Sucked dry by the EU
From Professor Ferdinand E. Banks
Sir: The contribution by Nick Herbert on Swedish taxes (‘Gordon’s Swedish model’, 4 December) is interesting, but incomplete.
To be specific, the highest taxes in the world could easily have allowed this country to retain the highest welfare level in the world had it not been for an overdose of internationalism. By that I mean sending billions of crowns to countries in the Third World so that they can buy weapons and plane tickets and, worst of all, join the EU. If you want to know what happened to Swedish welfare, a large slice of it has been transferred to Brussels.
The most amazing part of all this is that membership of the EU has resulted in everything that Swedes do not want. Examples are more alcohol, more crime and excessive immigration, which in turn have taken resources from healthcare at the same time that demand for this service increases (because of more alcohol, more crime and excessive immigration). You can add more exposure to a major curse of globalism, by which I mean the departure of employment opportunities to ‘low-wage countries’. These things translate — for those of us who remember how to add and subtract — into an inability to reduce the tax burden.
I remember laughing at, and later apologising to, the Nobel laureate Sir John Hicks because of his belief in the rationality of the electorate. Had I known what I know now, he would never have received an apology from this teacher of economics and finance.
Ferdinand E. Banks Uppsala, Sweden
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