Sweden, much admired by Bernie Sanders and others on the Left as a model “democratic socialist” country, is not socialist like Venezuela. It tried socialism, found it didn’t work, “turned sharply back toward capitalism” round the middle of the 1990s, and regained prosperity. It is still a highly taxed welfare state.

The Swedes were happy with that, and decided in Christian spirit to share their happiness with tens of thousands of aliens from the Third World. They came from the hot lands of Africa and Asia to the north of Europe, with its long cold winter nights.

Judith Bergman writes at Gatestone about what happened to Sweden when it welcomed a “large influx of people [read Muslims] who do not have the educational or language skills to work in the Swedish economy”.

The small Swedish city of Filipstad exemplifies a place where the influx of non-Western migrants, some of them illiterate, with little or no education, has meant that the unemployment rate in that group is at 80%: they depend for their livelihoods on the municipality’s social welfare program.

In 2015, during the European migration crisis, nearly 163,000 migrants arrived in Sweden seeking asylum – primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq …  60,000 received a residence permit. In the group of people over the age of 15, made up of 40,019 people, only 4,574 get their livelihood from employment … 18,405 people from the cohort live on welfare handed out by municipalities and 9,970 people receive funds for studying.

Many municipalities … need to make budget cuts. In Ystad, in the south of Sweden, the municipality, as part of the services of the welfare state, [has been helping] the elderly with hot meals and cleaning services. Now, to save money, the municipality will no longer serve hot meals to the elderly and cleaning services will be limited to once every three weeks. The elderly will instead have to get ready-made meals from the supermarket. …

Motala municipality … announced that it would lower the heat in buildings managed by the city, including old age homes, to save money. “We will take care of the elderly; they will not be freezing, they can have blankets,” the message went.

The criticism of the proposed savings on care for the elderly in Motala, however, was so massive that the municipality had to back down. …

Meanwhile, in June, the Swedish parliament voted in favor of a law that is likely to increase immigration to Sweden based on family reunification.

 Alert capitalists will be buying shares in the blanket industry.