Rent seeking
If it is hard to earn money from work and easy to rake in money in the form of various hand-outs, even honest people’s view of right and wrong will change in the long run. If different benefit systems and grants are overly generous, in practice this means that honest behaviour will be penalised while cheating and fraud are rewarded.
Rent seeking entries
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Rail system on a Taxpayer funded life support
Research from the Taxpayers’ Alliance UK finds that government subsidies to Britain’s rail system since the pandemic have totalled a staggering £42 Billion. That’s an average of over £1,300 from every taxpayer.
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Pitiful recoveries from fraudulent covid contracts
The UK Government has recovered £18 million from fraudulent personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts. This represents just under 3%. The figures are based on estimates that 5% of the £12.6 billion in government contracts were fraudulent.…
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Climate equality comic book
The Swedish Gender Equality Agency handed out SEK 802,000 to environmental activists at Swedish Friends of the Earth for a book of cartoons intended to “highlight the link between gender equality and climate”. When someone…
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Welfare fraud
Swedish welfare systems are naively organised. Poor coordination between different government agencies and a lack of checks have meant that a large proportion of our shared tax money, which ought to be going to people…
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The sound of Malmö
The City of Malmö paid a communications agency SEK 485,000 to produce “the sound of Malmö”, which includes the silence of a library. The sound will create a sound identity for the city, something in…
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Tranemo’s municipal poet
Tranemo municipality wanted its own poet in residence and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee gave them funding to the tune of SEK 900,000. The idea is that over the course of a year, the poet…
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Draped poetry – or junk art?
The work is in Paradisparken in Borlänge and consists of 13 sculptures in total. It is not very easy to work out that they are art, as they look like abandoned rubbish. This is the…
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Non-existent study circles
In recent years, widespread fraud and irregularities have been uncovered in Sweden’s ten study associations that run non-formal adult education. Tax money has gone to fictitious study circles with no actual participants. The money may…
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EU Corona Fund
The EU has set up a post-COVID fund. From a pot of EUR 750 billion, countries will be able to claim money for the “recovery” of their economies. Sweden is expected to contribute about SEK…
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