After 20 years of building the world's greatest welfare state, Sweden finds most of the original problems unsolved and, in some cases, grown greater instead of fading away.The costly welfare and educational reforms have not curbed such social ills as crime, alcoholism and drug addiction. Sweden's crime rate has doubled since 1950, with juvenile crime largely responsible.Now you hear this comment from a high police official: . . . “It has become increasingly clear over the past 10 years that the welfare state we live in is anything but an ideal society.”Housing subsidies are one of the achievements of which the social planners are most proud.Yet housing today is one of the worst of the messy situations troubling Sweden's welfare state.Young married couples often are forced to live with relatives. Many face a wait of 10 years before they can have homes of their own.Workers in the lower and middle income brackets pay in taxes twice as much as Americans in the same brackets.In this welfare state, wages and salaries have risen even faster than prices, but higher taxes have swallowed most of the gains in pay.Wage inflation now is beginning to undermine the competitive position of some industries.Widespread discontent over high taxes, inflation, the housing shortages and other flaws in the welfare state led to a setback for the Labor Government . . . in last autumn's elections.Sweden's top Communist . . . has greater popularity than any Communist has ever before enjoyed in Sweden.As the Labor Government moves leftward to meet the Communist challenge, it loses support from business and other “moderate” elements.So when you look behind the facade of Sweden's “Great Society” you find a disturbing picture—a picture of developing crisis, not one of social problems solved. Here in Stockholm, suggestions are heard that the U. S. Congress, inundated with new ideas and new plans for bigger and broader benefits to be financed by taxpayers, might take a long, hard look at what has happened in Sweden.
In 1944, the socialists said they would solve the unemployment problem by building government factories. Not only this, they promised to use the profits from these socialist enterprises to build highways, schools, hospitals, and to finance better social welfare measures generally.Of course, in the overall picture, there were no profits — rather there were colossal losses. Thus the welfare program had to be financed from taxation.Under the socialist government, our provincial debt went from $150 million to $600 million. During the period more than 600 completely new taxes were introduced. 650 other taxes were increased.All throughout their regime, the socialists tended to use compulsion. Repeatedly, their boards and agencies were manned by some social theorists, who told businessmen how their businesses should be run.Mr. Chairman, 20 years ago, the socialists promised to make Saskatchewan a Mecca for the working man. Instead, we saw the greatest mass exodus of people out of an area, since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.Mr. Chairman — Is there a lesson to be learned from Saskatchewan's experiences? I think there is—a rather horrible lesson.If there are any Americans who think that socialism is the answer, I wish they would come to Saskatchewan and study what has happened to our province. Twenty years of socialism gave my province—industrial stagnation;—retarded development;—oppressive taxation;—major depopulation.In our province, we know socialism not from text books but from hard, bitter experience. We have found that there is nothing wrong with socialism except that it doesn't work.
With respect to increase in living standards, things are going badly. . . . There has not, in fact, been any rise in the standard of living during recent years. Ten million people have suffered a decrease in their living standards.
Everything that has been said is highly alarming because it is not just a question of the situation existing in our economy today, but one of the existing trend and this is very, very much worse.