SWEDEN - September 14, 2014 - GUIDE and THREAD

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Feminist Initiative is proposing a special tax that only men will have to pay, in order to even out the sallery gap between the genders... FI's leader, Gudrun Schyman, doesn't want to call it a Man Tax though... "That sounds wrong... I prefer the term Equality Tax".

Because nothing quite says equality like having people pay different tax levels based on their gender.

Apperently Schyman thinks this will be a big vote winner. I'm sceptical...
At least S, V, and MP can rejoice that the pink voter leech will have destroyed itself by September 14th.   


 

[DC Al Fine]

Feminist Initiative is proposing a special tax that only men will have to pay, in order to even out the sallery gap between the genders... FI's leader, Gudrun Schyman, doesn't want to call it a Man Tax though... "That sounds wrong... I prefer the term Equality Tax".

Because nothing quite says equality like having people pay different tax levels based on their gender.

Feminist jizya

I'll have to keep this one in my back pocket for the next time I see one of those annoying "feminism just means equality" posts on Facebook.

[Sol]

Feminist Initiative is proposing a special tax that only men will have to pay, in order to even out the sallery gap between the genders... FI's leader, Gudrun Schyman, doesn't want to call it a Man Tax though... "That sounds wrong... I prefer the term Equality Tax".

Because nothing quite says equality like having people pay different tax levels based on their gender.

Feminist jizya

I'll have to keep this one in my back pocket for the next time I see one of those annoying "feminism just means equality" posts on Facebook.

That actually sounds quite reasonable. I myself have seriously considered "tithing" a certain % of my income to feminist organizations once I begin actually earning stuff.

[Tayya]

For the record, the article is from 2006 and while they've not retracted that policy they're campaigning on platitudes rather than real issues. The article has been spread on social media lately for political reasons.

[jaichind]

* Sweden’s opposition parties would get 49.6% of votes if a general election was held today vs 48.7% in poll last week, according to Sifo survey commissioned and reported by Goeteborgsposten and Svenska Dagbladet.

* Backing for four-party government was 38.5% vs 38.9%

* Moderate Party of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt backed by 24.6% vs 23.9%, Liberal Party by 6.7% vs 6.1%, Centre Party by 3.8% vs 4.6% and Christian Democrats by 3.4% vs 4.3%

* Opposition Social Democrats supported by 30.3% vs 30.7%, Green Party by 11.4% vs 11.4% and Left Party by 7.9% vs 6.6%

* Sweden Democrats, with which neither bloc wants to govern because of its restrictive views on immigration, backed by10.1% vs 9%; Feminist Initiative by 2% vs 2.6%

[Cassius]

Feminist Initiative is proposing a special tax that only men will have to pay, in order to even out the sallery gap between the genders... FI's leader, Gudrun Schyman, doesn't want to call it a Man Tax though... "That sounds wrong... I prefer the term Equality Tax".

Because nothing quite says equality like having people pay different tax levels based on their gender.

Feminist jizya

I'll have to keep this one in my back pocket for the next time I see one of those annoying "feminism just means equality" posts on Facebook.

That actually sounds quite reasonable. I myself have seriously considered "tithing" a certain % of my income to feminist organizations once I begin actually earning stuff.

[DL]

If this latest SIFO poll is right both the Centre party and the Christian Democrats could fall below 4% and lose all their seats. Before people say they will be bailed out by some "strategic votes" from the moderates, look at what happened to the FDP last year in Germany

[Lurker]

If this latest SIFO poll is right both the Centre party and the Christian Democrats could fall below 4% and lose all their seats. Before people say they will be bailed out by some "strategic votes" from the moderates, look at what happened to the FDP last year in Germany

They'll be bailed out, once again.

Germany isn't really comparable; The CDU's chances of leading a government did not at all depend on the FDP clearing the treshold.

[EPG]

More importantly, most polls say everyone will get over the threshold, except Feminists.

[Gustaf]

There are weak signs of a government recovery in the polls, which makes it possible that the Red-Greens will be denied a majority. If that happens we might get some chaos.

I find it hard to believe that the left would win Stockholm by that type of margin. Sure, it's swingy, but historically it's been something like alliance +10 compared to national average and if anything has seemed to be trending more and more that way. Would it really be more left than the country?

[DC Al Fine]

Feminist Initiative is proposing a special tax that only men will have to pay, in order to even out the sallery gap between the genders... FI's leader, Gudrun Schyman, doesn't want to call it a Man Tax though... "That sounds wrong... I prefer the term Equality Tax".

Because nothing quite says equality like having people pay different tax levels based on their gender.

Feminist jizya

I'll have to keep this one in my back pocket for the next time I see one of those annoying "feminism just means equality" posts on Facebook.

That actually sounds quite reasonable. I myself have seriously considered "tithing" a certain % of my income to feminist organizations once I begin actually earning stuff.

Give your time and money to the poor. You'll do a hell of a lot more good than attacking non-existent microagressions or somesuch.

[Tayya]

Summarizing the last few days of meta-chaos:

The Swedish Migration Board, noting what a cluster the world is in currently, has requested more money to handle an uptick in asylum seekers. The amount of money requested is about 7 billion USD - that is to say, a lot of money. PM Reinfeldt noted that asylum seekers would require a larger part of the budget and probably replace any allocations to reforms, but called on the populations to open their hearts and minds and welcome those in need.

We're kind of far from Denmark. For better and worse, I guess.

Anyways, this has been lauded by liberals, seen skeptically by leftists (who think that it's a plot to strengthen SD and deny a red-green majority, making a Reinfeldt government supported by SD possible) and the SD crowd is likely nuts - their supporters tend to sound like the most radical fifth of the Tea Partiers.

Meanwhile, Reinfeldt and Löfven debated in the Sunday evening political show Agenda - which for the record should show that SD definitely isn't marginalized by the media - where Reinfeldt seemed to retract his promise that he and M would vote "present" on Stefan Löfven's confidence vote if the Alliance became smaller than S, V and MP.

Lööf (C) and Björklund (FP), meanwhile, declared that they'd stay with the promise, and Moderate Secretary General Kent Persson later declared that the promise held, but yesterday Göran Hägglund (KD) said in an interview that he'd have conditions for voting present and indicated that the same was true for the other parties. Indeed, all four parties presented today that they would only let a government through if it could present a budget in October.

In Sweden, passing a budget requires a plurality of the votes. The government is standing together and will all assured have a common budget proposal. What this means is that unless S and MP becomes larger than the Alliance without V - which they are currently in many if not most polls, but will probably not be once the Alliance-leaning undecideds return to the fold any day now - V will have to promise to vote for the S/MP budget or present it together with them, which is probably doable but tricky considering how much they want to be in government, or actually join the government. The latter won't happen because S and MP won't completely stop for-profit actors in the welfare sector. Oh, and SD will also have to not join the Alliance budget. If it's still too liberal on immigration, they likely won't, but SD will have the power to potentially keep Reinfeldt as Prime Minister. It remains to see whether that will be too tempting.

[Antonio the Sixth]

We're kind of far from Denmark. For better and worse, I guess.

For better.

[MaxQue]

We're kind of far from Denmark. For better and worse, I guess.

For better.

I once read the Denmark was the Western country doing the less about refugees and than they freak out as soon there is more than 2-3 ethnic restaurants in a street, claiming they are overwhelmed by immigration.

[Tender Branson]

Summarizing the last few days of meta-chaos:

The Swedish Migration Board, noting what a cluster the world is in currently, has requested more money to handle an uptick in asylum seekers. The amount of money requested is about 7 billion USD - that is to say, a lot of money. PM Reinfeldt noted that asylum seekers would require a larger part of the budget and probably replace any allocations to reforms, but called on the populations to open their hearts and minds and welcome those in need.

We're kind of far from Denmark. For better and worse, I guess.

Sweden these days is a real magnet for asylum seekers.

People from Syria/Eritrea/Iraq/Afghanistan/Africa, who come via Italy to the Austrian border in Tyrol increasingly tell the Austrian border agents not to send them back to Italy, because they want to travel further to Sweden (where most of their families are already).

Many still decide to stay in Austria and file for asylum here, because the border agents would send them back to Italy nontheless, so they can file for asylum here and then secretly travel to Sweden.

This has boosted population growth in Sweden to 100.000 over the last year (+1%), the biggest increase ever.

http://www.scb.se/sv_/Hitta-statistik/Statistik-efter-amne/Befolkning/Befolkningens-sammansattning/Befolkningsstatistik/25788/25795/Behallare-for-Press/376142

Our population has also grown by 70.000 in the past year to June, or by 0.8% (I wrote about the asylum back-and-forth earlier in the Austrian thread), but I think it is needed that the EU is helping out those in need.

Of course, other bigger countries like Italy and France - who bitch around all the time about how they take up "enough" asylum seekers already - are in fact not.

[Tayya]

Indeed. For us, these are very large numbers, that should be recognized. I'm surprisingly more skeptical of immigration than others who fall close to me in other questions, but the problem here isn't primarily that we accept too many but that so many European countries are, frankly, selfish and don't.

Time will tell if we're seen by history as naïve fools or as one of few beacons of morality in Europe.

Fun fact: Fokus - Sweden's best political magazine - has this as their front page tomorrow:



"What does Jimmie Åkesson cost? The risks with the Moderates' dangerous game"

[Diouf]

Comment from high-ranking Liberal, Danish MP Søren Pind on Facebook:
"I listened to the Swedish Radio News at 9. Two out of the five main stories were: that the Swedish counties did not do enough to provide interpreters for ambulances, and whether it was legal for the municipalities to "just" offer mother-tongue teaching as distance teaching. This is quite incredible. In the middle of an election campaign. I predict huge gains for the Sweden Democrats".
The debate below quickly centered around the abovementioned comment from the PM about the Swedes opening their heart for the migrants, and that the Swedish artist Dan Park has again been sent to jail for "hets mot folkgrupp" (hate speech) due to his art works about immigration.

Yes, really two worlds apart.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Yes, really two worlds apart.

Well really there is Skåne inbetween which is something of a mix of the two.

[Gustaf]

I think the budget/government thing is mostly to make people concerned about what government will happen after the election. It makes sense from the right's perspective.

The immigration thing is I think a fairly logical move as well. Reinfeldt doesn't want to play the racist card and then this is probably the best course of action.

[politicus]

We're kind of far from Denmark. For better and worse, I guess.

For better.

I once read the Denmark was the Western country doing the less about refugees and than they freak out as soon there is more than 2-3 ethnic restaurants in a street, claiming they are overwhelmed by immigration.

Denmark isn't close to being the country taking the least asylum seekers per capita and the restaurant thing is just silly, there is an abundance of ethnic restaurants in all major towns (and a Kurdish pizzeria in every hamlet..).

[Tayya]

I think the budget/government thing is mostly to make people concerned about what government will happen after the election. It makes sense from the right's perspective.

The immigration thing is I think a fairly logical move as well. Reinfeldt doesn't want to play the racist card and then this is probably the best course of action.

And to force Löfven to form a three-party government with the Left, setting the Alliance up for a 2018 victory.

Of course, it would be so much easier to pile on Reinfeldt if there actually was a gentlemen's agreement. Löfven is unfortunately overconfident enough to not himself promise to let an Alliance that remains stronger than S, V and MP through.

A possible outcome is that Reinfeldt and Co. are betting on V and S/MP to not agree on a budget, which would lead to the Alliance budget having a plurality over the S/MP, SD and V budgets, and then passing SD-optimized budgets the coming years - which leaves them time to flip-flop and potentially change leaders - when V will have been pressured into a joint budget proposal with S and MP.

EDIT: This is a big simplification - the budget voting is conducted, as most other votes in the Riksdag, through eliminations of the least popular proposals meaning that the top two budgets (Alliance and the one supported by the Social Democrats) will be put against each other for a vote. V will have to vote "present" in this vote for the Alliance budget to go through unless SD votes for the Alliance budget.

Would every single right-wing MP accept voting for a de facto SD-supported government? An open question, but there will probably not be more than a handful of objectors which won't be enough.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Meh, the budget thing is mostly concern-trolling from the right to be honest. As is the left's fear that the Alliance will all of a sudden join forces with SD to stay in power no matter what. If Reinfeldt wanted to take that route, he wouldn't make a speech enraging SD-core supporters and even some of his own voters a few weeks before the election. Both claims have little to no basis in reality and are purely tactical talking-points.

The Left is clearly trying to scare working-class people who hate the government into thinking that a vote for SD is a vote for the Alliance in order to keep them in the Labour camp. While the right is trying to continue building on the "The Left won't be able to govern together" narrative they've desperately been trying to push with cake commercials and what not.     

The idea that a S+MP government wouldn't be able to pass a budget all presume two things that are far from certain. 

1) That S+MP doesn't make a budget deal with V, similarly to what Persson made with V and MP 1998-2002. After all V has only said they won't join a government that doesn't ban profits in the welfare sector, not that they will never support their budgets.

2) That the Alliance will keep making a joint budget once they're in opposition. Far from certain. They might very well do it the first budget process after the election, but I have a hard time seeing them keep that up for four years.

Of course, I know that close to election people always like to imagine the worst case scenario, but as long as the relationship between S+MP and V doesn't sour completely before October 1st, it's not going to happen.

[Gustaf]

I don't think anyone genuinely doubts that S, V and MP could make a budget together. The question is what happens if they don't have a majority which is still a feasible scenario. A budget that V is on board with would probably be a hard sell to any of the other parties. This is why S keeps flirting with C/FP.

[Tayya]

I don't think anyone genuinely doubts that S, V and MP could make a budget together. The question is what happens if they don't have a majority which is still a feasible scenario. A budget that V is on board with would probably be a hard sell to any of the other parties. This is why S keeps flirting with C/FP.

Indeed, but as long as S/V/MP is bigger than the Alliance they can govern as a minority as long as SD doesn't join an Alliance budget. Finding cross-aisle support for individual policies is also hard but perhaps more doable.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I don't think anyone genuinely doubts that S, V and MP could make a budget together. The question is what happens if they don't have a majority which is still a feasible scenario. A budget that V is on board with would probably be a hard sell to any of the other parties. This is why S keeps flirting with C/FP.

Indeed, but as long as S/V/MP is bigger than the Alliance they can govern as a minority as long as SD doesn't join an Alliance budget. Finding cross-aisle support for individual policies is also hard but perhaps more doable.

Yeah, that is what it comes down to, and since it's extremely unlikely that SD would all of a sudden do a 180 degree turn and unquestionably vote for an Alliance budget they had no influence on, especially not just a month and a half after the Alliance was just rejected by the voters.