For reasons having entirely to do with sloth, I am remaining agnostic on the issue of Sweden’s economic well-being until I look it up myself. But I’ve gotten quite a few emails like this:

Dear Jonah:
Please don’t accept TAPped’s defense of Sweden at face value. The comparisons
of Sweden’s standard of living which show it to be lower than Mississippi are
NOT based on net income after taxes, as TAPPed claims, but rather, on BEFORE-TAX GROSS INCOME.
This means that the comparison to Mississippi does indeed take into consideration government spending on social programs, which naturally come from taxes. If you don’t believe me, look back at paragraph 6 in the Instapundit
post you linked to yesterday: http://www.instapundit.com/archives/003594.php
If you don’t trust income figures, then look at GDP per capita, which is how
most economists do apples-to-oranges comparisons of relative purchasing power. This includes government productivity. According to the CIA World Factbook Sweden’s stands at $26,000, while the U.S.’s is $36,300.
What has many Swedes worried is the long-term drag on their economy of their
high tax rates, a phenomenom that ought to be familiar to a supply-sider. This
is illustrated by the lower trajectory of their income growth over the past decade vs. the U.S., which over time has meant a relative decline in the Swedish standard of living.
Keep on keepin’ on,