High taxes, invest invest invest - and strong social welfare -------------- the recipe for immense wealth (compare this with Oz - cut cut cut, low tax, low debt)
This is foundation building ---------- Sweden has a global reputation for championing high taxes and social equality, but it has become a European hotspot for the super rich.
Sweden - a country with a global reputation for its leftist politics. the nation has been run by Social Democrat-led governments for the majority of the last century, elected on promises to grow the economy in an equitable way, with taxes funding a strong welfare state.
In 1996, there were just 28 people with a net worth of a billion kronor or more (around $91m or £73m at today's exchange rate), according to a rich list published by former Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer. Most of them came from families that had been rich for generations. By 2021, there were 542 "kronor billionaires", according to a similar analysis by daily newspaper Aftonbladet, and between them they owned a wealth equivalent to 70% of the nation's GDP, a measure of the total value of goods and services in the economy.Sweden - with a population of just 10 million - also has one of the world's highest proportions of "dollar billionaires" per capita. Forbes listed 43 Swedes worth $1bn or more in its 2024 rich list.That equates to around four per million people, compared to about two per million in the US (which has 813 billionaires - the most of any nation - but is home to more than 342 million people).
One reason for the rise of the new super rich is Sweden's thriving tech scene. The country has a reputation as the Silicon Valley of Europe, having produced more than 40 so-called unicorn start-ups - companies worth more than $1bn - in the past two decades.Skype and Spotify were founded here, as well as gaming firms King and Mojang. More recent global success stories include the financial tech start-up Tink, which Visa acquired for around $2bn during the pandemic, healthcare company Kry, and the e-scooter company Voi.At Epicenter - a shared office and community space with a giant glass atrium - veteran entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson traces this success back to the 1990s. He says a tax rebate on home computers in Sweden "wired or connected all of us much faster than other countries".
