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Sweden pays (salary and benefits) blue collar workers relatively well, an average white collar worker very rarely makes more than double what a blue collar does
by DanielHB 3y ago
Sweden pays (salary and benefits) blue collar workers relatively well, an average white collar worker very rarely makes more than double what a blue collar does (especially after taxes). On top of the social security net and taxes it creates a very egalitarian society.
It DOES cause another problem though: unemployment. Since blue collar workers are so expensive there is a lot of incentive to reduce it as much as possible in all areas of society. A few examples:
It is almost comical how many swedes do manual labor themselves instead of hiring help (especially home renovations). A software engineer coworker renovated all of his apartment (except bathrooms) himself, including changing floors. Construction materials and housing styles are optimised to reduce manual labor.
Almost all public parks have grass-cutting roombas, street cleaning is mostly done with machines, etc
IKEA is so popular because furniture is almost disposable, it is never worth repairing it (unless you do it yourself).
So this still creates another underclass of unemployed people which is also pretty bad for society and individuals. A lot of the gang violence you see about Sweden is a direct result of this. The social safety net helps (especially in ensuring that the children from this class has a chance to excel) but it is not enough and there are no clear answers.
- gumballindie 3y ago> A software engineer coworker renovated all of his apartment (except bathrooms) himself, including changing floors. I mean that’s trivial. Get a decent paint gun, laminate or vinyl flooring and just install them? It’s neither hard nor time consuming and it helps clear them mind.
- DanielHB 3y agoIt took him months to be able to finish it even with taking a vacation. If it weren't so expensive to hire someone to do it he definitely would have
- gumballindie 3y agoWell i converted my garage into an office, sound and thermal proofed it, layed out drywood walls and the structure needed, painted, did the flooring and underlaying too. Took me a week and a half. A fun project. But i do admit i forced my self to step out of the tech bubble and learn other skills a few years ago, just for myself. It was a really cool project. It can take longer when you have zero experience but once you build it up just a little bit it can go fast. As an added bonus, i made sure my network cables running through the walls are 10 Gbe. Just in case :-) I absolutely recommend to anyone working in tech that they try it.
- Reefersleep 3y agoHow did you learn those skills? I wouldn't know where to start with such a project.
- paddim8 3y agoAnd making them work more than 40h a week would be illegal. And if you work that much because you have two jobs, you're going to make as much as engineers, even as a cleaner.
- atom058 3y agoThe marginal tax rate is going to be quite a deterrent when you're working two jobs. 55%, and then an additional 25% VAT, and you're at about 67% tax. In Sweden, it's difficult to get rich through salaried work. Startups, inheritance, and housing are the only avenues. As an example, during the 'housing bubble' years, there were some buzz around people earning more from the appreciation on their house than they did from work. With that said, Sweden has a high dollar-millionaires-per-capita. When you already have money, Sweden is almost a tax haven. But they pulled up the ladder behind them for most of the population.
- DanielHB 3y agoyeah, to the point it feels like it is by design. From the gov point of view more companies == more growth for the economy as a whole. They don't want a high income working class, that is bad for business
- paddim8 3y agoThat's extremely misleading. The tax in practice for the average person is 20-30%. The employer pays some more, but they do that in the US too for eg. health insurance.
- Gud 3y agoThe surge in gang violence is not because people are using Roombas. You don’t think importing more than a million people from countries with vastly different cultures and placing them in segregated neighborhoods has more to do with it? Native Swedes(and well integrated foreigners) have very little unemployment.