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Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

nytimes.com

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Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#11

Post by msvan »

orf wrote: post #8

This all stems from the Iraq war. We get dragged into it by the USA, and now we have to house the hundreds of thousands eventually displaced by that illegal catastrophe as well as tighten our borders against bombing. And it's going to tear Europe apart, all while the west still funnel money into Saudi Arabia (and from there into ISIS). Great. Fuck America. Edit: Rather than patriotically downvoting me it would be coo…

Let's not be so quick to cast judgment on the US. Europe's colonial history is pretty unflattering as well, and also plays a big part in the middle eastern mess. It's certainly not all about the Iraq war.

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#12

Post by dotchloe »

Numberwang wrote: post #5

For once a reasonable article about Sweden. I doubt many of my fellow Swedes will agree, but those to blame in all this are the Sweden Democrats. By having a party of thuggish clowns (a point that cannot be argued) monopolize a single issue like immigration and making it impossible for real political parties to take steps in a more restrictive direction they have achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. The…

No, in fact the Sweden Democrats has nothing to do with this. They have not even been able to vote about this - all this mess is ONLY the seven parties that came together.

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#13

Post by cesarbs »

Numberwang wrote: post #5

For once a reasonable article about Sweden. I doubt many of my fellow Swedes will agree, but those to blame in all this are the Sweden Democrats. By having a party of thuggish clowns (a point that cannot be argued) monopolize a single issue like immigration and making it impossible for real political parties to take steps in a more restrictive direction they have achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. The…

Wikipedia says that the Sweden Democrats are anti-immigration [1]. Your comment seems to imply the opposite. Could you elaborate more?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#14

Post by adventured »

Significant immigration is inherently in conflict with a big welfare state. You can't have both, unless you're willing to lower the standard of living of everyone to do it, or you have fast economic growth. Citizens of Europe's big welfare states are going to continue to disapprove accordingly, as witnessed by the way Germans are turning on Merkel or Denmark's move right, or Sweden taking action to stop the inflow. Or, say you're Finland, and you're teetering on a slight economic depression [1][2], with zero growth for a decade, bad unemployment, and rapidly rising poverty to go with inbound austerity measures to control the budget deficit - do you take in huge numbers of immigrants? How do you pay for it?

Germany is supposed to be Europe's economic engine - their GDP is at 2008 levels, they're struggling to just show any positive growth, while their poverty levels are the highest since re-unification. How do you convince your citizens to take in a million or more refugees at a time like that? It's a tough sell.

[1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/35c8560c-c62f-11e4-add0-00144...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/12001895/Finlands-depress...

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #9
orf wrote: post #8

This all stems from the Iraq war. We get dragged into it by the USA, and now we have to house the hundreds of thousands eventually displaced by that illegal catastrophe as well as tighten our borders against bombing. And it's going to tear Europe apart, all while the west still funnel money into Saudi Arabia (and from there into ISIS). Great. Fuck America. Edit: Rather than patriotically downvoting me it would be coo…

> Fuck America It breaks the HN guidelines to do this here, regardless of foreign policy failures. Please don't do it again. Btw, the HN guidelines also ask you not to go on about getting downvoted. Please re-read and follow them when posting to this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

[deleted]

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#16

Post by [deleted] »

msvan wrote: post #11
orf wrote: post #8

This all stems from the Iraq war. We get dragged into it by the USA, and now we have to house the hundreds of thousands eventually displaced by that illegal catastrophe as well as tighten our borders against bombing. And it's going to tear Europe apart, all while the west still funnel money into Saudi Arabia (and from there into ISIS). Great. Fuck America. Edit: Rather than patriotically downvoting me it would be coo…

Let's not be so quick to cast judgment on the US. Europe's colonial history is pretty unflattering as well, and also plays a big part in the middle eastern mess. It's certainly not all about the Iraq war.

[deleted]

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#17

Post by throwaway2209 »

Numberwang wrote: post #5

For once a reasonable article about Sweden. I doubt many of my fellow Swedes will agree, but those to blame in all this are the Sweden Democrats. By having a party of thuggish clowns (a point that cannot be argued) monopolize a single issue like immigration and making it impossible for real political parties to take steps in a more restrictive direction they have achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. The…

From what I have read it used to be very difficult to have a reasonable debate about restrictions without being labeled as a right wing racist.

It seems to me that when moderates didn't dare to speak in public, the voters had only one choice. They may not agree with everything, but when it is the only major party that wants restrictions they have no choice.

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#18

Post by Others »

cesarbs wrote: post #13
Numberwang wrote: post #5

For once a reasonable article about Sweden. I doubt many of my fellow Swedes will agree, but those to blame in all this are the Sweden Democrats. By having a party of thuggish clowns (a point that cannot be argued) monopolize a single issue like immigration and making it impossible for real political parties to take steps in a more restrictive direction they have achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. The…

Wikipedia says that the Sweden Democrats are anti-immigration [1]. Your comment seems to imply the opposite. Could you elaborate more? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats

I think his point is that the Sweden Democrats are perceived as being terrible people, so no one wants to be on their side of this issue.

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#19

Post by Legogris »

carsongross wrote: post #7

If "neo-fascist" continues to be used to describe people who are willing to help foreigners but are not happy to see their own countries completely transformed at the societal level, more and more of us will become comfortable with that label.

Even if Swedish Democrat politicians (like the article states) claim that "it's better to help people where they are than to bring them here", their budget proposition included a 47 billion SEK (about 470 million USD) reduction of international aid under a 4 year period. For reference, the total international aids budget for 2015 is 29.5 billion SEK. Nothing they have proposed have made any indications that they have any intentions to provide help to those in need who happen to be far away.

It's still true that the debate here is extremely infected and polarized, though.

Re: Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare

#20

Post by Numberwang »

throwaway2209 wrote: post #17
Numberwang wrote: post #5

For once a reasonable article about Sweden. I doubt many of my fellow Swedes will agree, but those to blame in all this are the Sweden Democrats. By having a party of thuggish clowns (a point that cannot be argued) monopolize a single issue like immigration and making it impossible for real political parties to take steps in a more restrictive direction they have achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. The…

From what I have read it used to be very difficult to have a reasonable debate about restrictions without being labeled as a right wing racist. It seems to me that when moderates didn't dare to speak in public, the voters had only one choice. They may not agree with everything, but when it is the only major party that wants restrictions they have no choice.

Had the Sweden Democrats not existed the proper parties would have had the full spectrum of positions to chose from.

By being so reprehensible the Sweden Democrats gave the other parties no choice but to dismiss them entirely.

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