when it comes to taxes, it is important to consider that not only does the 50% of the salary go to the state, when you use what you have left of the salary to buy goods and services, the state adds an additional 25% in tax/VAT, so we pay a lot in taxes

There are private healthinsurance/care takers available in Sweden as well. Which either you could pay/sign up for on your own, or some employers offer as a benefit. (If as a benefit you still pay tax for it but it's less than paying for the plan on your own). Some people see it as unfair but on the other hand anyone with the means to have that as an alternative is a spot not held in the "public que". Lower the pressure on the public healthcare. Maybe the most important thing with the system is that in real emergencies you normally will be taken care of.

in general in sweden the longer you have to wait the less "urgent" it is. If i go to the ER with something less serious sure i can have to wait a long time - when i came in with troubble breathing they had me on a stretcher before they took my name (turned out i had a LOT of water trapped in my body, especially around my lungs so i got drained for like 10l in 36 hours - not fun but needed it) but if you come in with something serious they will see you as fast as possible

I’m a Swede in NY. Love the living in NY but miss so many things from Sweden, not the dark and cold. So very proud being Swedish.

Great video. Have a nice evening🙂

Very Nice to see a Video of Storforsen in Älvsbyn-Vidsel

I looooove my homecountry Sweden,, 🥰 Thanks for your time and work Stefan,, 🍻😎👍‍‍👍‍‍

Jag uppskattar din ärliga presentation av Sverige. Jag uppskattar att du tycker om Sverige, även på vintern när det är kallt och mörkt. Jag uppskattar att du inte förskönar utan ger en ärlig bild av mitt hemland. Jag har föräldrar som emigrerade till USA, slog sig ner i Minnesota; Svenskbygden i USA. Jag uppskattar att du ger en nyanserad bild of pros and cons about living here. I think you are a good ambassador of a person coming from another country and decide to live here in Sweden. I appreciate you, thank you!

I fully agree about the dark period of the year. Especially november is terrible. But! Because of the long dark months you love the spring, summer and autumn months all the more. At least I do. 😎 Whats the link to that chat bot?

@5:32, that is in place in Sweden already. You can sign those insurances today.

Food prices are high? Now, granted, I only spent a week in Visby. But while we were there we went grocery shopping so we could cook our own meals at the B&B to save money. We were shocked, I tell you, absolutely FLABBERGASTED, how much cheaper groceries were in Sweden, especially afer hearing that Sweden was so expensive. For example, a carton of Oatly Oatmilk was about $1.50 USD whereas in the US it is about 3.50 to $5.00. I bought 5 items at for $13 at a Swedish grocery store compared to 5 grocery items at Target for $23. If gorceries in Sweden are "expensive" then somehow we got very, very lucky. We shopped at Lidl's and the Nara Togkassen in Visby's innerstad, if that makes any difference.

Interesting comments Stefan, but don't forget, as all Americans seem to do, that New York, to take an example, is on the same latitude as Spain's capital Madrid and Stockholm in the middle of the Hudson Bay in Canada !!!

05:30 You know there is insurance for private healthcare if you want to pay premium...

OMG! AI is taking over! 😵‍💫 makes me just a smidgen nervous. Arch-e-pä-la-go ~vs~ Arch-e-pela-go made me smile 😊 getting 'lite grann svenska' hello from Denmark 🌸🥶

Stefan you’re getting a Swedish accent when speaking English 😂 the “basically” at the start sounded like a Swede speaking English 101

You can buy a private health insurance. In Finland it is quite normal to take an insurance before your baby is born. Then you know you are covered. Then your employer had to provide healthcare as well. So actually you can get help on the spot. I have a travelinsurance since 1970 valid 24/7 in all countries. It also is valid within the country. Whwn I am 50 km from my home it is valid and I am covered. I am sure they have similar things in Sweden.

Stockholm gets 6 hours of sunshine during winter solstice. In my Reykjavík, ca. 5 latitudes north, we get about 4 hours (wanna switch?). What is funny is that our noon is about 13:30 and Stockholm is about 11:45. Our sunrise is 11:23 at the latest and sunset is 15:28. But Stockholm's sunset is 14:46 at the earliest (because of the difference in our solar noons it turns out this way) 🤓

Just a thought, have you ever seen people living on the streets here in Sweden? Compered to the US. I myself have never seen it in Sweden, but in the US it's not so oncoming. And regarding the price for food, if you buy at Ica, Hemköp and so on it is very expensive. Willys is the best, imho

love winter, im born in november, mayby its why I like it.

Hi Stefan. You talk about Privet insurens and its so that you can have own privat insurens in haelth care and dentists and i think every insurens company here have a lot of options in that ,it only depends on how much you will spend so yes i think Sweden and USA are alike. Food prices ,yes they have increase hughe but but many sweds will have Swedich meat or wedges and if you look at the pricetag you allways have the producer country , so if you buy a staek from sweden its very expenciv but if you buy that staek on for. ex LIdl its often German and cheeper and if the meat comes from Argentina its cheepest because people dont like their methods of slatr. long transportation and so on . but even there the prices increase because of transportation costs. so as many people say, you got what you pay for. this is my opinion . Ha det. KJ

Unfortunately, the existence of private insurance is what's hollowing out the public health sector. It goes like this: wealthy people seek private solutions, thus they don't need the public so they vote for people who won't fund the public sector, so the public health care system loses money, which leads to longer lines and diminished qualify of care, which leads to more people who can afford it seek care outside of the system... You can see the issue. Stockholm county is by far the worst re this (because it has so many wealthy people and thus have been controlled by the right and center for a long time), but it's a general problem. The solution is to get rid of private care entirely so that everyone is experiencing the same care, which would force the wealthy and powerful to put pressure on the system to improve. Unfortunately this isn't gonna happen, but 🤷. Currently living in the PNW, but hoping to move back to Sweden in the next year or so, and the health care situation is definitely among the top of my worries.

There is private health care insurance in Sweden! There are private hospitals and doctors!

Stefan Thyron, you've lived in Sweden long enough to know what "jobbskatteavdrag" is. This labor tax deduction lowers the income tax to around 23-24%. In the US your employer also pays additional taxes for each employee.

The part that the employer is paying isn't taxes but negotiated with the unions and goes to things like social security, pensions and so on. That is why we get our sick pay from Försäkringskassan - it is an insurance and is paid for from our salaries. That is why it is called arbetsgivaravgifter (employer fees) and not taxes.

Long dark winters are not a con. You can never become a real Swede without embracing the dark and the winters

We have something called multi-child allowance, also if you have 2 children, you get allowance for 2 ½ children, 3 children you get for 4 and 4 kids you get for 5 kids, etc. so I got it in the 80s. They implemented it because that they were born too few children in Sweden (whites) they wanted more so that there would be more collectives taking care of the old so it was crass. The first child allowance was SEK 700.

But that money that the company is paying to the government is actually the workers money. Not the companies. Over the years it's the unions who has negotiated that the part of the salary should be paid by the companies, because the worker themselves were not paying it in. In Swedish we call it 'avstådd lön'. Alltså inte företagets pengar. Mkt viktigt att komma ihåg.

Great video! I’m from Stockholm, moved to Denmark, and now live in Skåne! It’s very beautiful in Skåne!! Come visit with your girlfriend! Österlen, Falsterbo, Malmö, Helsingborg och Kullen! You have to see it!! I love Copengagen too and all the beautiful smal harbour towns around Copenhagen!

You Don’t see all from main roads or Any roads so many hidden lakes mountains Islands hills

As a Swede i to need get a way from The cold and darkness i take a hollyday AT Christmas to Newyear this i year i go to Kanarieöarna.

5:44 The problem with this kind of tiered system that you're arguing for here is that when the rich and powerful are allowed to pay their way out of the public health system, support for a comprehensive public tax system is lowered among these classes, which are of course very powerful in politics. We are starting to see this problem in Sweden now, as public healthcare is being hollowed out, but the wealthy can still pay for private insurance in order to get their own level of service.

I am paying about 25% in taxes when I check in the end of the year. Its not that bad. If i would have lived in a municipality with lower tax That would be a few percent lower.

I wonder why the list is so irregular when we see the actual poverty in the US and UAE.

What are the colors of the Swedish flag? The flag of Sweden is a blue and yellow cross on a white background. The blue and yellow are the national colors of Sweden. The blue represents the sky and the yellow represents the sun. The flag is known in Sweden as the "Svenska fanan," which means "the Swedish flag." It is a rectangular flag with a width-to-length ratio of 8:11. The blue and yellow colors are equally sized, with the blue occupying the top and bottom halves of the flag and the yellow occupying the left and right halves.

3:57 This is just wildly misleading. First, a very large part of the ~30% that the employer pays to employ you is actually your pension payments. This is not a tax, this is your payment into your pension plan. The other parts of it are things like various kinds of insurances, like for instance sick insurance so that the employer doesn't have to cover your sick payments after two weeks of you being sick. There is one part that goes directly to the government, this has been implemented and made raised by multiple governments in order to implement various deductions which mostly benefit the upper middle class, but this also lowers the part that goes to those important insurance systems. When comparing to a country like the US, you also have to take into account the US equivalent payroll tax, and of course the lack of insurance provided through taxes which you have to take care of yourself. Second, to actually pay 30% or more in income tax if the kommun income tax is 30%, including national tax, you have to earn about 50,000 kr/month, which puts you in something like the 85th percentile.

Hello Stefan how are you my friend??

In This ~20%, there is also tour pension. They go to you later on.

Do you think that senior citizens are appropriately and well cared for?

This does not make sense. if Swedes are taxed 50% and yet you see so many boats and yachts and expensive houses, are most making real high incomes to compensate high cost of living and luxury? The math does not add up.

There is private healthcare if you insist to pay. I myself is absolutly sick of private healthcare, the worst ever and they have most certenly shortend my life with atleast 10 years.

You can't really add arbetsgivaravgift (whatever that would be called in english) on your income tax and say it's 47.3%. It's not a tax on your own income. It is an extra expense for the employer. If anything it could be regarded as an added corporate tax. Not personal income tax. I often see this talking point from anti tax people. It's rather misleading.

Sweden is cheap compared to Norway💰😉

You're just poilte. Sweden is mostly very depressing. There are also very few people who will apprechiate you as a stranger talking to them. And we're also very impolite. I'm fascinated with you coming from bubbly America to stiff Sweden and don't seem to have a problem.

Things beeing expensive is partially because of a high sales tax (moms). 25% on most things... Lower on food, travel and cultural/arts (momssatser). US employers often pay for health-/dental-insurance for their employees. I would put that in the same bracket as arbetsgivaravgift.

the worst thing in my current experience of working in norbotten is the german employer who flew me here under the pretense of nice creative cabin refit job. she turned out to be an abusive liar who when i refused to work through christmas due to me wanting to spend time with my kids who visited us exploded into a tirade of insults and lies.now im stuck in the middle of nowhere trying toplot my escape with my dog overland to spain.. i love sweeden i love the sweedish people they are Mong the friendliest most helpful people ive met, but iwill never work for millionaire germans again as long asilive.