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Back to Barter. The Lindgren case resulted from a quirk in the law (which will be changed), but it dramatized the near confiscatory nature of Sweden's tax structure, which inhibits individual initiative. Sven Stolpe, 70, one of Sweden's most distinguished writers, announced last month that he had burned the manuscripts for a new five-volume series of novels. His angry explanation: "Practically everything I earn is taxed around 100%. It is all my life's work that is being stolen." Silversmith Rey Urban, 46, moans that while his products are in demand everywhere, "I don't dare produce on a large scale" because of the taxes. In order to avoid records of transactions and hence a tax on earnings, there has even been something of a return to barter. Example: a dentist will fix a plumber's teeth in exchange for having a sink repaired.
Adding to the Swedes' frustration over tax rates is the sweeping power of the tax collectors. They can enter houses without court order, inspect bank records, even survey private medical records. The Bergman case prompted Author Kjell Sundberg to declare angrily, "The way society treated Bergman is the way ordinary people are daily treated by the tax authorities, the judicial system, the penal system, the schools."
Swedes, in fact, are for the first time beginning to worry about "Big Brother." Traditional civil liberties are largely intact: there is complete freedom of the press, as well as free elections, free speech and freedom of assembly. But the ever growing government bureaucracy encompasses 1.1 million of the country's 4.1 million workers. It inundates businessmen with almost endless forms and regulates a great deal of private life. A man who wants to repaint his house, for instance, must use officially approved colors (chiefly, various shades of tan).
A particularly unpleasant kind of unofficial intimidation is something the Swedes call den kungliga Svenska avundsjukan (the royal Swedish envy): a near universal disapproval of anyone who jumps too far outside the norm, either in the quantity of his material possessions or, by extension, the quality of his ideas. It is, moreover, nearly impossible for anyone to hide from a neighbor's scrutiny: all income-tax data, birth records and other personal documents are matters of public information, available for inspection at public records offices.
There is a growing irritation with the stifling welfare system, in large measure because Swedes have discovered it does not always deliver as much as it promises. In health care, the government discourages Swedes from using costly medical services by forcing patients to wait in long queues. It can take up to two months to get an appointment to see a doctor, and such visits average about ten minutes. Referral to a specialist often takes two years, and the wait for elective surgery (like the removal of a troublesome but not too dangerous gall bladder) can take five years.