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– Hi everybody, I'm Bill Whittle. You know, we hear so much of what a socialist Utopia Sweden is, we hear it every day from our liberal counterparts. So we figured we'd see how right they are. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Lars Anders Johansson, who's a Swedish journalist. He's a former political editor for the newspaper, (speaking in foreign language) and he's also reported for Swedish TV 4 and SVT. He now works with Timbro, it's a free market organization in Sweden. He had a horrific trip coming over here, 30 hours, 25 hours, and I think you look fresh as a daisy, and thanks very much for being here Lars Anders. – Thank you for having me. – There's a couple things I'd like to talk about Sweden. Sweden, in America, is held up by the progressive left as the kind of society that they would like America to be. They want cradle to grave benefits, they want all of the maternity leave, they want the whole socialist package. And you make the case that this is far from this idealized Utopia that it's presented to us over here. Can you give us the summary of how that works? – First of all, conservatives like to think that Sweden's some kind of socialist nightmare. That isn't the truth either because Sweden is a very well functioning society in a lot of aspects. But when leftists argue that Sweden functions well because of leftist policies, social democratic policies during the last four or five decades, I would argue that it's functioning well despite those policies. 'Cause it was a functioning society long before that and I think it has to do with we have strong, functioning institutions since centuries in Sweden. And you can only have that in, you can only have that kind of policy in a country that are so conformist as Sweden are. – It is perhaps the most, well certainly prior to this immigration wave, but Sweden seems to be the most socially cohesive society on the planet. It's almost as homogeneous as Japan is in a way, again prior to the recent immigration waves. And that sense of identity is what has made the Swedish socialism model as successful as it is. That's not something that can be exported, necessarily, right? I mean, what you're basically saying is that is that essential Swedish character that drives that social welfare state, but that's not something that can be exported to the United States. – I think it's easier to implement that kind of social democratic policies in a very homogeneous society then in a diverse society, that is correct. – One of the things I was reading, for example, is that in Finland, which is also, by the way, I think the Danish Prime Minister said to Bernie Sanders, "Stop using us as an example of socialism. "We're not socialists, we're trying to make "some money here." But just as a little example, I thought it was a very telling example, they said that one of the reasons that the social welfare state works well in Scandinavia is for things like there's a lot of automated trains and so on and that in America, unions would simply just not allow this to happen. You know, they'd get involved, they'd want the rates, there's a big fundamental difference between these two societies in terms of how this kind of thing could be implemented even if you wanted it to. – Well, Swedes tend to look at themselves, or ourselves, as the most normal people on Earth and all you other people, you are extremists– – One way or another? – Yes, but when you look at, for example, the world values survey, you'll see that the truth is exactly the opposite. Swedes are extremists in the way that we are the most secularized people on earth, we are the most socially progressive people and so on. So it's kind of hard to implement the same policies on that kind of population and the diverse population like that in America. – Well, we are certainly seeing large changes in Sweden and all throughout Europe and so I kind of would like to talk about some of these changes because it looks like this model of the perfect social welfare state is falling apart. Now, if you'll just give me a moment, I'll just set something up here. My take as an American conservative would be that, would be twofold, that number one, one of the reasons Sweden can afford so many benefits for their people is because they don't have to pay for the kind of defense that can stop the Russians. Essentially, American tax payers are paying the bulk of Swedish defense from what used to be the Soviet Union and– – [Lars] We're being (mumbles) the same, the same– – [Bill] Yeah. So you don't have to cover that kind of defense bill and that frees up more money, but I think the main point is, and this ties into the Islamic immigration issue, is that a social welfare state is, essentially, a Ponzi scheme. You can have four people giving a little more of their income to support one person, right? And as long as the bottom of the pyramid continues to grow, as long as the population continues to grow, you can have cradle to grave benefits for the top. But if your population is declining, you can't have one person working to support four people for their entire lives. And so, therefore, since the Swedish birth rate is well below replacement rates, you have to import workers to keep the bottom of this socialist pyramid going and these workers have not really been assimilated very well. Is that a fair statement do you think? – First, one word on the defense issue. During the Cold War, Sweden was one of the most militarized countries on Earth. I think on the fourth place or something, per capita. So during the most socialist years, the Swedish government spent a lot on defense. – I stand corrected. – So, but it's correct now that we spend almost nothing on defense and we are not able to defend ourselves. So the Fins, they are quite angry about us because Sweden is a vacuum in the Baltic Sea region when it comes to defense policy. But I don't think that has to do with the welfare state. – Okay, fair enough. – But the problem with the immigration is that it is immigration to welfare and not to jobs. So I don't think that you are right, that you need people to immigrate to keep them working in the socialist model because they are not working, that is the problem. – But that's the failure, right? I mean, the idea would be, certainly, the idea at the beginning was, "We have a declining birth rate, "we need new workers in order to keep these "social benefits coming. "We need more people working at the bottom "than we have at the top," so these immigrants are brought in as workers, but they're not only not working, they're actually pulling resources out of the state and it seems like this is gonna collapse fairly quickly. – Actually, I think that the immigration that we see now, it's different towards the immigration we saw during the '60s and '70s, when workers came from Greece and Italy and from Finland and so on and almost everybody got a job immediately. – Right, right. – But now, it takes around seven years for half of the immigrants to get into the labor market. And that has to do with the, we have a very regulated labor market in Sweden. So those policies collide. On the one hand, we have this big welfare system and a regulated labor market. On the other hand, we have this open borders policy that every asylum seeker should get to Sweden. But the system don't cooperate with each other. – Well, let's talk about one of the things that you seem to specialize in and that's how some of these Swedish policies affect actual business. We know for, in Europe, certainly in countries like Sweden and even in France, it's very, very difficult decision to hire a person because once you hire them it's so difficult to fire them. Here in America, if we have a boom, we can take on some staff and if it slows down, we just let them go and, you know, that's the way it goes. So can you tell us a little bit how the left wing policies in Sweden have suppressed Sweden's economic growth and while it certainly appears to be a very egalitarian society, would it not be a lot richer and wouldn't people be a lot better off if so many of these kind of legislative, left wing restrictions hadn't been put into place? – Of course, Sweden would be richer if people who get to Sweden, to live in Sweden, got into the labor market as soon as they got there instead of living off the welfare systems. So, it's obvious. – We used to have, here in America, the lowest corporate tax rate in the world, now I think we're number 24 or something. It's cheaper to go to Ireland, the tax rate in Ireland is lower than it is here. How do you think that kind of heavy tax burden, I think Denmark is the most heavily taxed, highest tax rates in the world. What does that do to business and innovation? What does it do to the ability to not only produce jobs but to create entirely new industries? – Well, we have decreased the tax burdens during the last two periods of government, but now I think they will raise it again because the system is shaken right now. So what was the question again (laughs)? – What do these policies do, you know, you were talking about it takes seven years to get somebody in the labor force because it's so hard to hire somebody, 'cause it's so hard to fire somebody and all the benefits. How does that suppress wealth creation in Sweden? – Well, when the companies are to pay high taxes and they are afraid to hire people because they can't get rid of them when demand is shrinking, well, people don't get hired and then you've got those minimum wages that (stutters), make low productive labor force. They are not hired. So if you are not very skilled, then you won't get a job in Sweden. And that's a problem when people come from countries with low education and so on. – Well, as a voice for the free market and all of these economic individual liberties in Sweden, what do you see in America that you find alarming? 'Cause I wake up every day and I just, you know, I just want to jump off a bridge. I mean, everything in this country seems to be heading in a direction away from what made America such an economic dynamo. Do you see warning signs in America? And what kind of things might you say to the American people in terms of, because we're being sold that this is the way to go. – Well, the thing about regulations and centralization is that once you start, once you give away power to the government, it's very hard to get it back. And that is on the labor market and all other areas in society. And so, if you want to keep individualism and freedom then you should be very careful to give away individual power to the government. – Yeah, in the US, once a federal agency is in place, it becomes immortal. NASA spent $14 billion in 2006 and we were flying four space shuttles and the spent $14 billion this year and we're not flying anybody. It's a standing army, it just never goes away. The budgets just keep going up and more and more money goes into this hole and it's not used for investment, it's not used to start new businesses, it's not used for business loans, it just goes sunk into these bureaucracies and it's just kind of a standing army of jobs for people who are pretty mediocre. – And, you know, it's a slippery slope as well. Back in the '70s, which is considered like the Golden Age of Socialism according to the leftists in Sweden, the social democratic government actually tried to impose a system where the government should by shares in the major companies in Sweden so that, and those shares should be given to the labor unions so eventually the labor unions were supposed to own the major enterprises in Sweden. Socialization of the market. – Doesn't work very well in terms of competition, does it? It kind of stifles a lot of innovation. – It's such an extreme policy that the communist government in Yugoslavia turned it down, but they tried to implement it. It was like Sweden's very conformist and we tend to head everybody in the same direction at the same time. And the '70s was the most extreme century. Fortunately, it turned around in the other half of the '80s, but it's still a warning, I think. – Maybe we could shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about some of the cultural things going on over there. Because American observers who are paying attention have noticed a sea change in European attitudes towards immigration within the last six months. Especially with this latest refugee crisis. We're seeing things over here that we never thought we'd see. You can't buy a gun in Austria. Every gun in Austria's gone off the shelves. People are arming themselves, they want borders now. They're sealing borders within the European Union. They're demanding, you know, some kind of protection against this. We hear that in Sweden a couple of these refugee centers were burned, apparently? Sweden, from the outside, I certainly don't mean to tell you what Swedes think, that's why you're here. But from across the ocean here, it seems to me that Sweden takes enormous national pride in their fairness, their generosity, their decency, and their willingness to accept immigrants. But these immigrants are not being assimilated into Swedish society and they are changing Swedish society and when we hear things over here that Sweden's become the rape capital of Europe, and that the news will not report that the people that committed these crimes were Muslim immigrants, or whatever the case may be, do you feel that when the elites suppress what people know to be true, there's a coiled spring in that every day this spring gets a little more strength behind it and then something, something's gonna change, right? – It's very confusing to live in Sweden when the government one day says that there's no limit on the immigration, we can take how many asylum seekers (stutters) will come. And just a few months later, they are planning to close down the bridge connection to Denmark because they say that Sweden can't take it anymore, the same government. So they are not talking openly about what's going on, that's true. – Can you tell me what, this is actually the most, of all the things over there, this is the thing that interests me the most. Can you tell me what it's like for the average Swedish citizen who's been raised and who's national identity is immigration, diversity, multi-culturalism, this is a religion, essentially, it's essentially a religion that's been imbued in them from birth and at the same time, they're being told that women probably shouldn't wear miniskirts or dress so provocatively and maybe you should walk together in groups. Isn't there gotta be a kind of a cognitive dissonance between what you were told to believe and what you want to believe, versus what you're seeing on the street with this, you know, this rampant crime from a very small part of the population? – Well, to understand the Swedish view on multi-culturalism, you've got to understand the ideological foundation. 'Cause the authorities since the '70s has promoted the idea that the Swedes and the immigrants have an equal responsibility to integrate into the new society that will occur in the future, which is a multi-cultural society. It's the same idea as in Great Britain and Germany, I think. – But that doesn't seem to be working out so well. 'Cause these people don't seem to be integrating. On the contrary, and of course, as we need to say, as we say in this country as well, we're not talking about the vast majority of people who are peaceful, hardworking people come there, but there is a large immigrant radicalized Muslim immigration problem in Europe and starting here as well. They're not talking about integrating, they're not talking about merging to form some new society that nobody looks like. They are calling for Sharia Law, they are calling, they have a cultural norm that says, "Well, you know, if you rape somebody "and she's kufar, well, she was asking for it, "she wasn't wearing a burka." This is not, certainly, this cannot be what Sweden had in mind when they started this process. – We got big problems with segregation in Sweden: ethnic segregation, economic segregation with large areas around the big cities where people are living outside of the labor market and in some aspects outside the society. And people who are not getting getting in touch with the labor market, they have no jobs, how could they integrate into society? It's a big problem. So, yes. – What do you think the future's going to be in terms of this trend if it continues? I believe I heard the Swedish Prime Minister say during, there were a recent set of riots and he basically said, "This can't continue, "that this is destroying the country." Where do you think it's gonna go? – Well, we have to find a way to get those people to get jobs because it won't work. – Do you think it's just a jobs issue? – No, it's not just a jobs issue, but without jobs, (chuckles) nothing will change. And then we have the problem, I don't know, have you read Paul Collier's Exodus, the book about migration? – No, I haven't but I've heard about it. – Yeah, we've got the diaspora problem that when you've got a diaspora, the great cultural differences from the majority, it tend not to integrate into society. And the larger the differences between the diaspora, for example, the Somalia diaspora and the majority in society, the harder it will get to integrate and the larger the diaspora gets the harder to integrate and it will continue to grow because people bring over their relatives, of course. – Yeah. I'd like to get your take on something, the European progressive multi-cultural model is the idea that you could set up a country where everybody brings in their own ethnic groups, they stay in their own ethnic groups, they aren't one new cultural. There's a Muslim population, there's an Irish population, whatever, and they all live together in peace and harmony. This doesn't seem to be working anywhere in the world. The American model's almost the exact inverse of that. The American model says, if you are willing to come here and renounce your, not only your former citizenship, but renounce your former animosities. If you're gonna have a pizza shop and you're an Indian, and you've got a guy next door who's got a shoe store and he's a Pakistani, we don't expect you guys to be at war with each other over here, you're new people here now. This melting pot idea is the antithesis of multi-culturalism it says, "Yes, by all means, bring the flavors of it "but we all agree that we're gonna form a society," and the core conservative belief and I think the core American belief is if a person comes here legally and they pass the citizenship test and they raise their right hand, they are as American as somebody who got off of the Mayflower. – But that's the problem with combining (stutters) big welfare system with open borders. Because migration to welfare won't lead to integration in society– – [Bill] That's right. – But migration to jobs will do exactly that. – That's right, it's the difference between a refugee and an immigrant. An immigrant makes a decision to give up the old life in order to come to a place that they want to live and adjust to the new society, while refugees, whether political or economic, are people who, basically, just running but they're bringing their old values with them and they're looking kind of for a handout. – Yeah, and that's, that won't work in the future. – No, I don't think so either. Final question for you. What do you think the future of the European Union is going to be? There was just a year or two ago with the Greece, you know, default there was enormous financial pressures on the EU and in a short form, the Germans don't want to work their tails of in order for the Greeks to sit around on the beach and there's an enormous economic problem. But with this most recent wave of immigrants there is now a sense of closed borders between these European states, do you think the European Union has a future? – Well, it depends on which direction it takes because the European Union has, for some decades now, been moving towards some kind of big welfare state. I don't know if you have heard about the agricultural policy? 40% of the EU's budget goes to subsidize, goes to subsidize agriculture in the European countries. And I think if that will continue we will see more examples like that in Greece.

The free movement inside the Union and the inner market are great achievements and, unfortunately, I think we will see the end of those achievements soon with border controls and everything and if that happens, I'm afraid that it will be not, I don't think the European Union will have a future. – Yeah, if you can no longer get on a train in Calais and ride to Great Britain because immigrants are going down the tunnel and you have to basically stop, then it's no longer a federal union in the way the United States is. I don't have to stop at the border with Arizona in order to get to Arizona, it's a whole different set of problems. Well, Lars Anders, it's been absolutely enlightening and it's always good to know there are people over there who have a different view over things and it's been a pleasure hearing your viewpoints here today. Thanks for joining us. – Thank you for having me. – Well, we'll continue to tell you things that the mainstream media doesn't here at PJTV, so for everyone here at PJTV, I'm Bill Whittle, thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (ethereal music)