[whizzter]

One thing to note is that the idealized Sweden and many benefits remain because we had a much lower wealth inequality 30 years ago but (mainly) right-wing governments have been very "successful" at removing the barriers that kept the wealth inequality low.

- Inheritance tax was abolished in 2005 - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007 - "income tax reduction" was initiated in 2007

Meanwhile our schools have gotten larger classes and worse results, especially the income tax reduction was insidious since it was a nationally mandated tax reduction that mainly hits the tax revenue of cities and regions (ie, political entities that had no part in the laws that lowered their tax revenue).

Basically, Sweden has been speed-running into re-making our society into a mini-US and even surpassed the US in some regards.

Sweden 2025 isn't the same as in 1985, and policies enacted around 2005 are the ones that are really starting to hit with their secondary effects today (Iirc Denmark has had fairly many right-wing governments over this period as well).

[roenxi]

> - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007

I did notice once that IKEA's governance scheme looked like an unusually sophisticated anti-tax structure. It now makes sense why the Swedes would be really interested in dodging taxes.

[alephnerd]

The foundation based governance model is common all over Northern Europe because of the reason you pointed out ;).

SAAB, Bosch, ThyssenKrup, and others are similarly structured.

[whizzter]

SAAB is publicly traded, however a majority(or nearly) of voting shares are held more or less directly by the Wallenberg family, they have investment/"power companies" as well as their family foundation(s) and control quite a few major companies here.

[lifestyleguru]

> IKEA's governance scheme

They are non profit charity designing furniture for the humanity, what taxes are you talking about?