Little confused here. The social democratic era started according to the author "between 1870 and 1936" but the "high tax welfare state" didnt exist until the 1950's? Social democracy means a large welfare state... I mean during Per Albin Hansson reign as PM during the 30's and 40's such as "subsidised dental care, income-tested child allowances for invalidity pensioners and widows, maternity allowances through voluntary sickness insurance, and a 1935 law that introduced state subsidies for the construction of apartment houses for families with three of more children, combined with housing allowances for families with more than two children living in these houses", and also during Tage Erlander premiership during the 1940's universal healthcare was expanded, union controlled by state funded unemployment funds, universal housing expanded.
Also... Tax rates had several increases before the 50's....
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I think it has more to do with this: "Scandinavia was also not alone in developing comprehensive social welfare systems in the twentieth century. Across Western Europe, the kernel of a social compromise around the building of universal welfare institutions emerged in the early twentieth century in step with the rise of organized labor movements.. In the aftermath of World War II, European elites, wary of a radicalized workforce and the rise of Soviet Communism, found it necessary to compromise with labor in order to retain the capitalist system. This resulted in rapidly rising real wages and the building of social welfare institutions in all of US-controlled Western Europe, helped along by Marshall Aid and generous access to the American market.
Here again, Scandinavia conformed to the general West European trend. But this new model of social capitalism took a more radical form here than elsewhere. Under the hegemony of strong social-democratic parties, redistribution and welfare provisions in areas such as health care, education, transport, and housing reached an extent not seen anywhere else in Europe.
This was to a large degree the product of uniquely strong labor movements, politically empowered by robust alliances with social-democratic parties. Labor managed to achieve political hegemony by forging alliances with other popular movements supporting egalitarianism and democratization, most notably the peasant-based corporative movement and the women’s movement after the 1970s."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/national-review-williamson-bernie-sanders-sweden/
Not some cultural unity or what not..
