[rayiner]

Sweden has corporate taxes slightly lower than under Trump’s tax law. It collects 6% of revenue from corporate taxes, versus 9% in the US. It collects much less of it’s revenue from progressive income taxes than the US does, and much more from regressive consumption and payroll taxes. Sweden’s capital gains rate is only moderately higher than the US’s (flat 30% versus 23.8% in the top brackets). There are no inheritance taxes. In short, if the US adopted Sweden’s tax code, taxes on lower income and middle class people would go up much more than on rich people. (In fact, the tax burden in Sweden is almost perfectly flat.) Sweden has school choice including subsidization of religious schools. Elective abortion is legal only up to 18 weeks. Deregulation and privatization are extensive. For example, Stockholm’s metro system is operated under contract by for-profit corporations. Sweden has no ban on fully automatic weapons or high capacity magazines.

These are really fundamental differences, particularly in the area of taxes (and that’s true not just for Sweden and Spain, but most European countries). In Europe, there is an expansive welfare state with lots of benefits for the middle class, but the middle class are also the ones that pay for it, through high payroll and sales taxes. In the US, replacing sales taxes with a 20% VAT (the OECD average) would raise an extra $700 billion according to CBO estimates. Enough to pay for socialized health care and education. But nobody on the left is proposing that. Every proposal focuses on raising taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for middle class benefits.