Articles of H L Wegley RSSTue, 18 Aug 2020 19:49:13 GMTI was at the headquarters of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute in the ‘80s at the height of Sweden’s socialist experiment. Here’s what I saw:I was the U.S. representative at a meeting of scientists in Norrköping where we discussed wind-energy integration into electrical utilities. Our host was a Swedish scientist who held a position equivalent to the Chief Scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In June in Sweden, it’s daylight until midnight, so after dinner we took a walking tour of the city. Norrköping boasted a paper mill in the city along the river that runs through the town. It was beautifully designed to look like an old-fashioned water mill, and the odor—there was none, nada. But there was a price to pay. The U.S. Chief Scientist probably lives in the equivalent of a mansion in Chevy Chase and drives 4 miles to work in Silver Spring. But in Sweden, at the height of its drive to socialism, the “Chief Scientist” and his family lived in a drab looking apartment building surrounded by mostly dirt, not manicured grass. He walked to work each day. This man loved music, he but could not afford to buy many records or tapes. They cost almost 4 times what I paid for them in the U.S., and I didn’t have to pay 61% federal income tax.In short, the standard of living stank in Sweden. I was a peon scientist with only a master’s degree working at a national lab but living like the richest of the rich in Sweden. And here was one of their premier scientists with a standard of living equivalent to a retail clerk in America. That’s real-world, real-life socialism. It was stark and staring me in the face.Socialism distributes the misery equally and lowers everyone to about the dregs of lower middle class in America—maybe to upper lower class. Is that worth it to you just to have socialized medicine, you know, like Canada with its death queues, where you hope to get life-saving surgery in time? Do you want to work hard and... Read more

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