this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
466 points (93.6% liked)

World News

38578 readers
1725 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Sweden is infamous for having some of the highest taxes in the world, and yet the country's tax agency is still one of Sweden's most trusted institutions.

The Swedish attitude towards tax contrasts sharply with many countries where taxes can be a deeply divisive issue. We investigate what this says about Swedish society and how the popularity of the welfare state might survive growing challenges in the future.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sweden has historically been ethnically close to homogeneous (until the 20th century, life in Scandinavia was hard, and few wanted to move there) and has a relatively flat social hierarchy, meaning that redistributive taxation to fund services is popular (after all, if everyone needs a specific service, having the government provide it through taxes is an economy of scale). America, meanwhile, was founded on racial slavery, which resulted in a racial hierarchy (i.e., the definition of who counts as “white” shifting over time), and there’s a non-negligible proportion of voters who would resent being taxed extra to help lift those below them in this hierarchy closer to their level.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tell that to the native Sami peoples.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

While your point remains somewhat valid, it's not actually valid to say "native" in the same sense as "native Americans".

There were a whole bunch of tribes in the area. Some were more influenced by Europe (swedes, Norwegians) and some less (Finns, Estonian, Sami). Surprise to no one, these tribes living in the southern regions were more successful (easier weather), so they expanded northward and thus rolled over the semi-nomadic Sami in a very nasty, but extremely historically common human way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

it’s not actually valid to say “native” in the same sense as “native Americans”.

It actually is, it's just that Swedes are just as native as Sami. Which is why usually we're talking about autochthone minorities in Europe (or some similar term), and if you see a European unironically using terms like "BIPOC" you can be sure they haven't used their brain in a while because the "I" in that abbreviation is literally the overwhelming majority of the population.