The World’s Most Innovative Economies

Perhaps someone can give a recent update on this?

It's got China wedged between Canada and Poland. On the one hand, on average this is probably correct: there are vast swathes of inland China that are undoubtedly quite stultifying and wouldn't rank highly on any "innovation" metric. On the hand, if you're interested in this kind of innovation, then what does rural China have to do with anything? The innovations happening in Shanghai and Beijing and Shenzhen and Chengdu are very innovative indeed, and ought to rank near the top of any global list. Certainly much higher than anything you could find in Poland or Canada (meaning no disrespect).

I'd suggest that it's problematic for a ranking like this to even be based on countries. Countries, per se, don't produce innovation: urban economies do. A ranking of innovative cities would be a much more interesting and realistic metric.

Same shits been going on in Norway for decades.

In addition, this was an explicitly stated goal in the creation of the Swedish welfare state. The Social Democratic "philosophy" underlying it goes by the name of "Folkhemmet"[1], "the people's home". The idea is that in order to progress to a more modern economy, the state should take over the more traditional support systems previously provided by family/community/religion/etc. when it comes to things like healthcare, education and taking care of the poor.

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

Your education prospects now depend on which school you go to, especially with blatant grade inflation. My friends are putting their kids in queue for elite elementary school the day after they are born. Even if you can make it to college the traditional route you'll have trouble finding an apartment and keeping your student benefits.

Healthcare is a complicated system of public funded private institutions that regularly and willingly violate the law on things like time before you get to see a specialist. I always used to like the Swedish healthcare system until I realized I've always visited the same doctors that I knew.

Unemployment benefits doesn't apply (or atleast appeal) to former students or short contract workers these days. You have to go the welfare office and even they have no problem denying you means. You'll probably won't have much job security anyways since you'll be hired as a contractor.

Housing, especially in Stockholm, is a mess that won't be solved anytime soon. It makes the effects of everything worse. Commute time, work-life balance, even the weather.

I honestly think Sweden is one of the best countries in the world, but it's not a good deal anymore. If you got established ten years ago and could go to school before rampant youth unemployment, got an apartment before housing prices skyrocketed, know which doctors to go to, get a stable job where it makes sense to join the union etc. then it's great. You can study at university for seven years, some of them abroad, work for a few years, go on paternity leave for the better part of a year, move abroad for some time, then come back to your stable job again, leave your employer and get hired back as a consultant and if you don't find work go on unemployment. All this while you make a workers salary in housing appreciation, take vacations three times a year and get to use your parent country house in the summers.

Bottom line is that increasingly only the rich can afford to take advantage of the social safety net these days and I think it's starting to show even with things like startups. It was apparent very early that companies like Spotify, Klarna, Mojang etc. would be successful. I don't see many of these types of early successes anymore (but that might be my own ignorance of course).

There's increasingly nothing special about Sweden.