Sweden has the unique combination of a huge social insurance system -- biggest tax system in the world -- and relatively little market intervention of the regulatory type. Some conservative pundits like to point to the latter without acknowledging the former.

I think it's a stretch, Kathy, to say that Kenworthy's stats show a culture more like our own than not: the fact that 13% of the population is immigrants says nothing about the homogeneity of the other 87%. It's America's 87%, not it's influx of immigrants, that really speak to our far less homogenized culture. And that's before noting, as Kenworthy does, that there is decidedly low economic inequality within the Swedish population.

Don't get me wrong: I think those who dismiss the Swedes and their social policies miss the strengths that they have as a society... but still, the idea that their ideas and approaches can be applied to the far more diverse, and far less egalitarian American culture has always struck me as a mistake. That was hammered home even more clearly when I (finally) met my Swedish relatives and saw Sweden first hand. I think the most interesting questions in watching Sweden are in seeing how they adapt to the changing face of their immigrant population - whether they can hold onto a lot of the egalitarian notions they hold now - and how they continue to succeed by partly keeping the European Union at arm's length (they are the ones who, famously, rejected shifting to the Euro and the economic rules it entails).

I love my Swedish heritage, and I love Sweden. But as a model for America, its (still) largely homogeneous (and smaller) population and its overwhelming sense that everyone should be in the middle class are things that don't necessarily apply here. I wish they did. That - and those stats - will not make it so.

So lemme get this straight... Megan McArdle doesn't know what she's talking about?
The mind boggles.

Maybe this is where Susan Sarandan will go if McCain wins the presidency. It would suit her well. Lots of government, high taxes and socialism out the wazoo.

I'm not holding my breath, though. We heard the same promise from other Alec Baldwin and other Hollywood types.

It's so sad to see perfectly good neurons wasted on paying attention to Megan McAddled.

First off, Scandinavian societies including Sweden are characterized by many deep-seated features that may well tend to promote social democracy and the conformity/group-think it demands. Very important in this regard are the so-called Jentelagen or Laws of Jente, a tongue-in-cheek way of summarizing the cultural pressures to conform and give the collective more weight than many other European cultures do.

Such deep-seated cultural features are of course not transferrable even if specific policies might be.

Anyone trying to pontificate on Sweden has to take such complex cultural characteristics into account rather than treating Swedish society as a social-scientifically constructed "black box" out of which lessons can be drawn for other societies.

That "homogeneous population" line to explain away the success of European social welfare systems has been a cliche' on the right since at least the 1950s. It basically translates as "it will never work in the U.S. because we have black people."

Righties hate Europe because it's living proof that almost every crap idea they push is dead wrong.

Whether it works or not in Sweden, would you really want to give the U.S. government any more or power than it has already squandered in the hopes that it will distribute said money and power more equitably?

Didn't Megan McArlde say that kids in New York's public schools would be better served by spending their days at McDonald's? Her Marie Antoinette-style solution to education for people less privileged than herself is, "Let them eat vouchers."

The mystery for me is why anyone at TAPPED takes McArdle any more seriously than they would take the creeps over at The Corner.

This is not someone who is interested in a fruitful discussion of the issues . She simply endeavors to tell the rich and greedy what they want to hear.

You might wish to read the following article, K. Try harder next time, huh?

http://reason.com/blog/show/126884.html

Geier Pwn3d.

Aaron: Yeah, Kathy G would like to give more money and power to the federal government. Probably state and local governments too. Don't worry, it'll all be paid for by turning Buffett and Gates upsidedown by the ankles and shaking them for change.

Pretty much her whole philosophy can be summarized thusly: her favored groups (unions, government bureaucrats, etc.) absolutely deserved to be showered with the money hose and anyone who suggests otherwise is an uncaring elitist who only wants to line their own pockets with the misery of the working man. Oh and any economist that actually, you know, studies this stuff and comes to contrary conclusions is either a shill or suffers from publication bias. Or both.

The real question, for me, is whether she's better described as a "Google Pundit" or a practitioner of "Google fu." Personally, I prefer the latter, but given the term's association (to my limited knowledge) with Megan McArdle and Ms. G's strange obsession with Ms. M, it may be best to pick a different source for a term of ridicule.

"On the one hand, Sweden is more market-friendly than you might assume."

Gee, Ms G but aren't all markets just nefarious tricks employed by moneybags capitalists to rob the glorious proletariat of his rightful rewards? Or have your ditched the old rhetoric the barking seals back at "The G Spot" know and love?

Wow -- really got your arse handed to you by Reason on this one eh? By the way, according to the BEA (see http://www.bea.gov/regional /gsp/), the 2006 capita GDP in Louisiana was $34,702 (in 2000 dollars) while according to the BLS (see ftp://ftp.bls.gov /pub/special.requests/ ForeignLabor/flsgdp.txt) that of Sweden for the same year was $31,621 (in 2002 dollars -- so in fact the disparity is even greater).

Hmmmm doesn't look too good does it G when a socialist paradise can't even compete with a state comprised largely of swamps?

Kathy G/K.A. Geier is one of the absolute worst lefty bloggers I have come across. She's constantly blundering into topics she obviously knows nothing about. She has no facility with numerical or statistical data. And she constantly quotes cherry-picked and highly misleading (if not simply false) factoids and statistics carefully culled from other lefty bloggers.

The Reason piece is a pretty devastating rebuttal to Geier's nonsense about Sweden. But my bullshit detector went off as soon as I saw Geier try to equate "homogeneity" with the foreign-born share of the population and appeal to obscure and rather meaningless labor statistics ("share of working-age Swedish households with no employed adult") to try and rebut McArdle's points about Swedish labor and employment.

That Reason post is really going to put a serious crimp in your blogging career. I hope you can Google up a good rebuttal.

"Wow -- really got your arse handed to you by Reason on this one eh?"

Yes, she/he did get owned by Reason, big time.

No I did not follow the link to this bloggers site to figure out his/her sex.

Sweden already sucks and the Muslim problem is going to turn them into a hellhole. Wait till the demographics of a subculture that pumps out babies, distains gays and women, and hates other cultures gets the upper hand.

Ms. G:

Since it appears that you're not going to actually respond to either the Reason article nor the commentators who read it as a response to your post to be nothing less than a complete smackdown of your thinking, writing, topic choice, educational background and intelligence, I have to wonder if you're really helping the cause by participating in this whole blog thing.

I mean if your ideas stand up so poorly to actual data and scrutiny, shouldn't you worry that some more thoughtful lefties might be swayed by the actual data and scrutiny? And if so, aren't you actually shoving would-be compatriots into the "markets might not be perfect but they are much better than the alternative" camp? That would be bad, right?

At the very least, maybe you should email Megan and ask her to point out her posts which concern topics with which she's not as familiar as others (like, say European economies). That way, at least you can minimize the damage.

Concerned Lefty, I am sure that Ms G will slink away back to her own little blog "The G Spot" and keep pumping out more ill-thought out nonsense that is (at best) orthogonal to actual evidence or (more likely) in opposition to it. There she will bask in the approval of her small circle of barking seals and avoid any wider scrutiny of her ideas as that might make her actually learn something about what she writes about rather than just knocking words off shelves. The problem with Ms G is not that she is a lefty but that she is a rather poorly informed and innumerate one.

Dudez (and I use the term advisedly), concerning the Reason post, I didn't even know about it until today. I don't normally read Reason, and besides that my internet has been down for the past two days and I've been busy working on other stuff I promised Tapped.

The idea that I'm somehow quivering beneath my bedcovers because someone harshly criticized me on the internets is laughable. So is the alleged "demolition" of my blogging "career." I wasn't aware that it was a career, but what the hey.

Anyway, I've got some other interesting writing gigs lined up, so I'm not worried. Any attention is good attention, as far as I'm concerned. Especially this early in my blogging "career."

So keep up the attacks, guys -- believe it or not, they're more likely to help my "career" than hurt. To paraphrase my favorite president, I welcome your hatred.

And btw, I'm still waiting for She Who Shall Not Be Named to respond to this:
http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/here-we-go-agai.html

A few more specific responses:

1. Concerned Lefty, that is the most awesomely unpersuasive concern trolling I've ever seen in my life. Congratulations!

2. As for this idea that I'm "innumerate" and have "no facility with numerical or statistical data" -- that's an odd accusation. Specific examples, anyone? I'm quite comfortable with numbers -- have done grad-level coursework in statistics and econometrics, and passed the econometrics qualifying exam at my Ph.D. public policy program at University of Chicago.

But I guess I must be a dumb girl who can't do math, because all you manly fellows say so.

3. Finally, the idea that the I get all my facts and statistics from other bloggers is also rather odd. If you've been to my site, The G Spot, and read the posts I've done on subjects like the minimum wage, unions, monopsony, early childhood education, and paid family leave, you'll see that the studies I cite are peer-reviewed lit -- not other bloggers.

So how about you actually address the Reason article and its pretty thorough debunking of your entire post instead of just laying on the snark, and calling people trolls. Are you going to stand by what you wrote?

So, your response so far is "shut up jerks, i'm smart"?

Pretty pathetic.

There are plenty of specific criticisms of your work that the Reason article and some of the above "trolls" have made. Why not show everyone how smart you are by responding to them?

I absolutely stand by what I wrote. I may or may not respond to the Reason post, which makes some good points and other far more dubious ones. My internet has been down for the past two days and I'm on dial-up, which makes access to the materials I want to cite (if I do reply) difficult right now.

It's actually quite flattering that all of you are on tenterhooks waiting for my response! Is the suspense of it all just killing you?

And who did I tell to shut up, again? I actually welcomed y'all to bring it on! Did you read what I wrote?

The only reason I mentioned my academic credentials is that I was being attacked, ad hominem style, for being "innumerate." Not that anyone could cite any specific example where I *was* innumerate, though, but whatev.

Meanwhile, while you're all breathlessly awaiting my response, why don't you ask Megan why she never responded to my response to her post on early childhood education?

Love and kisses to you all in the meantime!

"Meanwhile, while you're all breathlessly awaiting my response, why don't you ask Megan why she never responded to my response to her post on early childhood education?"

I'm sure she has a made-up story about her internet being down or something too.

K.A. Geier,

I'm certainly not breathlessly awaiting your response to the Reason piece. It would just be more of your usual nonsense. The best thing about the Reason piece is not that it demolishes this particular post of yours, although it does, but how well it illustrates the broader truth that YOU JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. That applies to most everything I've seen you write about, not just Sweden.

Tom -- I'm sure you have a made-up story about having a life or something too.

JasonR -- I don't know "what the hell I'm talking about" about "most everything"? Citations, please?

I also breathlessly await your cites about how I have "no facility with statistics or numerical data." Though I'm none too hopeful about that one, either. IIRC, you're the person who made a total ass of yourself last year on a thread at Ezra's blog, when you made it clear you had not a clue about what an outlier was, or what statistical methodology entails.

Also, JR -- I'm lovin the all caps as well. Somehow, it's just so -- you.

Guess that dial-up works well enough to allow you to post sarcastic comments but not well enough to actually respond to any criticisms of your original blog.

Nice work. In your first guest post on this blog, you dedicate yourself to reopening your longstanding personal blog grudge match with Ms. McArdle. Then, you embarrass yourself by making that post a poorly-thought out, weakly-sourced attack which is so awful that a third party steps in on another blog to point out just how bad it is. Finally, when confronted, you have nothing to offer but backbiting and a frankly unbelievable story.

Also, just a tip: when deciding to pick a fight on someone else's blog, if you intend to be asked back, perhaps you should choose a target who isn't friendly IRL with the biggest name on the blog you are guesting on (as Megan is with Ezra). (I'm sure you've learned about their friendship in one of your many reconnaissance missions to Megan's blog, looking for a fight to pick).

You are wrong:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126884.html

Readers will be unsurprised to find out that a visit to Ms G's own little blog "The G Spot" shows that her "internets" (as she charmingly puts it) must be working now as she is back to blogging (there at least).

No sign of a rebuttal to the pasting she took from Reason though. I'm sure she'll not bother. After all the barking seals who people her blog don't seen to have noticed their idols humiliation.

I gotta say, you guys (guy?) have provided hours of fun and entertainment.

You'e devoting an inordinate amount of time and mental energy on little ole me. I'd almost suspect you don't have a life, or something.

I know you're trying desperately to get me to shut up, but nonesuch, you in particular disappoint me. C'mon, can't you do better than "Megan McArdle has friends in high places, you know"? Besides, if you read Ezra Klein's blog, you'd know he's linked to me a number of times and called my blog "the best new blog on the internets":
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=04&year=2008&base_name=psa_2

And Montague St. John, I am thrilled, thrilled! to hear I am an "idol"! With an entourage of "barking seals" yet!! (You mentioned it three times, so it's gotta be true). My Norma Desmond-esque delusions of grandeur have been fulfilled at last!!! Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!!!!

No, my internet is not up yet (Comcast sucks) so I'm doing this at the library. But I hate to disappoint my audience, so never fear, I will have a response to the Moynihan post. It might not go up until Monday, though -- I owe the Prospect two more posts and I might hold that one for them.

In the meantime, I suggest y'all back to wanking off to your stash of Ann Coulter pictures. It's a far more productive use of your time.

"In the meantime, I suggest y'all back to wanking off to your stash of Ann Coulter pictures. It's a far more productive use of your time."

Geez, you're so wrong that even your ad hominems wind up as straw men, seeing as most of the people here are libertarians, not Ann Coulter-worshipping conservatives.

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The Sweden seems to be a wonderful country,I think democratic problems will be solve quickly the people should patient of working out there problems by themselves.If a person is doing a good others should appreciate him and do the same for others.But will there be solutions from people who pulls out unwanted problems.Sweden country people its all up to you.
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