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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Yes!

If the government can provide effective healthcare that should at least in theory be a great boon to social mobility and entrepreneurship as that means people can much more easily move to a new job. Tying healthcare to employers is antithetical to that.

I suspect the real issue doing that in the US is simply because it's so varied. You've got several individual demographics within America that are bigger than Sweden's entire population - all with different cultures and even histories. Having a more homogeneous culture is advantageous in that respect. Maybe it's not surprising that SK has seen similar results.

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Today, Sweden is much more diverse that most people from other countries imagine (the percentage of the population that is born in foreign countries is higher in Sweden than the US, for instance). A walk down any street in Stockholm would disabuse you of the notion that there is no diversity here.

However, it is fair to say that when the system was "designed", (largely in the early and mid 20th century), Sweden was much more ethnically homogeneous than it is today. There might be something to the notion that people are much more willing to accept a generous welfare state if they know the beneficiaries are from the same ethnic group. It's shameful, but that's humanity for you.

Diversity is no excuse for America's failures. Your nation is not as much an outlier in diversity as you would like to believe, and in the domain of health care you need only look north to Canada to see that this argument is nonsense.

In all honesty, when I hear people say that some social program can't work in America because it's "too diverse," I can't help but hear "it can't work because of all the blacks and Mexicans".

It's disappointing and quite upsetting to me... It's clear that they are using a (slightly) more socially acceptable form of racism. After all, are they saying, for eg, education can't work because of all the Irish or German or Asians? Is it because of all the Canadians living off the US government?

Who exactly are these diverse types that are ensuring that particular failure?

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