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