It's highly unfair to say that the rich are all a bunch of criminals. I see pictures of Bill Gates in prison or claims that so many people are stealing or running protection rackets.
I see now that it was very unfortunate that I chose that mug shot of Bill Gates. Because my intention was absolutely not to show him as a criminal. I thought it was obvious that the mug shot was a joke. Let me repeat: I don't begrudge Bill Gates his money. I don't regard him as a criminal, but as a benefactor of society. And the same goes for other rich people who have made remarkable inventions or created a lot of jobs in their home countries.
I do, however, regard Lars-Eric Petersson and his ilk as criminals. I think that they are much bigger criminals than some of those people who are actually sent to jail by society. Petersson was prosecuted, by the way. However, just a few days ago he was found not guilty by an appeals court. The court ruled that it was not clear that Petersson had overstepped the bounds that were given to him as an executive officer, that it was not clear that he had had any criminal intent, and that it was not clear who was actually responsible for making so many million dollars disappear from Skandia. According to what market magazine Privata Affärer reported in 2003 about Skandia, the board of directors had for years channeled hundreds of millions of Swedish krona from the policy holders to the stock holders of Skandia, costing the stock holders billions and resulting in less money that could be paid to to the policy holders when they needed it in a case of emergency. But no one will ever be prosecuted for that.
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It's a common phrase but it's true. "You don't get a job from a poor person."
That could be true, Roger. But an unfortunate truth in Sweden has been that people have literally had their jobs taken away from them by rich persons, who themselves got richer by costing others their jobs. Like I said, rich persons have been given extra money, extra benefits and bonuses for closing down production units, for selling their companies abroad and for taking jobs from Sweden. Sometimes, yes, the production units didn't make a profit, but very often they did. It was just that the CEOs and others felt that they could make an even bigger profit by closing their Swedish production units down and opening other units up in Lithuania or somewhere where the work force could be paid a fraction of what the workers would be paid in Sweden. These CEOs live in Sweden, operate in Sweden, and make money by taking jobs away from Sweden, making Swedes unemployed.
