these are very good points, i think the world was just in a far better place across the board ten years ago, more or less.

I think the fact that Swedish salaries (and Norway, Denmark etc) are so much higher than anywhere else probably softens the blow because, on some level, it must feel pretty good to know you have a higher salary than almost anywhere in the world, on average at least.

i think it also helps that it's a low corruption index country as people won't feel like the tax money is just being stolen. if you had a system like that in Bulgaria it wouldn't work because people would just take the piss and the money would be 95% embezzled.