Large government that works
A friend sent me the following quote about how Sweden spends a couple of hundred basis points more than we do on government, but actually gets some joy and benefit out of it, unlike the US. My friend quotes Johan Norberg, one of Sweden's sharpest liberal writers, thinkers and bloggers (www.johannorberg.net) who says Sweden is home to a huge, well run public sector, he tells me, but that is because Sweden runs public sectors well, regardless of their size. "Sweden's bureaucracy is one of the most impressive in the world, and it has been for a couple of hundred years—that's what makes it possible to have a public sector this size. This is something foreigners rarely understand. They think that our big government makes the country run well, whereas it is the other way around—the fact that it works well makes it possible to have a big government. If countries don't already have a tradition of an efficient, non-corrupt bureaucracy with an impressive work ethic a large