[jampekka]

> The heydays of communism in those countries are long gone.

Marxist-Leninist countries typically don't have high taxes. Which is kind of obvious as the state doesn't rely on taxes for income. North Korea claims to have eradicated taxes.

> And it’s everything to do with religion and history, why do you think all the Nordic countries had these same 20th century movements and all have extremely similar governance approaches.

Shared history sure: they were geographically very close to each other, or even under shared rulers (e.g. Finland under Sweden for half a millenium), Scandinavian languages are essentially dialects of each other, they were all part of the wider European socialist and labor movements etc. The religion and Lutheran churches opposed development if anything.

The Nordic system is not very radically different from the continental Europe in general, more a matter of degree.

[pembrook]

Just because you rebrand it as something else (communism) doesn’t mean you aren’t taxing labor at 100%.

[jampekka]

If a worker gets paid working for a state owned company are they taxed 100%? 100% tax on labour clearly indicates the worker wouldn't get any remuneration.

Perhaps, with major conceptual gymnastics, state ownership can be seen as "taxing" potential private capital gains. But this is kind of the point of state socialism.