Because we don't tax the people with all the money. It's why someone making $100,000 a year loses probably half of it or more to federal, state and local income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc and Warren Buffett pays 3%.
There is a persistent idea that we cannot or should not tax wealth because it's "unfair". We certainly can. We do it all the time. Property taxes, depending on your jurisdiction, are either taxed based on assessed value or whatever the assessment method is correlates strongly to property value.
I can't speak to the specifics of Sweden and its tax base but in general a key problem in the developed world is the skyrocketing cost of housing. Why is this a problem? Because it's an input into the cost of everything. It makes your labor more expensive, which in turns makes what they do more expensive. I have heard getting an apartment in Sweden is rather difficult. Stories of having to register at birth and waiting 20+ years. I could be wrong.
But everywhere in the developed world has high housing costs (in terms of real income) because we constrain supply, subsidize demand (particularly to the very rich) and allow people to hoard housing.
There is a persistent idea that we cannot or should not tax wealth because it's "unfair". We certainly can. We do it all the time. Property taxes, depending on your jurisdiction, are either taxed based on assessed value or whatever the assessment method is correlates strongly to property value.
I can't speak to the specifics of Sweden and its tax base but in general a key problem in the developed world is the skyrocketing cost of housing. Why is this a problem? Because it's an input into the cost of everything. It makes your labor more expensive, which in turns makes what they do more expensive. I have heard getting an apartment in Sweden is rather difficult. Stories of having to register at birth and waiting 20+ years. I could be wrong.
But everywhere in the developed world has high housing costs (in terms of real income) because we constrain supply, subsidize demand (particularly to the very rich) and allow people to hoard housing.