Sweden: Lessons for America? A personal exploration by Johan Norberg | movie | 2018 | Official Clip - video Dailymotion

It's been suggested that Americans would be better off if the United States was more like Sweden. Do the Swedes know som | dG1fVVpFUjVmdTZqVmc

Transcript

00:00It is no exaggeration to say that Sweden experienced a non-violent liberal revolution starting

00:10around 1840.

00:11Chytenius' ideas and Goethe's megaphones set the stage.

00:16Then came along a young aristocratic politician named Johan August Gripenstedt.

00:21He put these ideas into political action.

00:23For ten years as finance minister, he pushed the establishment and transformed Sweden's

00:28economic system.

00:31This was the man that indeed created the new open economy in Sweden, the market economy.

00:39He abolished the old system of guilds and regulations and he created the institution

00:46of the modern economy.

00:48And Sweden had fantastic economic expansion for a hundred year period, characterized by

00:54free markets and minimal state intervention in the economy.

01:00Sweden went basically from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest

01:06countries in the world.

01:09We were growing in wealth and health.

01:12Between 1850 and 1950, Sweden's per capita GDP increased almost sevenfold.

01:18Its mortality rate was reduced by 85 percent, and life expectancy increased by an amazing

01:2426 years.

01:27Sweden was now one of the world's richest countries.

01:29It had one of the most open and deregulated economies in the world, and taxes were lower

01:33than in the United States and most other Western countries.

01:37Sweden managed to transform its impoverished fate and build the beautiful cities and landscapes

01:42we know today.

01:44And you know what happened after that?

02:18Lower taxes, minimal government, free markets, private ownership.

02:24Then in the middle of the 20th century, slowly the welfare state was introduced, the welfare

02:31state which Sweden is so famous for.