If you listen to the Democrats and Caesar Obammus, more government spending seems to be their only solution to our economic woes.  We need to spend more!  This Keynesian economic theory is similar to what European welfare countries have been saying.  Most of them took a similar route to the United States in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis: They spent spent spent in order to “stimulate,” and all they ended up doing what racking up more debt with little “stimulation” to show for it.

But there was one country that decided to take the opposite route: Sweden.  Sweden’s financial minister Anders Borg took the opposite approach to Spain, Portugal or even the United States.

While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Anders Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. 

Imagine that!  Permanent tax cuts and a quest to shrink the size of government led Sweden to be the fastest growing economy in Europe and running a zero deficit.  Meanwhile, the United States is seeing the slowest economic growth in any post-recession recovery in history and our deficit is at a historic high.

He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. The last bit was the most unpopular, but for Borg, economic recovery starts with entrepreneurs. If cutting taxes for the rich encouraged risk-taking, then it had to be done.

Isn’t it nice to have a leader who understands the driving force behind a growing economy?  Instead, we have Caesar Obammus who insists on demonizing the rich.  In this past weekend’s address to the nation, Obama said, “[Republicans] think all we can do is cut taxes – especially for the wealthiest Americans – and go back to letting banks and corporations write their own rules again. That’s their plan.  But I think they’re wrong.”  Well Obama’s characterization of what Republicans want to do is wrong … but that doesn’t stop him from using wealth envy as a means to generate votes.  But let’s get back to a man who understands what drives an economy … Sweden’s Anders Borg (an economist, by the way).

‘If you have a high wealth tax and an inheritance tax, people emigrate because it becomes too costly to own a company. Ownership is a production factor. Entrepreneurs are a production factor. Yes, these people are rich and you can obviously argue that we want to encourage social cohesion. But it is also problematic if you drive out entrepreneurs from your country, because they are the source of job creation.’

Here’s what happens when you have an economist, or someone who knows what drives an economy, running a nation.  Compare that to the track record of Obama, who characterized his brief stint the private sector as “working behind enemy lines.”