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Business Daily: Sweden - a Bit Too Equal?

27/08/2014

Sweden - a Bit Too Equal?

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Sweden - a Bit Too Equal?

Sweden's social model, with its high taxes and benefits, is not without its critics

Sweden is one of the world's most equal societies, yet some feel the high taxes and large welfare state that entails have gone too far, as Manuela Saragosa discovers in Stockholm.

Sweden is famed for its welfare state. But the country's social model has its critics, as Manuela Saragosa finds out in Stockholm.

One such sceptic, Malin Sahlen, an economist at the right-wing thinktank Timbro, explains why she thinks too much equality is a bad thing.
Manuela also hears from finance minister Anders Borg, who defends the country's high taxes, although his government has been scaling back the welfare state. And while Sweden may have one of the world's lowest rates of poverty, there are still plenty of poor as Manuela discovers when she speaks to Kavian Ferdowsi, who runs a soup kitchen at the Klara Church in Stockholm.

Also in the programme, television presenter Li Pamp of the Swedish Architecture and Design Centre explains what makes the country's style so distinctive. And Goran Kecklund, deputy director of the Stress Research Institute at the University of Stockholm, reveals that the Swedish lifestyle is not as laid back as you might imagine.

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