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Territory in northern Europe, ruled since 1905 by the Konungariket Sverige

Sweden (Swedish: Sverige), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: Konungariket Sverige), is a Scandinavian country in northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north and Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund, a strait at the Swedish-Danish border. At 450,295 square kilometers, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area. Sweden has a total population of 10.2 million of which 2.4 million has a foreign background. It has a low population density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometer. The highest concentration is in the southern half of the country.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 63° N — Longitude: 16° E

Area: 450,295 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: SE

Birthplace of

Greta Garbo, in Stockholm, on 18 Sep 1905
Knut Wicksell, in Stockholm, on 20 Dec 1851

Deathplace of

Knut Wicksell, in Stocksund, on 3 May 1926

Measures of Freedom

Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2021
2019: 8.83, Rank: 9, Personal Freedom: 9.63, Economic Freedom: 7.72
Level of Economic Freedom, Economic Freedom of the World
2014: 7.46, Rank: 38
Sweden | Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2022
2016: Status: Free, Aggregate Score: 100, Political Rights: 1, Civil Liberties: 1
More than 160,000 people—the vast majority fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq—applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015, placing severe pressure on the country's ability to process applications and accommodate new arrivals. Meanwhile, the 2014 agreement between the social-democratic government and center-right opposition on budget proposals, designed to curb the controversial right-wing Sweden Democrats party, was broken in October, expanding the Sweden Democrats' capacity to influence the response to the refugee crisis and other national policies.

Articles

How the Welfare State Corrupted Sweden, by Per Bylund, Mises Daily, 31 May 2006
Old people in Sweden say that to be Swedish means to supply for your own, to take care of your self, and never be a burden on anyone else's shoulders. ... What we are now seeing ... is the perfectly logical consequence of the welfare state: when handing out benefits and thereby taking away the individual's responsibility ... a new kind of individual is created — the immature, irresponsible, and dependent.
UpdThe Sweden Myth, by Stefan Karlsson, Mises Daily, 7 Aug 2006
... far-reaching free market reforms in the 1860s allowed Sweden to benefit from the spreading Industrial Revolution. ... during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sweden saw its economy rapidly industrializing, driven by the many Swedish inventors and entrepreneurs. ... In addition, there were countless non-inventing entrepreneurs during that period ...

Interviews

Wendy McElroy on Sex, Rape and Libertarian Feminism, by Wendy McElroy, Anthony Wile, 11 Mar 2012
Topics discussed include McElroy's early life, two of her notable books, individualist anarchism, voluntarism, conspiracy theories, religions, banks and money, feminism, capitalism, Austrian economics, Julian Assange and the future
Wendy McElroy: ... Sweden's definition of legal rape includes the idea of 'unlawful coercion', which involves exerting emotional pressure on someone to have sex ... A man in Assange's position ... would be particularly vulnerable to this ..., which carries a possible four-year sentence, because it could be argued that his status allowed him to exert an inordinate level of influence ... I disagree with the notion that falling for a "good line" ... is the same thing as being raped ... Sweden's law trivializes the brutal crime of rape and leaves nonviolent men open to unjust imprisonment.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sweden" as of 1 Oct 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.