The incentive to work has not been removed in capitalist Sweden.
For many, it has. Quite a few have done the math and figured that there is a much greater incentive to do what they do in the United States instead of doing it in Sweden. So those individuals no longer contribute to the "free stuff" fund.
Sure, there are a number of people who continue to work despite a 61% tax rate. But that number would be much higher if that rate were only 25%. Your goal should be to maximize tax revenue. Yet you seem completely oblivious to the elasticity of tax rates, and equally oblivious to the fact that there is a revenue ceiling relative to GDP.
Bernie and his followers . . . all they're asking for is a public option for college and healthcare.
Right now, the US is not able to pay for all the 'free stuff' that we are currently giving away. Think about this for a moment. Every single dollar paid in personal income taxes does not cover the amount of money given out to other
citizens residents as direct cash payments. So the government prints up new dollars to cover the difference, thus stealing wealth from anyone holding dollars. And this is all happening at a time where federal tax revenues are at an all-time high. Knowing that, how do you propose we pay for even more 'free stuff'?
They don't want to destroy capitalism and bring on totalitarian socialism.
Actually, they do want socialism, but they want capitalists to pay for it.
Of the minority of people on the left that say they want to end capitalism, 99% of those are children speaking from a position of ignorance. They lack the ability to properly articulate what they're asking for.
And Bernie Sanders is their champion.
Literal socialism doesn't work, and anybody with a brain knows that.
Then explain it to me. Explain why socialism doesn't work. Because if you really believed that, you wouldn't be calling for government monopolization of the health care industry - the same type of monopolization that has drastically driven up the cost of acquiring student loans.