The Trend to Widening Wealth and Income Inequality in Sweden and its Causes

Abstract

Sweden is a model of social democracy in which the Social Democratic Party has long been in power, and in which distribution under the conditions of monopoly capitalism has been the object of one-sided praise. Wealth and income inequality in Sweden was in the past relatively low, but in recent years has shown a tendency to undergo a structural increase, and some indicator values are already at comparatively high levels. Investigating the causes, we find that the ownership structure of the means of production, dominated by monopoly capitalist private ownership, has played a decisive role in the creation and evolution of wealth and income inequality within Sweden. The Swedish welfare system, whose core elements are social security provisions and the tax system, has played an important role in alleviating wealth and income inequality and in promoting social equity, but the degree of adjustment it achieves is relatively limited, and it now faces challenges in ensuring its sustainability. In recent years, the weakening of the organizational strength of trade unions in Sweden has resulted in an imbalance between the power of labor and capital, an imbalance that to some extent has promoted the widening of wealth and income inequality. With the deepening of the basic contradiction of capitalism, the trend to widening wealth and income inequality in Sweden represents a historical inevitability.