At 9/19/06 06:54 PM, Glendale wrote:
The problem with Sweden is that there is a very large unemployment rate. If you can get a living off of doing nothing, why do anything? I mean sure, doing odd jobs here and there, but then you go and use all that money for a computer or TV since you do not have to worry aboout buying food or paying rent. With Capitalism, you work hard, you get paid. And its not like theres NO social benefits here in the US. Labor Unions, Scocial Security, Pensions, etc etc.
Besides do you want the same party to be in power for 70 YEARS
Sounds like welfare bribery to me
BTW that party I'm talkin' about (Social Democratic Party) Just got ousted and the state is pulling off this nasty little nuber in response
Unemployed you say? We can't really offer you a job... but we could classify you as mentally disabled to improve our labor market statistics!
That's the message 25-year-old Swedish citizen Jessica Pettersson got from the state unemployment office. Pettersson has a high school degree in economics and has worked in a post office and in a grocery store, among other jobs. After being out of work for a while, her supervisor at the unemployment agency told her that she ought to meet with a work-psychologist since "it is so hard to be without a job".
Petterson told the Swedish daily paper Expressen that she had no desire to go to a psychologist but was persuaded to do so by the unemployment agency. The psychologist gave her a number of tests that she found stressful and humiliating, such as building objects with wooden blocks. To her surprise the psychologist said that Petterson should be classified as disabled since she wasn't good enough at mathematics. Jessica was shocked to hear this: "I might not be a math genius, but I know how to count," she told the paper.
The unemployment agency explained that it was simply a matter of changing a code in her status as unemployed. If she agreed to be classified as mentally disabled she would be entitled to a range of government subsidies and programs. In fact, she could begin working at "Samhall" - a government project aimed at providing employment for the disabled. There she could get a job cleaning and building wheelchairs.
"I felt the panic spreading in my body," she said. "Samhall is intended for the truly disabled who could never get another job. Could I really work there? A place that might mean a lot for a handicapped person - but that would be a giant leap backwards in my development and self-respect."
Petterson finally managed to convince the unemployment agency that she would never agree to become classified as mentally disabled. She told Expressen that her family, her friends and her boyfriend have reacted strongly to this notion.
Alarmingly, what happened to Petterson is not an isolated incident in Sweden. The state unemployment agency is constantly attempting to force people to "admit" to being disabled. Today 19.3 percent of those seeking jobs at the unemployment office are being classified as disabled.
Stockholm University professor Mikael Holmqvist, who has done research on the subject of Samhall's workers, believes that most of these people are in fact not disabled at all. They have been lured or threatened into agreeing to become classified as such. The reason for this is simply that if you are disabled you are removed from the statistics of open unemployment, something that the current Social Democratic government greatly appreciates.
It is bad enough that the Swedish government hides the country's true unemployment rate by hiring people through various state projects and by manipulating official statistics. But classifying healthy young people as disabled is truly a shameful exercise. If the Social Democrats lose this weekend's election the protest votes the young people humiliated by the unemployment agencies might play an important part.
http://www.tcsdaily...icle.aspx?id=091806D
I'm not much of a Sweden pundt but COME ON! This is like truthfully annoucing that pigs are flying
