Swedish socialists are obsessed with the income gap and want more of government redistribution to even it out. As a libertarian, I am opposed to any such policy because it infringes on individual rights and makes the citizen a means to an end. Of course, individual rights means nothing to socialists; to them, people are merely interest groups waiting to be pampered by an enlightened, omnipotent elite.

Most Swedes are not socialists, but many are strong advocates of egalitarianism. The socialists know this and appeal to people’s sense of fairness when they imply that a growing income gap means less money to the poor. But this is not true. The rich are getting richer, but it is because they are increasingly successful at what they are doing, not because they somehow take money from the poor.

I just found this graph from Statistics Sweden. It shows the development of disposable income in Sweden between 1995 and 2007. The yellow line marks those who do not work (full-time students, unemployed, people on sick leave, etcetera) and the red line marks those who work. As you can see, the gap between the two groups is widening, but everyone has increased their income during the measured period. The wealthy are getting wealthier, but so are the poor.