So? You think that everyone pays the same % of taxes in Sweden? Those high taxes make it possible for Sweden to offer free education, healthcare and social security to citizens. There is a reason why the Nordic countries rank so high in happiness and human development indices. You can check the tax brackets here.
That’s in large part because countries like sweden are highly educated and ethnically undiverse. Sweden is beginning to have issues due to outside parties being introduced and becoming what’s known as “the freeloader problem”. I’m not saying that socialism can’t work, but you have to look at the situation it’s being introduced in. The United States is in a completely different situation than the scandinavian countrys. That’s the issue. Cultural differences, differences in position in world affars, differences in population size and diversity, the list goes on and on.
I double major in economics and energy managment, and I had a professor that more or less spent a month comparing and contrasting the US and Sweden and how and why certan economic and social policies work and don’t work in both places. It’s a huge cultural difference in large part. Many of the problems that the US has are completely unfathomable for Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. You gotta look at context in a matter of both the social and econ aspects, and in a country as large as the united states, the freeloader problem(among other things) would be utterly crippling and end up ruining the country.
Does the US spend too much money on trivial things? Absolutly. Should it spend it’s money in other ways? Yea probably. Does the entire government need to be audited and funds be spent more efficantly? forget yes. Will the united states be crippled by high tax rates? Ab so loving lutly, especially as the US’s middle class shrinks and the upper middle class dramatically increses while the lower and lower middle class remain at the same or largly similar rates as they’ve been the last 50 years(ajusted for inflation)