"Today, Sweden has one of the world's highest ratios of dollar billionaires, and is home to numerous "unicorn" startup companies worth at least $1 billion (£742 million), including the payment platform Klarna and audio streaming service Spotify. The abolition of the wealth tax ( förmögenhetsskatten) 20 years ago is part of this story - along with, in the same year, the introduction of generous tax deductions for housework and home improvement projects. Two decades on, the number of Swedish homes that employ cleaners is one marker of it being an increasingly two-tier country."
""Us pensioners can see the destruction of what we built, what was started when we were small children," Kjerstin, 74, explained. "I was born after the end of the war and built this society through my life, together with my fellow citizens. [But] with taxes being lowered and the taking away of our social security ... we're not building anything together now.""
Sweden has shifted from a historically egalitarian society to greater wealth concentration, with one of the world's highest ratios of dollar billionaires and numerous unicorn startups such as Klarna and Spotify. The abolition of the wealth tax twenty years ago and simultaneous introduction of generous tax deductions for housework and home improvement have contributed to rising economic stratification. An increase in homes employing cleaners marks a more two-tier society. The welfare state has gradually shrunk, reducing collective social security. Pensioners in southern Stockholm express regret and observe the erosion of the social project they helped build. The Gini coefficient has risen from about 0.2 in the 1980s to around 0.3 today (EU average 0.29).
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]