How much more proof do the Magic Marxist and his worthless ass-licking sycophants in Congress need that socialism is a bad, bad thing?  They obviously don’t see anything wrong with appropriating the earnings of the productive and redistributing them to those who couldn’t hope to reach that level of achievement. They obviously don’t see the folly of allowing a government that couldn’t even make a whore house a profitable venture to exert control over the lives of the citizens… of higher taxes, higher government spending and higher deficits.

They don’t see the evil of stealing the fruits of others’ efforts in the name of compassion.  Why should they?  The so-called “rich” can afford to be squeezed a bit. 

Well… what happens when there are no rich people to abuse?

But that’s beside the point.  They don’t see the immorality of their acts, because they choose, instead, to believe that achievement and financial success are evil.  And they choose to indoctrinate entire societies into that twisted school of thought.

So instead of showing them that their acts are immoral and morally corrupt, I choose instead to show them that some Europeans have actually seen what they’ve done and are acting to reverse years of welfare statism.

Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to takeover health care, rescue the financial system and run troubledcorporations: I have seen the future–and it doesn’t work.

As thefinance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of acountry long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state.In Borg’s view, the 1970s and 1980s were lost decades for Sweden.Left-leaning politicians pushed government spending, excludinginvestment outlays, from 22% of gross domestic product in 1970 to 30%in 1980. Real growth fell from an average of 4.4% annually in the 1960sto 2.4% in the 1970s and remained low for the next two decades.

“Like many societies, we went too far in our welfare-state ambitions,” say Borg (pronounced “Bor-ee”).

Thesedays President Obama is overseeing the largest increase in the U.S.government’s share of the economy since it was conducting a world waralmost seven decades ago. Economic stimulus, bailouts and expandedhealth care will all have to be paid for someday with either taxes orinflation. Borg is pushing Sweden in the opposite direction,encouraging the legislature to cut taxes, cap spending and privatizeparts of health care.

“If you’re working yourselves upwards intaxes and deficits, we’re working ourselves downwards,” says Borg.(FORBES recently interviewed him in Berlin, where he had delivered aspeech.)

So while the Swedes are acting to increase financial freedom and decrease government control, the United States is going backwards.  Backwards into the mire of statism, where the government appropriates the citizens’ earnings, controls healthcare and increases spending at the expense of its most productive.

You want a sure way to reduce productivity and investment in American firms? Reduce confidence. Why would investors want to put their money into ventures that are controlled and manipulated by a gargantuan bureaucracy where the majority of its ventures are unprofitable and cumbersome? Why would doctors want to work in a system controlled by a government that cannot even properly care for its wounded Soldiers – a relatively small segment of the population – but insists on controlling everyone’s health care as well?

The Swedes are beginning to understand that government control does nothing good for their economy.

When the hell will the worthless Marxist swine in Washington learn?