E-commerce is thriving like never before, with people ordering all sorts of things from various websites around the world. However, small cracks can be seen at the delivery stage. Sometimes I find that shipping costs more than I imagined and becomes a significant part of the purchase itself, and sometimes packages get lost, never arrive, or take a very long   …  

Western sanctions against Russia have worked badly, really poorly if we are honest, it may even be that they have made the country richer. How can it have gone so wrong? Isn’t the idea of sanctions to prevent countries from trading, to make them poorer, and thereby force them to obey? For sanctions to be successful, the countries imposing them   …  

There is a lot of talk about growth in economic discussions, often with the hope that it will last forever. But we know that this is not the case; sometimes there are hiccups in the machinery in the form of economic crises, recessions, etc. On the other hand, we have not experienced real paradigm shifts in modern times, where growth   …  

I live in a country with hot summers and high humidity. This means that many products have a shorter lifespan, especially things made of plastic. For example, it’s not uncommon for the inner door handle on cars to break off, as the heat fatigues the plastic and causes it to fail; the same goes for hatchets, knobs, strips etc. The   …  

Sweden has been a high-tax society since the 1970s. The sharp increase in taxes came as a response to industrial closures and the resulting unemployment. The high taxes became permanent, and finally put the nail in the coffin of the laissez-faire and low-tax policy that made Sweden prominent from around 1870 onwards. It was not Social Democrats and high taxes   …  

Modernism is a cultural, aesthetic and architectural phenomenon that can sometimes be oversimplified as primitivism, cubism and the search for something different. At least that’s how it started. Primitivism can be seen in Picasso’s portraits, which were inspired by African masks, cubism can of course also be seen in Picasso’s work, as well as everywhere in the streets, because modern   …  

What is happening today in Ukraine is seen by some as a major reshaping of power structures in the world. The misguided sanctions against Russia have exposed the weaknesses of the American empire, and we are seeing an economic crisis in the West, while the Russians seem to be faring unashamedly well. Moreover, the dollar is losing its role as   …  

Economic bubbles are often mentioned, especially in the housing market. And there’s certainly a fair reason, as prices have been going up for decades. Our housing spending is rising steadily, and there seems to be no end to the price increases. The housing bubble was already being talked about in the late 1990s, not knowing that prices would continue to   …  

Now that electricity and petrol are becoming painfully expensive, there’s every reason to reassess your personal spending. The first thing you notice is all those little monthly payments that are automatically deducted, Netflix, games, apps, media subscriptions etc. When it all adds up, it becomes quite a lot, even though each payment may seem small and limited. The internet economy   …  

The government, in its original form, provided military, judiciary and administration. The aristocracy collected taxes from the commoners and promised defence in the event of war. Over time, the government was increasingly transformed into a type of insurance company, where most of the budget goes to social protection, such as unemployment benefit, parental allowance, child allowance, social assistance, etc. Health   …  

Several articles and books have been written about waste of tax assets in Sweden. It’s about politicians using tax money for lots of unnecessary projects, everything from empty sports facilities, theme parks, strange art etc. Also important government schemes tend to be expensive and prolonged. There is a ghost in the machinery, most politician driven project are in fact overpriced   …