Headline, April 01 2025/ ''' SWEDISH STUDENTS SWEDEN '''

''' SWEDISH 

STUDENTS

 SWEDEN '''

! FIRST AND FOREMOST ! : THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY is the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student of Sweden, just as it is the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world.

SWEDEN was for decades one of the most open and welcoming nations in the world, to the point where its foreign-born population stands at about 20 percent. Now it is among the most restrictive.

By hardening asylum requirements and creating an unfriendly atmosphere for new arrivals, it has dramatically stemmed the flow of migrants. Arrivals have fallen year over year. Not satisfied, the government has cooked up schemes to induce migrants already in the country to leave:

Offering a $34,000 payment per adult. In much less than a generation, Sweden has gone from safe haven to heavily fortified citadel.

IN THE GLOBAL IMAGINATION - SWEDEN IS A SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC paradise, a cradle-to-grave welfare state that cossets its residents with free, high quality schooling and health care-

Along with affordable housing and a guarantee of comfortable retirement through government backed pensions.

At one point, this was a fairly accurate account of Swedish life. As the Swedish sociologist Goran Therborn has written, in the postwar period Sweden's Social Democrats built an exemplary nation, characterised by :

'' Full employment, a prosperous open economy that was competitive on world markets, a generous welfare state and an egalitarian society which, by 1980, had the lowest rates of income and gender inequality in the world.''

The reality of the past few decades has been markedly different. A series of reforms, beginning during an economic crisis in the 1990s, have slowly frayed the social safety net.

A country that had once presided over the construction of a million new housing units now holds few affordable homes.

Housing costs have soared. Its schools are still free to attend but a wave of privatization, coupled with the increasing geographic concentration of poverty, has meant that the savviest and usually wealthiest families get their children into the best schools, while poorer children crowd into less rigorous ones.

Medical care is free, but patients complain that the system is strained by long waits and overcrowding. The country's economy has thrived in some ways, though at a cost.

Sweden has a bumper crop of billionaires, three times as many per capita as the United States, and inequality has grown fast. Pensions have been squeezed.

So it is perhaps not surprising that when more than 160,000 asylum seekers arrived in 2015, a tattered Swedish state struggled to match the welcoming message with material support.

And given how many Swedes had seen what they saw as their birthright - a promise that the government would care for them from birth to death - it is equally unsurprising that many of them balked.

But I wondered whether that response was not merely to migrants but also expressive of a deeper frustration with other ways Sweden has changed.

This slower, less remarked-upon transformation - of disquiet and discontent slowly accumulating in the wake of socioeconomic changes.

The Honour and Serving of  the latest Global Operational Research on Great Countries and Great Systems, past and present continues. The World Students Society thanks Lydia Polgreen.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of Sweden, the Global Founder Framers of !WOW! and then the world.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - for every subject in the world - : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless