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So that's what it looks like when a Swedish Democrats supporter enters full-on rant mode. Window dressing for your racist views.

Why do you try to make your argument by measuring the size of the Swedish economy in USD? All currencies are currently in a race to devalue the fastest, given that there is too much slack production and debt in the world. http://www.scb.se/en_/Finding-... gives a view less distorted by currency manipulation.

We don't see the problem.....

http://www.scb.se/en_/

http://www.birthday.se/ (In Swedish)

If you have rights (and benefits) given by the government they also have right know who you are.

/C

That doesn't account for irregular population distribution, though. The population is not evenly distributed by age; this shows very clearly that the population has humps around the sixties (baby boomers), the forties (baby boomer echo), and teenagers (another echo), with people above 65 or so being both poorly represented and yet not evenly distributed. I don't think it's likely that ten percent of the population has died in the last ten years.

At any rate, a conflicting survey suggests that only 23% of Swedes believed in the supernatural in 2005.

In Sweden, around 12% of the population are first generation immigrants, of which around 75% are from non-Western countries.

Where did you find that particular statistic?

I can find one that points out the number of people born in foreign countries, which is 14.3% for 2009 (1,337,965 people), but not anything about where they're from.

If I do an extraction of data of people born in foreign countries, and I remove the EU countries I can remember, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada and Iceland, I end up with a total of 790,024 in 2009, which is 8.46% of the total population. The countries I excluded (Western countries) makes up 547.941 people. That's 41% of the entire group of foreigners, not 25% as you claim. This doesn't look at citizens vs non-citizens, just where people were born.

Now, my numbers come from Statistics Sweden, and you can easily double check them if you don't believe me. Where did you get yours?

Or well, it will fund more R&D since you are so many but:

Google turned up this:
http://www.riditt.it/documenti/Eurostat2004.pdf
2001 it seems.
"EU spent nearly 2% of GDP on Research and
Development
Ratio highest in Sweden and Finland"

"It was agreed that Member States should strive to achieve
3% of GDP to be spent on research by 2010.
In 2001 R&D expenditure as a share of GDP in the EU was 1.98% and is estimated at 1.99% in 2002, an increase
compared to 1.95% in 2000. However, the gap with regard to R&D expenditure in Japan (2.98% in 2000) and the
United States (2.80%) remained significant. The level reached by the Acceding Countries was 0.84% in 2001.
According to the latest data available, the Member States with the highest R&D intensity were Sweden (4.27% of
GDP devoted to R&D expenditure in 2001) and Finland (3.49% in 2002)."

Sweden:
2006:
http://www.scb.se/Pages/PressRelease____215664.aspx
"In 2006 SEK 108.2 billion was invested in R&D in Sweden. This amount was SEK 4.4 billion more than in 2005, in current prices. As a percentage of GDP, R&D expenses fell slightly from 3.89 percent in 2005 to 3.83 percent in 2006. In comparison, the corresponding figure in 2001 was 4.3 percent. As R&D expenditure during the last five years has not increased in line with the strong GDP growth seen in Sweden, R&D expenditure as a share of GDP has fallen."

So we still win, but then we are rather socialist and all and pay much higher taxes, so 3% while still having low taxes is probably really good.

Interesting that the goal for EU was 3% for 2010, maybe that's why he had to raise the goal? And not become a leader.

Well, according to the latest stats from RIPE, Sweden has 17,574,560 IPv4 addresses allocated, so that's approximately 1.90 addresses per inhabitant, or 3.94 per household.

Of course, that doesn't take business users into account, but in our office we have three different companies on the same floor, all sharing the same public IPv4 address (our group actually uses a NAT behind the one sharing out the floor's public IP, and we use one or both of our corporate VPNs in any case), and our other 2 offices also each use a single public IP + NAT for their internal networks, if that tells you anything.

BTW, it appears that Denmark has the most IPv6 addresses allocated among all of the RIPE countries by a wide margin.

Well, according to the latest stats from RIPE, Sweden has 17,574,560 IPv4 addresses allocated, so that's approximately 1.90 addresses per inhabitant, or 3.94 per household.

Of course, that doesn't take business users into account, but in our office we have three different companies on the same floor, all sharing the same public IPv4 address (our group actually uses a NAT behind the one sharing out the floor's public IP, and we use one or both of our corporate VPNs in any case), and our other 2 offices also each use a single public IP + NAT for their internal networks, if that tells you anything.

BTW, it appears that Denmark has the most IPv6 addresses allocated among all of the RIPE countries by a wide margin.

Followup:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~maphist/english/US/US32-01.html
http://www.scb.se/templates/tableOrChart____25831.asp

Given this information, we can assume that the life expectancy was 40 years or under when U.S. copyright law was first enacted. This would mean that a 12 year old would be safe to assume his creative work would be protected his entire life.

In Sweden, the state refers to it's citizens in the terms of "konsumtionsenheter", which to the best of my knowlage translates to "consumtion units". Makes you feel special. Som links in swedish for the non-believer. =) http://www.sos.se/fulltext/103/2002-103-5/fotnot.h tm http://www.scb.se/templates/tableOrChart____104224 .asp

Most people in Sweden DO speak English (at least around 95% of people with higher education can read it). This together with the fact that Uppsala University is the oldest university in Scandinavia kind of render your language barrier argument to void.

Tax however is a completely different matter...

In the 1998 election, about 75% of the Swedish male population between 18 and 30 years voted. More detailed statistics can be found (in Swedish only) at http://www.scb.se/templates/tableOrChart____38486. asp

225,000 votes is a LOT of votes. Does anyone know what the 18-30 male voting record is in terms of actually making it to the ballot box to vote?

Sweden has relatively high voter participation, at least in the parliamentary elections. This page shows that it has dropped from around 90% down closer to 80%, sadly.

Overall voter participation among males in the 1998 elections were 82% (83% for women). Participation in the group you ask about, males between 18 and 30, is a little lower, according to this table, it seems to be about 75%. Still, not too shabby. Both pages are in Swedish, but it's mostly numbers. :)

225,000 votes is a LOT of votes. Does anyone know what the 18-30 male voting record is in terms of actually making it to the ballot box to vote?

Sweden has relatively high voter participation, at least in the parliamentary elections. This page shows that it has dropped from around 90% down closer to 80%, sadly.

Overall voter participation among males in the 1998 elections were 82% (83% for women). Participation in the group you ask about, males between 18 and 30, is a little lower, according to this table, it seems to be about 75%. Still, not too shabby. Both pages are in Swedish, but it's mostly numbers. :)

In the Swedish general elections of 2002, 71.1 +/- 6.7 % of males aged 18 to 29 participated. Source: Electoral Participation in the 2002 General Election (PDF).

Before wishing too much, though, please note that in Sweden, we don't even have a libertarian party, and most people have no clue that there is a thing like libertarianism. We also have the highest taxes of the world. Our gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita is only 71 % of the US'. Source: List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.

Well, since you asked, in the last election in Sweden (2002), the figures were:

Males
18-22: 68.2%
22-24: 70.5%
25-29: 73.6%

Females
18-22: 72.6%
22-24: 67.4%
25-29: 80.6%

In 2002, men and women in ages 18-29 counted 1,289,000 persons (out of a total population of just over 9 million).

Courtesy of Statistiska Centralbyrån

http://www.scb.se/templates/Publikation____47578.a sp

Crash course in Swedish:

Ålder = Age
Röstande i % av röstberättigade = Voters as % of allowed voters
Män = Men
Kvinnor = Women
Alla = All
år = years
Förstagångsväljare = First-time voters
Samtliga = All

Germany, Netherlands, or Spain is the place to be for development. Sweden's too busy worshiping Bill, they're even naming their kids after him year after year.

You do know that USA is quite a bit more densely populated than Sweden, don't you? As a matter of fact the population density in USA is 45% greater than Sweden!

I love averages. Of course, like all northern scandanavian countries, the top half of Sweden basically empty. People are few and far between north of Gavle (~62 North). Not to mention the fact that Sweden has only 8 992 217 people total. (To be fair, big tracks of the American west are likewise empty.)

To make the comparison useful, what you do is start in the densest part of each country and count citizens, moving to progressively less dense sections. When you get down into the thin parts, say less than 10 people/sq km, stop. Now look at how many people were in the dense parts and how much area you had to cover to get them. That will give you a sense of how easy it is to achieve an "broadband penetration percentage" that looks good.

That said, the U.S. should get its butt in gear.

You do know that USA is quite a bit more densely populated than Sweden, don't you? As a matter of fact the population density in USA is 45% greater than Sweden!

I love averages. Of course, like all northern scandanavian countries, the top half of Sweden basically empty. People are few and far between north of Gavle (~62 North). Not to mention the fact that Sweden has only 8 992 217 people total. (To be fair, big tracks of the American west are likewise empty.)

To make the comparison useful, what you do is start in the densest part of each country and count citizens, moving to progressively less dense sections. When you get down into the thin parts, say less than 10 people/sq km, stop. Now look at how many people were in the dense parts and how much area you had to cover to get them. That will give you a sense of how easy it is to achieve an "broadband penetration percentage" that looks good.

That said, the U.S. should get its butt in gear.

Sweden's population density is far more uniform than the US's.

You guess wrong.

Sweden has some dense areas (around Stockholm for instance), although never as dense as the 'megacities' of the US east of course. And some extremely empty areas as well.

In fact, most of Sweden is pretty empty. look here

Note that a significant part of the country is white. The white areas have less than 1 person per square kilometer, which is less than 0.38 persons per square mile.

So what were you saying?

Politically the tradeoff has been you have to wire the uneconomic areas to wire the economic ones, this was true for both phone and cable. Blame your local utility commission for making that tradeoff if you want. Because our hugely populated areas pay for the service to all the sparse areas (the FCC's USF) they haven't invested in the infastructure for the densly populated areas. The only reason NYC doesn't have fiber to everyone's door is that the phone company generally offers the same set of services across the state of NY to stay out of regulatory hot water.

If anyone wants the numbers. You can wire 6.3% of Sweeden and reach 80% of the poulation. In the US you would have to wire about 15% of the counties (I couldn't find pop/km data for the US) to reach the same 80% of the population. Wiring 6.3% of the most populated counties only raches about 65% of the US population. The density map of Sweden is here. For the US I grabbed the county stats list from the census bureau and removed the states and then sorted.

The police here in Sweden has been using mobile position for a couple of years now. It's been used in some high profile crimes like the murder of two police officers a couple of years back.
(80% of the swedish has access to a cellular phone in their home, actually there are more celluars than cars)

Here in Sweden we're not as concered as the USA citizens of the Big Brother/1984 scenarios. Just check out our national statistics also everyone in sweden has a nationwide unique number based on our birthdate. Great to use a unique identifier in databases...

Swedens biggest mobile operator has a service where you can find your friends
though I have no idea why you would use it.
Mobile Friendfinder in swedish and only for swedish people.

Simple answer: Because we're an order of magnitude bigger. More population. More beaurocracy

That's simply not true. The US has a smaller population than the EU (285M and 376M) and a proportionally smaller public sector (the EU tax burden is 41.5%, US 29%).

The real root of the matter is that the EU has far too many politicians, bureaucrats and civil servants, too much money, and too little idea or inclination to do anything other than expand their role.