Government policies

now i'm just interested in your thoughts.

cause it seems a lot of people really really hate having to spend their tax dollars to the poor and the sick, the needy and the disabled.

so why are your thoughts like this??

Here is something on Sweden's policies..



http://newpol.org/content/ups-and-downs-swedish-welfare-state-general-trends-benefits-and-caregiving



Once one of Europe's poorest countries, in the post World War II decades Sweden evolved into a slum-free, affluent, egalitarian full employment welfare state, with a strong commitment to work for all and women's equality -- the poster child of advanced welfare states. Income differences narrowed dramatically and poverty was nearly eliminated. Labor-management cooperation, high union density, high taxes and (except for a few years) Social Democratic political dominance, were the norms.[1] A strong commitment to the welfare state and jobs for all eventually cut across political party lines.

Full employment was a national ethos and the top priority of economic policy. Swedes considered jobs the key to a normal life and the economic foundation of the welfare state. Sweden's benefit programs were developed to meet virtually all contingencies and include, among others: pensions; support for the unemployed that includes benefits, job training, retraining and job creation; disability and sickness benefits; health care; parental leave; child allowances; financial assistance for families with disabled children; and decent housing for all. Social provision of high quality services for the elderly, children, the ill and disabled greatly expanded the public sector and paid jobs for women. Swedish women have among the highest labor force participation rates in all the OECD countries.

Going against the trend on a continent plagued by high unemployment, until the 1990s, unemployment averaged barely 2 percent; 3 percent, an extreme rarity, was political suicide and could and did help topple a government.

The Unravelling

That's the Sweden that was. But in the early 1990s, Sweden was hit by the worst economic slump since the 1930s, with 3 years of falling output, the rebirth of mass unemployment, a ballooning budget deficit, and draconian cuts and rule changes in income benefits and services. These started under a conservative-led coalition and continued under the Social Democrats.[2]

What went wrong? Critics claim that the welfare state had simply become unsustainable and its cost had sent the budget deficit soaring. Yet shortly before the slump, Sweden still had full employment, a strong welfare state and a hefty budget surplus. To understand what happened, consider the background: the growing power of Swedish business, pressures from globalization and the race to join the European Union, with its requirements for low budget deficits and inflation but none for low unemployment. Neoliberalism had penetrated even the Social Democratic Party. The emphasis was on free markets, deregulation, and privatization. Perhaps as a consequence, the national government has increasingly thrust responsibility for health and social services onto local government. Also, a sweeping tax reform favored the rich and cut deeply into government revenues. Financial deregulation had sparked a wildly speculative real estate boom and a related near collapse of the banking system. These policies required an expensive government bailout, a stubborn, futile and costly defense of an overvalued krona that pushed interest rates briefly to 500 percent and helped to turn a recession into a depression that coincided with an international slump. Above all was the abandonment of the full employment priority.[3]

Unemployment

After a half century of full employment, the most striking change in Sweden's welfare state was the resurgence of mass unemployment in the 1990s.[4] It was worsened and prolonged by an austerity program that depressed demand and cut deeply into public sector jobs and thus directly affected the availability and quality of social services. In 1994, after a three-year rule by a conservative-led coalition, the Social Democrats returned and were strongly driven to meet strict criteria for admission to the EU's monetary union. In the 1990s, official unemployment hovered around 8 percent for five straight years. Participation in the labor force as well as the proportion and number of people employed and the number of public sector jobs fell. Even now, in 2006, and despite a booming economy, these figures are below what they were in the pre-crisis era,[5] and currently (February, 2006), the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent.*[6]

Recent budgets signal a somewhat more expansionary fiscal policy. With an eye toward the upcoming September 2006 election, there have been modest increases with an emphasis on more jobs and increased social welfare spending.[7]

The Social Democrats have a parliamentary minority and must rely on support from the Left and Green parties. The government still operates under neo-liberal norms. It has a self-imposed 2 percent of GDP budget surplus over a business cycle,** even more restrictive than the EU budget requirement! And it has had self-imposed expenditure caps on the whole budget since 1997. These hold down spending, even when there are surpluses. Expenditure caps have been declining as a proportion of GDP.[8] In addition, countries in the EU must not only adhere to budget deficit limits set by Brussels, but they must also include expenditures by local governments in their national calculations. An important consequence is that since 2000 Stockholm has imposed balanced budget requirements on local governments, and expenditures for health, social services and education have been held down.[9]

Income Distribution

Sweden has a very egalitarian distribution of income, though less so than in the past. Looking at disposable income, inequality dropped sharply in the 1970s, but has been rising since the beginning of the 1980s. The long run trend towards more inequality has continued, with some slight ups and downs.[10] The highest gini-coefficient -- a measure of inequality -- of disposable income was in 2000, mainly the result of capital gains that occurred as a result of the peaking of the stock market.[11] It has narrowed since then, but it is still markedly higher than it was in the 1990s.[12] That Sweden had the least income inequality of any industrialized country in 1980 and still does is because other countries have also increased their income inequality.[13]

so no one interested in politics and your own views on what you think of the homeless in your country and welfare institutions??

I know I sound like i'm on the Obama camp. lol

i'm all for Obama Care and a lot of Hollywood actors/actresses voted for Obama too.

Meryl Streep I heard online spent her speech on how awful Trump is. lol

Poor Meryl Streep.....she supported Hilary Clinton camp for so long. 😢