Sweden has an extremely shitty healthcare. I mean yeah it is free, but the quality is just not good. My relatives and I have had a lot of issues where the doctors would just straight up refuse to run tests or provide treatment no matter how much in pain you are… And that’s if they even see you. For example my grandfather was urinating blood and was in severe pain, but the doctors literally told him he was fine and sent him home… Only for him to be rushed back to the hospital the same day… Before being sent back again… Before being sent back again and finally having one of the doctors decide to actually diagnose what the issue was. My uncles have similar stories that they keep telling me. America has a very flawed healthcare system, but it’s not that bad.
The salaries are very, very low and the taxes are insanely high. I work in tech. A senior developer with 10+ years of experience there would make around $60,000 to $70,000 before taxes and that’s considered really good. After taxes, they get to keep about half of that (I’m not making this up, it’s literally half). I’m currently a junior dev here in the US and have only worked for 1 year and I already make more money than that. Not only do I make more money but I pay less taxes and deductions too. So even when we take into account health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k contributions, and other shit like this, I still pay less than what Sweden takes in taxes. Basically professionals in Sweden get fucked over and their lives are not that different than minimum wage workers (Sweden doesn’t really have a minimum wage but you get the idea).
The weather is pretty shitty. It’s freezing cold most of the year and in the 4 months where the country isn’t a freezer, it keeps raining nonstop. But what’s more annoying than the weather is the location of the country, it’s too far up north. In the summer the sun doesn’t set and so it’s completely bright in the middle of the night. You go outside at 2 am and it’s like going out at 6 pm here in most of the US. It really fucks with your sleep cycle. In the winter, it’s the opposite problem where it’s dark all day every day for about 3-4 months. It’s perpetual night basically. You still have to go to work, buy groceries, and do everything you need to do while it’s freezing and dark. I found it too depressing to bear.
The immigration there is horrendous. Immigrants are everywhere and the vast majority of them aren’t assimilated. Not only are they not, but they refuse to. The immigrants don’t want to embrace Swedish culture, language, and values and are instead actively against them… Which is wild to me because I’m a first gen immigrant and I consider myself American. So do most immigrants here. Most immigrants in the US want to work, speak English, and try their shot at the American dream. The US really sells the ideas of cultural hegamony and the melting pot well. You can still keep in touch with your roots, but you’re American first. Not there. In Sweden the immigrants live in bubbles that are in line with their home countries. For example, if you go to Södertälje, it’s like going to Syria. Women are afraid to wear revealing clothes, crime is really high, they’re extremely racist towards native Swedes and other ethnicities they don’t like at home, you can’t criticize islam in public or else your safety is at risk, and they’re against Swedish values of tolerance, freedom, and equality. Also a huge chunk of immigrants don’t work and don’t want to work, they just leech off of government benefits and they want to keep it that way. I had people tell me of the different schemes and loopholes they use to extract as much money from the government as possible, it’s just sad. The thing is that virtually all the ethnic communities I interacted with were like this and it doesn’t matter if they’re old or young or whether or not they’re first/second/third generation immigrants. There’s clear tension, segregation, resentment, and hate between Swedes, immigrants, and the different immigrant communities. Things are getting worse, but everybody is too scared of talking about it because they don’t want to be branded as racist, and so nothing ever happens. Everybody pretends things are just dandy when they’re not.
Swedes in general, immigrant or not, are very ignorant yet very proud. We tend to think Americans are arrogant and ignorant, but it’s true there too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are genuinely shocked that I didn’t have any college debt but still ended up with a degree. They unironically think they live in a borderline utopia and that America is basically the same as Afghanistan. They don’t comprehend that the US is a first world country and they’re not open to learning from other countries. They’re close minded outside of their immediate geographic neighborhood.
The markets there are bad, and the products they have are even worse. Common things that you wouldn’t even have on your mind aren’t there. Accent chairs? Nope. Memory foam mattresses? Nope. Upright vacuums? Nope. Bidets? Nope. The thing is that for the things they do have, they’re complete and utter trash. Their clothes are like towels, their beds are like tables, their appliances are like toys, and so on. The products have the same price tags as here, but when you buy it there’s nothing there. Oh, and everything is either domestic or regional. Want to buy an American vacuum and ship it there? Ha, good luck. They have import taxes that are as high as the price of the items and you also have to pay shipping which is also as high as the price of item. So if the vacuum costs $100 here, you would have to pay $300 to import it there. Fucking Walmart has greater variety and better quality than any of the stores there.
Houses there a joke. They’re extremely small and overpriced. Like 70% of the housing there comes in the form of condo complexes (kind of like the projects but nicer) or very small and crowded cookie cutter suburban styled house complexes… The other 30% are standard single family homes, and those are considered the peak of housing there but they’re mostly in rural areas. The thing is that even if you’re a masochist who enjoys living in a box, there are still things that are very annoying like for example, you don’t get to control when your heating comes on, the condo complex does. There’s no dryer, you have to book an appointment to use the complex’s driers. The toilets and sinks in the bathrooms are uncomfortably low. They don’t really have bathtubs there. It’s just not great.
The cities also aren’t that great. The centers of cities are dirty, most of the cities outside the centers are just swaths of strip malls with big parking lots that are segregated from swaths of condo complexes, you have to pay to use the public bathrooms, the drivers don’t give a fuck about pedestrians crossing the streets and will keep going at full speed, and there are sooooooo many smokers.
I know I’m making it seem like it’s all doom and gloom, but Sweden is a nice country. The healthcare is free (not good, but free), it is safe (becoming less and less true, but still safer than the US), guaranteed vacation time, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave, better worker protections, wayyyy better walkability, better public transport overall, Stockholm is fun to visit, the nature is pretty, a lot museums are free, and so on. But I was honestly disappointed. I went there with the idea that Sweden was basically the US but more competent, functional, and human orientated. While that’s true in some aspects, it’s not true in many others. For educated working professionals like myself, the US is much, much better than Sweden. Sweden is only really better if you’re a minimum wage worker or something along those lines, but that’s really about it. Sweden is a good country, but it is beyond overhyped and overrated. Some people have completely delusional views on the country, including myself and many Swedes themselves, and I only started putting things in perspective when I actually went there and experienced life there first hand. I hope this helps.
Holy shit that was a great read - thank you for taking the time. I’ve been looking at the tech salaries in the states - tempting. But things are not nearly as bad in Norway as you describe in Sweden. Interesting though that I can recognise a lot of our challenges in what you write though (not at the same scale, but most of them are present here too).
Sweden has an extremely shitty healthcare. I mean yeah it is free, but the quality is just not good. My relatives and I have had a lot of issues where the doctors would just straight up refuse to run tests or provide treatment no matter how much in pain you are… And that’s if they even see you. For example my grandfather was urinating blood and was in severe pain, but the doctors literally told him he was fine and sent him home… Only for him to be rushed back to the hospital the same day… Before being sent back again… Before being sent back again and finally having one of the doctors decide to actually diagnose what the issue was. My uncles have similar stories that they keep telling me. America has a very flawed healthcare system, but it’s not that bad.
The salaries are very, very low and the taxes are insanely high. I work in tech. A senior developer with 10+ years of experience there would make around $60,000 to $70,000 before taxes and that’s considered really good. After taxes, they get to keep about half of that (I’m not making this up, it’s literally half). I’m currently a junior dev here in the US and have only worked for 1 year and I already make more money than that. Not only do I make more money but I pay less taxes and deductions too. So even when we take into account health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k contributions, and other shit like this, I still pay less than what Sweden takes in taxes. Basically professionals in Sweden get fucked over and their lives are not that different than minimum wage workers (Sweden doesn’t really have a minimum wage but you get the idea).
The weather is pretty shitty. It’s freezing cold most of the year and in the 4 months where the country isn’t a freezer, it keeps raining nonstop. But what’s more annoying than the weather is the location of the country, it’s too far up north. In the summer the sun doesn’t set and so it’s completely bright in the middle of the night. You go outside at 2 am and it’s like going out at 6 pm here in most of the US. It really fucks with your sleep cycle. In the winter, it’s the opposite problem where it’s dark all day every day for about 3-4 months. It’s perpetual night basically. You still have to go to work, buy groceries, and do everything you need to do while it’s freezing and dark. I found it too depressing to bear.
The immigration there is horrendous. Immigrants are everywhere and the vast majority of them aren’t assimilated. Not only are they not, but they refuse to. The immigrants don’t want to embrace Swedish culture, language, and values and are instead actively against them… Which is wild to me because I’m a first gen immigrant and I consider myself American. So do most immigrants here. Most immigrants in the US want to work, speak English, and try their shot at the American dream. The US really sells the ideas of cultural hegamony and the melting pot well. You can still keep in touch with your roots, but you’re American first. Not there. In Sweden the immigrants live in bubbles that are in line with their home countries. For example, if you go to Södertälje, it’s like going to Syria. Women are afraid to wear revealing clothes, crime is really high, they’re extremely racist towards native Swedes and other ethnicities they don’t like at home, you can’t criticize islam in public or else your safety is at risk, and they’re against Swedish values of tolerance, freedom, and equality. Also a huge chunk of immigrants don’t work and don’t want to work, they just leech off of government benefits and they want to keep it that way. I had people tell me of the different schemes and loopholes they use to extract as much money from the government as possible, it’s just sad. The thing is that virtually all the ethnic communities I interacted with were like this and it doesn’t matter if they’re old or young or whether or not they’re first/second/third generation immigrants. There’s clear tension, segregation, resentment, and hate between Swedes, immigrants, and the different immigrant communities. Things are getting worse, but everybody is too scared of talking about it because they don’t want to be branded as racist, and so nothing ever happens. Everybody pretends things are just dandy when they’re not.
Swedes in general, immigrant or not, are very ignorant yet very proud. We tend to think Americans are arrogant and ignorant, but it’s true there too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are genuinely shocked that I didn’t have any college debt but still ended up with a degree. They unironically think they live in a borderline utopia and that America is basically the same as Afghanistan. They don’t comprehend that the US is a first world country and they’re not open to learning from other countries. They’re close minded outside of their immediate geographic neighborhood.
The markets there are bad, and the products they have are even worse. Common things that you wouldn’t even have on your mind aren’t there. Accent chairs? Nope. Memory foam mattresses? Nope. Upright vacuums? Nope. Bidets? Nope. The thing is that for the things they do have, they’re complete and utter trash. Their clothes are like towels, their beds are like tables, their appliances are like toys, and so on. The products have the same price tags as here, but when you buy it there’s nothing there. Oh, and everything is either domestic or regional. Want to buy an American vacuum and ship it there? Ha, good luck. They have import taxes that are as high as the price of the items and you also have to pay shipping which is also as high as the price of item. So if the vacuum costs $100 here, you would have to pay $300 to import it there. Fucking Walmart has greater variety and better quality than any of the stores there.
Houses there a joke. They’re extremely small and overpriced. Like 70% of the housing there comes in the form of condo complexes (kind of like the projects but nicer) or very small and crowded cookie cutter suburban styled house complexes… The other 30% are standard single family homes, and those are considered the peak of housing there but they’re mostly in rural areas. The thing is that even if you’re a masochist who enjoys living in a box, there are still things that are very annoying like for example, you don’t get to control when your heating comes on, the condo complex does. There’s no dryer, you have to book an appointment to use the complex’s driers. The toilets and sinks in the bathrooms are uncomfortably low. They don’t really have bathtubs there. It’s just not great.
The cities also aren’t that great. The centers of cities are dirty, most of the cities outside the centers are just swaths of strip malls with big parking lots that are segregated from swaths of condo complexes, you have to pay to use the public bathrooms, the drivers don’t give a fuck about pedestrians crossing the streets and will keep going at full speed, and there are sooooooo many smokers.
I know I’m making it seem like it’s all doom and gloom, but Sweden is a nice country. The healthcare is free (not good, but free), it is safe (becoming less and less true, but still safer than the US), guaranteed vacation time, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave, better worker protections, wayyyy better walkability, better public transport overall, Stockholm is fun to visit, the nature is pretty, a lot museums are free, and so on. But I was honestly disappointed. I went there with the idea that Sweden was basically the US but more competent, functional, and human orientated. While that’s true in some aspects, it’s not true in many others. For educated working professionals like myself, the US is much, much better than Sweden. Sweden is only really better if you’re a minimum wage worker or something along those lines, but that’s really about it. Sweden is a good country, but it is beyond overhyped and overrated. Some people have completely delusional views on the country, including myself and many Swedes themselves, and I only started putting things in perspective when I actually went there and experienced life there first hand. I hope this helps.
Holy shit that was a great read - thank you for taking the time. I’ve been looking at the tech salaries in the states - tempting. But things are not nearly as bad in Norway as you describe in Sweden. Interesting though that I can recognise a lot of our challenges in what you write though (not at the same scale, but most of them are present here too).