wanted to reform it but here are my suggestions.
- Restore tax levels to 2006 levels for those earning over 35000 and start raising taxes for those earning from 30000. Sweden did well in 2006. People had money and we had one of the strongest competitive forces in the world.
- Use the money from the tax to reintroduce a Keynesian economy to expand the public sector to replace the ever increasing number of jobs that the private sector is rationalizing away at an ever increasing rate.
- Build good, cheap rental properties partly for everyone who already lives here but also for those who will move here. More housing allows people to move to where the jobs are and the construction of rental properties itself will create jobs that lead to consumption that boosts the economy.
- Reintroduce publicly funded labor market education. There is a big matching problem where there are lots of job vacancies but not enough qualified job seekers. Offer quality-certified training so that the unemployed can take the jobs that constantly arise in the constant further development of the labor market.
- Make sure that those with the right skills and good language skills in Swedish can get a good job regardless of background. Offer training opportunities for those who want to acquire this competence, but never lower the knowledge requirements below a qualitative level.
- Expand the underserved areas such as school, healthcare, welfare, culture and social services in the public sector. As the rationalization of jobs continues in the private sector, public jobs will become increasingly important for employment. Then make sure that staffing, resource distribution and salaries are so good throughout the public sector that people find it meaningful and developing to work in these areas.
- Work so that the wages and working conditions of female academics and working professions do not lag behind those of men. Mainly for reasons of equality, but more cynically also because it is in these jobs that the jobs of the future will be found.
- Abolish the almost unregulated labor immigration law that the Alliance introduced and instead protect the refugees with real protection needs.
- Protect good social security. Good social insurance means that recessions are not worsened by sudden unemployment due to general falling purchasing power.
- Abandon equilibrium unemployment so that there are jobs for all and so that integration can work. Equilibrium unemployment is destructive and creates crime, stress, illness and too low general purchasing power. Politicians, business and the trade unions must cooperate to keep the wage trend appropriate in other ways. The Swedish unions are extremely cooperative.
- Don't sign free trade agreements like TTIP that want to prevent our right to expand the public sector.
- Reduce the privatization of the public sector. Privatization can sometimes be good if it is heavily regulated, but free privatization is usually destructive to quality and working conditions.