On the second part: possibly. People do better when they ignore their crumbling circumstances, at first. But somebody has to care about a world being threatened by dangerous thugs and disciples of warlords. Or the life of all of us, including the relative peace of Sweden, will be short-lived.
Go ahead and bash the United States for all the wind we catch first in an attempt to combat those who do not respect other people’s freedom. But I suggest you do not praise to glory all the good men doing absolutely nothing to preserve the kind of freedom to each his own. You, too, will find solace in Plato’s cavemen allegory.
On the first part: if you are prepared to pay significantly higher taxes, we can be more social too. Mind you; I paid about 60%(!) income tax in The Netherlands (socially close to Nordic Sweden) when I lived and worked there for the first 30 years of my life.
Surely, there is something to be said for pulling 25% of our children off of food support from the public school system by providing their parents with new and better means to earn a good living. 15.8% of Americans are considered extremely poor. I would gladly pay 5% more tax to eliminate that and enhance the renewability of our human resources.
The operating-systems of humanity must be reinvented, for neither the Swedish model nor the American model is sustainable, as they each, in different ways, lack the strengthening of renewability that prolongs human sustainability.
