I recently had a fascinating meeting with the Swedish ambassador to the United States, Urban Ahlin, who made me wonder if America should be more like Sweden. Over lunch, Ahlin explained that Sweden actually balances their annual budget. I asked myself, could Europe's socialists actually be more fiscally responsible than Democrats, and even some Republicans?
Before his appointment as ambassador to the United States for Sweden's current conservative-led government, Ahlin was a longtime Social Democrat, the former speaker of the Riksdag (the Swedish equivalent of speaker of the House), and once the chair of the Socialist Group in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly. So imagine my shock when he explained to me that no political party in Sweden would support a government retirement pension program that doesn't balance.
