Anita Malmqvist,
artist
>In those days, when I was young, we all used to think in the terms of "we", we thought of us as of a group. For us, our country was "home of the people". Nowadays, every person thinks only about himself and his perso-nal life and success, making his own unique plans for the future. Still, there are many problems in my country. One of the biggest being segregation. Every day there are more and more very rich people and more and more those who are extremely poor. That makes me so angry. There is no more that old kind of government which used to be a kind of mother and father to all of us, taking care of everything. It isn't easy for us, artists in Sweden to menage only by our artwork. We don't have any salary. But the same situation is everywhere in the world. There is some funds for art and artist but it is hard to get them nowadays. There are changes in the principles of funding. In the past they gave smaller amounts of money to more artist and today they give a bigger amounts to fewer artists. Most of us think that is unfair. <

Maria Lind,
curator
>It was clear that how the social welfare state was functioning towards the end of it's prime time was not satisfactory. There were to many restraints, the state has become too bureaucratised and also the freedom of choice was limited. Today things are going in a completely different direc-tion. We are going towards a new, liberal system. But the way is marked by extreme stupidity! For example: I am totally against private schools. I believe it is very important for society to have primary education same for every-body. Today we have too big diffe-rences between groups. That is very dangerous, not only for the individuals, but also for the whole society. I don' t come from a family where high education and travell-ing was a normal thing. That kind of system gave me the oppor-tunity to achieve what I wanted. In the last ten years there is more and more of an american style charity. There are wealthy people helping homeless and poor but I wouldn't like that to become a rule. I am not completely optimistic about the future. If you ask me: what our major party - the social democrats is doing - is scandalous! <

Anders Paulrud,
journalist
>To understand the Swedish social system we have to go back in the 30-ies when the social democrats and the financial system made a deal how to share social richness. For many decades it was a strong consensus between these two sides. We shouldn't forget that our economy was almost intact after World War II. We had a good start in 1945. In the 50- ies Sweden was predominantly rural society. From that time on, people started to move more to the cities. In that time we were all able to feel how our country was prosperous and how economy was in the constant progress. When I finished school in the 70- ies I could really choose what I would do with my life. I could immediately find a job or go to the university.There is no more of that safe Swedish model, and we don't have same options any more. There are so many poor people, homeless living on the streets of Stockholm. You couldn' t see that 5 years ago. I believe we are heading for the society that will be more and more unfair in a very profound way. <

Sven-Olof Wallenstein, philosopher
>The famous Swedish model has become too much idealised over the time. It is some kind of posi-tive retroprojection. 50- ties, 60- ties and 70-ties surely weren't some kind of "Golden Age". In order to have that kind of social welfare, the state made many mis-takes, such as borrowing the mo-ney. So the crises of the 90-ties had their origins in the accumu-lation of the problems in those decades. They have pushed the problems over to the next gene-rations, to us. Many people would say that they live bad, that they don't have enough money to have a normal life. Artists, for example always complain that they are not well paid. On the other hand, there are enormous funding for them. The problem is that they to stay at home contem-plating, producing the art and to be paid for that. In America artists work in the restaurants, drive taxies... Sweden is a rich and well orga-nised country where people can express themselves. Economy is doing well, the rate of unemploy-ment is low, and living standard is good. Many of us think that Sweden is the best country to live in. I believe that I can be optimistic about the future. <