Hysterical. The author of There is no alternative; Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) explains why socialists will bring up Sweden when justifying socialism:
“In his view [Neil Kinnock who disliked Thatcher], and he is perfectly clear about this, the alternative to Thatcher was a planned economy.
And the evidence he offers that such an economy can create anything other than a human hell is Sweden. Let me finish the sentence he wouldn’t let me finish [in her interview with him, p. 151-53]. Socialists love analogies to Sweden. But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland. In this Sweden of lore, every single woman is also eighteen years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked, and waiting for you in the sauna. Kinnock is simply mistaken about Swedish unemployment statistics. In the early 1990s, Swedish unemployment rose to 13 %, higher than ever experienced in Britain after Thatcher came to power. In the period Kinnock is discussing, Sweden in fact experienced a precipitous slide in the prosperity league—from fourth place in 1970 to sixteenth place in 1998. In fact the policies Kinnock admires nearly ran Sweden into the ground. Only when they were abandoned did the Swedish economy begin to recover. You may as well argue that the command economy has been a splendid success in Narnia.”
Berlinski agrees with her critics that she didn’t plan for Britain’s economic transition—precisely because if the government plans the economy, it is no longer free, and if it isn’t free, the transitions are likely to be in the bread lines.
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