The Dark Side(s) of Swedish Prosperity

I hadn't known this aspect of the Swedish safety net and economic growth.  It's pretty grim. Put these numbers against a background of about 5,000,000 Swedes in 1930. So their 63,000 sterilisations, forced and semi-forced, would be about the same as 2,000,000 Americans sterilised because they were considered unfit in that time period. I will confirm that women who were long-term residents of state psychiatric institutions were sterilised in those times, and similar things likely happened at the Laconia State School for the developmentally disabled. I'm not throwing up my hands in horror and saying Americans would never dream of such a thing.  Other states may have done it more than NH, also. But we aren't getting close to those numbers. I'm handwaving in imprecise but entertaining fashion that it's 10% of that.  Call it 20% to be cautious.

I don't want to say that Swedes aren't lovely people, who try to be kind and responsible, who produce a great many engineers, and generally work at getting along with others. They are 25% of my genetic heritage, after all. But this is something of a dark side here.

I have mentioned before that part of the Swedish economic miracle was about 20% of its population, largely the poorest quintile, moving to America and Canada from 1865-1920. The country largely stayed out of WWI until the end and were entirely neutral in WWII, so defense spending was very low. Add that to the sterilisation of about 3% of each year's births* (delayed about two decades, after the government can see they are unfit), and you can see why around 1970 they said "Let's go full socialist!"  That lasted about 20 years, and since then they have backed off, and even passed us in economic freedom in some ways.  They have much better school choice, for example.

So let's propose that to our most racist, anti-socialist, deplorables, eh?  We will gradually send 20% of our population to other places over the next 50 years, with an emphasis on young people who don't have much money. land, or education.** Then we will harden the border behind them as they leave, so that almost no one comes in.  Now we will carefully cull about 3% of the 20-year olds every year. No wait, half the population is male!  Is it 6% of each year's females? (No vasectomies then, I don't think.) Have I misplaced a decimal point somewhere? Holy crap, this can't be accurate. We won't spend much on defense for over a century, and then we will look around at who we've got and say "Socialism.  We can afford it. Medicine, day care, maternity leave, housing - all of it." Hell, even the Cato Institute would throw in the towel.

And then we'll look down on all the countries who aren't as socialist as we are.

*1,500sterilisations/year, 50,000 births/year
**Americans might notice that the young and ambitious, even if poor and uneducated, might not be the one's we want to send, however.