Magic Statistics

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela found somebody to sell him some expensive new toys in exchange for our gasoline money his oil revenues.

Russia signed a £1.6bn arms deal with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela today, risking a confrontation with the US, which has imposed an arms embargo on the South American country.
. . .
Mr Chávez again launched a vitriolic attack on the United States. "After almost 200 years, we can say that the United States was designed to fill the entire world with poverty as if in the name of freedom," he said according to Interfax.

"The United States' empire is the greatest threat which exists in the world today. This is a senseless, blind and dumb giant, which does not know the world, does not know human rights, and does not know anything about humanity, culture, conscience, or consciousness."
. . .
He added that during a recent visit to Belarus, Russia's neighbour whose leader was dubbed Europe's last dictator by Washington, he had seen a monument to Lenin. The leftwing leader said: "He will always be in our heart and our ideas."

h/t: David Michael Phelps at Acton Institute PowerBlog, who suggests that the antics of Presidents Chavez and Putin could be made into a new sitcom called Hugo and Vladi.  That would happen only if the actor playing Vladi doesn't mind working opposite a delusional scenery chewer.

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Sweden, erstwhile darling of "progressives" and statists, has fallen into an economic morass.  The fourth-richest country in the world in 1970, as measured by per-capita income, by 2000 it had dropped to 14th place.  Of the fifty American states, only four have per-capita incomes lower than Sweden.

Neil Reynolds of the Globe and Mail reports on a Swedish study attributing the country’s economic downturn to overly generous social programs and poor integration of immigrants.

Absenteeism is rampant in public and private sector jobs alike. The government provides sickness benefits equal to as much as 80 per cent of a worker's wages. Although they are the healthiest people on the earth, Swedes now "report sick" more often than any other people. Absenteeism has doubled in the last seven years and "sick pay" now consumes 16 per cent of government's expenditures.

Segregation of Sweden's foreign-born work force abounds. Although they comprise one-seventh of the labour force, most immigrants live on welfare in ghettos. "The number of segregated neighbourhoods continues to grow," Mr. Norberg says. "In some neighbourhoods, children grow up without ever seeing someone who goes to work in the morning."
. . .
Sweden's welfare state succeeded in the short term for four reasons. The population was small and homogeneous. The civil service was efficient, free of corruption, motivated. A strong Protestant work ethic ensured that people worked hard regardless of social programs. And the work ethic ensured high productivity — essential for an export-dependent country.
. . .
[N]one of these strengths remains.

A national election will be held on 17 September.  Current public opinion polls show a dead heat between the governing leftist coalition (Social Democrats, the Left Party, and the Greens) and the centre-right Alliance for Sweden.

The Social Democrat campaign is pandering to the worst fears of welfare-state beneficiaries, apparently with some success.  If the “red-green” coalition is re-elected, watch for once-powerful Sweden to decline further.

For access to the full column, click here.

. . . Recruitment of two doctors makes the local CBC news.  From this morning's 7:30 am CBC Whitehorse news broadcast:

The Yukon government has recruited two new doctors.  Both are from Germany and will be affiliated with the Klondike Medical Clinic here in Whitehorse. . . .

(Transcript not available online, unfortunately.)

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