[vilhelmmoberg]

Did not expect such a positive post on Sweden given the negativity floating around these days. I made the decision to move back from a higher paying position abroad a few years ago, and most of it due to the points you bring up. Plus I'm Swedish so I can deal with the weather. In the end, a lower stress existence is more important to me than maximizing my earnings.

A lot of the complaining you hear from Swedish people is because they haven't really experienced anything different. They have no idea how comfortable life is here (still). As a parent, I can barely fathom raising a child in the US for instance. Even the best companies will give you 4 months paid time off, if you're one of the lucky few working for FAANG. What the hell do you even do with a 4 month old after that time's up? They can't fucking even crawl yet. Not to mention the healthcare situation. The relief to just be able to walk into any hospital and just give your person number, and everything is just taken care of. No $20k bill because the hospital is out of your coverage or whatever.

The main thing worrying me today is like you say, the immigration and crime situation. The current crime wave is not because of recent immigration but because of earlier waves. I don't want to find out what happens when 200k refugees and (mostly) their disillusioned sons turn to crime in about 18 years. Hopefully we can figure this out before then.

[kungtotte]

If you read crime statistics reports from places like BRÅ, violent crime is actually down especially in proportion to the increasing population levels.

Edit:

Also, to add, during the Syrian refugee wave of 2015/2016, the second largest group to come here after Syrians were repatriating Swedes. We didn't get 200K war refugees during the wave on top of our regular immigration. It was 200K including repatriating Swedes and the normal immigration we see year over year.

[vilhelmmoberg]

Perhaps overall, but murders are up quite a bit: https://www.bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/m... Robberies: https://www.bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/r...

I certainly hope you're right though. But anecdotally, I know of enough people getting robbed with guns and knives that I don't feels as safe as I did 10 years ago.

I pulled the 200k out of thin air. I'm talking more about the sum over the past few years rather than a specific peak.

[bitrrrate]

> A lot of the complaining you hear from Swedish people is because they haven't really experienced anything different. They have no idea how comfortable life is here (still). As a parent, I can barely fathom raising a child in the US for instance. Even the best companies will give you 4 months paid time off, if you're one of the lucky few working for FAANG. What the hell do you even do with a 4 month old after that time's up? They can't fucking even crawl yet. Not to mention the healthcare situation. The relief to just be able to walk into any hospital and just give your person number, and everything is just taken care of. No $20k bill because the hospital is out of your coverage or whatever.

FAANG employees are essentially the top rung of benefits in the US.

[dsajames]

This is a very distorted view of the US. Very few live in SV or NYC. My wife simply stayed home for a few years and we easily afforded a nice house.

[vilhelmmoberg]

My experience comes from living in 3 major US cities outside of SV/NYC, take it for what you will. That's great that you can have a SAHM, but I don't think women should be basically forced to do that. I concede that having a SAHM is easier on a US engineering salary than in Sweden, but there are probably way more families in the US that can't really afford to have a SAHM and are in economic distress because they have to choose between staying home and losing income, and going to work and paying for child care (plus the issue of low parental leave). Because of this and many other issues, I argue that life for most families life is way less stressful in Sweden than in the US. Even for high income families, basically free health care, education, child care plus amazing work-life balance, parental leave etc makes having children as low stress as you can feasibly get.