ABSTRACT
Looking at Sweden from the perspective of the Johnson administration, it is understandable that they thought its egalitarian project was a success. Some 25 years into its life, the Swedish welfare state was institutionally complete, and the nation's economy was outgrowing the US economy. Sweden stopped just short of introducing Soviet-style economic planning. Soviet Union and its European satellites simply could not compete with the free-market based economies in Western Europe. As a result, not even the most fervent egalitarians in the West had much to gain from proposing Soviet-style central planning. After a very expansive start in the 1960s, the egalitarian American welfare state slowed its expansion markedly. Because of the limited demographic that receives Social Security checks, the transfer share of personal income grew very slowly before the War on Poverty: from just below 5 percent of personal income in 1955 to a bit over 6 percent in 1965.
