right on the water here, so it never really gets that . . . Darn it, hand me the hammer, Rolf. The Mr. Coffee has frozen solid again.” But a socialist paradise was what, indeed, I found—“ folkhemmet, ” as it’s called, “the people’s home.” This sounds like the latest sensitive renaming of the local poorhouse, but the word has perhaps more charm in the original language. Sweden is a welfare state from cradle to grave, and further than that. Between elaborate sex education and the constitutional status of the Lutheran Church, Sweden provides for its citizens from, as the Swedes put it, “erection to resurrection.” Medical care is available to everyone in Sweden at nominal cost, even to tourists, though I was not personally lucky enough to have an accident or disease while I was there. A visit to the doctor costs between fifteen dollars and twenty dollars. A specialist gets five dollars more. Hospital stays cost about twelve dollars a night for anything from a twisted ankle to cancer. Unemployment insurance is 75 percent of your pay, and there’s unlimited sick leave at the same rate of compensation. If you’re completely disabled, you get your whole paycheck. (During a brief period of nonsocialist rule in 1991, a one-day waiting period for sick-leave benefits was instituted. An enormous drop in Monday and Friday worker illnesses resulted—one of the medical miracles of the twentieth century.) Day care is available for all children from infancy until who knows when. Maybe until they get senile, because I have an official Swedish government report (which I never quite summoned the patience to read) titled The Old Are Youngsters Who Have Grown Older. Parents pay about 10 percent of day-care costs. Eighty-four percent of women work—most of them in day-care centers. No, it just seems that way. A very large proportion of women are employed in the public sector, however. Some of them are in Parliament. Swedes get five weeks of legally mandated paid vacation. If you have a baby, parental leave lasts 450 days, at up to 80 percent of salary, and either the mother or the father can stay home. An additional 120 leave days can be had to care for a sick child. Thus some Swedes are able to take 570 days a year off from work. And teenage girls who become pregnant can presumably get fifteen months off from school with good grades. Actually, there isn’t any grading in Sweden until high school, and education is free through the Ph.D. level, with additional “study assistance” money available, plus cheap student loans. This should pretty much carry you through
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