BIG FAT SWEDISH WRAP-UP: That sounds like something that would be on special at IHOP, perhaps with some lingonberry butter on top for “authentic” ethnic flavor. But I’m going to try to hit the high points of a discussion that has generated a lot more interest than I had expected, though mine — and no doubt that of most readers — is beginning to flag.. (You can also enter “Sweden” in the search window on the left if you like and follow all the links. Warning: there are a lot.).

It started with my response to Eric Alterman, who held out Sweden as a “beacon of light” that we should emulate. I noted Sweden’s behavior during and after World War II, which doesn’t live up to the moralistic standard it pretends to set, and to studies (which I had previously linked to) saying that Sweden has more crime than America and is less wealthy than Mississippi. (The wealth study was from a Swedish business group, the crime from the International Crime Victimization Survey, a U.N.-sponsored study described as “the most far-reaching programme of fully standardised sample surveys looking at householders’ experience of crime in different countries.” You can criticize such studies, though the flaws in such comparisons work both ways, and I didn’t notice people raising these issues in the past when they criticized U.S. crime rates in comparison with those of Europe. It’s not as if I conducted the ICVS just to embarrass Sweden, as you might almost think from reading a few of the responses.)

Naturally, defenders of Sweden emerged from the left side of the blogosphere, criticizing the studies. These criticisms were summarized in Eric Alterman’s Friday blog, which I linked and responded to here. Alterman proposed the Netherlands as an alternative “beacon of light,” which suits me fine in light of the Dutch support for invading Iraq, which coupled with legalized drugs and prostitution makes them look pretty good to me. All they need is shall-issue carry laws and I’m there. The beer’s even good, and they like techno. (Stephen Green thinks I’m “too gracious” on this point.)

The Cranky Hermit writes that rising Swedish disability rates, which he reports as one out of six working-age Swedes, suggest that either Sweden’s economy or its health-care system is not performing as advertised. We also noted that Sweden’s birth rate is sufficiently low that its population is below natural replacement, with deaths exceeding births, alarming the government to the point that one legislator is suggesting porn broadcasts on the weekends to encourage people to have sex, which apparently they’re not doing enough, thus exploding one of my most cherished illusions about life in Sweden. Several readers also wrote about Sweden’s eugenics program, which led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of women deemed defective, as late as the mid-1970s.

Though some lefty bloggers (e.g., Max Sawicky) seem somehow to think that I demonstrated bad faith by even raising these issues, Swedish readers pointed out that with the upcoming Swedish elections, they are hot topics in Swedish newspapers. Nussdorf provided a nice summary of a recent newspaper debate on the issue, in which various Swedes raised the same points.

At any rate, here’s how I read the “beacon of light” score: (1) collaboration with the Nazis, basically unchallenged — Sawicky makes a weak tu quoque argument tiredly invoking Somoza, et al., but that’s about it; (2) crime worse than U.S. — studies challenged, but only on picayune technical grounds; (3) poorer than Mississippi — some credible arguments that Sweden is richer than Mississippi, but no credible claim that it’s economically better than the United States, and a strong case that it’s poorer than Alabama, anyway. Extra points off for the disability, sex-shortage, and mass sterilization issues.

“Beacon of light?” Not in my book. But it all depends on what you mean by “light,” I suppose. If you’re willing to sacrifice a lot of national income in the name of reducing poverty rates by half, then Sweden is the way to go. I don’t hear the reduced-income angle played up much by those who see Sweden as a beacon, though.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle has updated her post on the Swedish economy.