r/LemonadeStandPodcast

I sparked a lot of controversy with this statement on a subreddit for immigrants in Sweden and I have never been more downvoted. I want to share my honest experience after living in Sweden for almost eight years and interacting with a lot of locals and other immigrants. I hope to have a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of living here but if people want to attack me or downvote me for doing this AMA, you’re welcome to do that. I am open to sharing my opinions and experience living here and also what I have seen happening at the companies where I’ve worked and maybe some of the stories others have shared with me. So go ahead and ask me anything about living in Sweden as an immigrant.

Edit: as I said I’m open to talk about Sweden but please don’t ask me personal questions as I won’t answer those, it’s not the point of this AMA and I don’t want to share my personal health condition on the internet. I’m obviously open to sharing my opinions and experience though. I also started getting very overwhelmed by all the questions where I’m from. I answered at some point and I’ve also said I’m white but then I deleted some of those details since I really don’t think it makes such a big difference to my experience in Sweden. I really wanted to keep this AMA about sharing my experience in Sweden and hopefully having a healthy, open and nuanced discussion instead of explaining my skin color and ethnicity in details.

This post exploded so I will provide a summary of the most common questions and my answers:

Yes, I speak Swedish, not perfectly as I have an accent but unfortunately I can’t improve my accent that much. My pronunciation will just never be truly Swedish it seems.

I moved here for work but stayed for love. I am planning to move out as soon as I find a job elsewhere which takes a while since the job market seems to be extra tough everywhere. Where I move to next will depend a lot on the job I’m offered and I’ll make sure to do a ton of research in advance.

I think moving to Sweden was my biggest mistake since I am convinced that my career, social life and savings account would have been much much better elsewhere. I am jealous of my acquaintances who have similar background as me and are better off elsewhere in Europe. I’m also jealous of many of my immigrant friends who left Sweden and are happier elsewhere so I’ll move soon too.

Taxes - no, I have no issue paying taxes. My issue is that I keep on hearing that healthcare, social security and institutions are good in Sweden and that’s not my experience.

Immigration and racism - the racism I’ve faced is subtle, not in my face and behind my back. I think it’s obvious how Sweden treats immigrants nowadays if you look at the institutions. I am one of the 100000 immigrants who have been stuck in the application process for citizenship for years and there’s even a court decision that my application should be processed as soon as possible. However, I’ll most likely just be rejected in a few months due to the new rules and the fact that I don’t pass a test for Swedish culture that doesn’t even exist yet. Then I’ll need to wait for the test to be created and possibly wait a few more years in the queue again. Currently 75% of the decisions for citizenship are decided within around five years which is the reason why my application has been untouched for years. I would have hoped that I’d get a more fair process as an immigrant trying to integrate here and gain the right to vote and have say in politics but at this point I just want to forget about all of it and move out.

Here racism isn’t really in your face but more like behind your back. If you want to read more concrete racist comments you can go to r/Sverige As for my personal experience with what i would claim is racist there’s always assumption that I moved here to work in a warehouse or some other lower-paying job as that’s what immigrants do apparently. Ive also heard about questions behind my back about my education or my beliefs or values as they of course must be worse than people born and raised in Sweden. I’ve even been accused in a restaurant about not paying my bill for some reason and the accusation was dropped immediately when my Swedish friend appeared. In general, the treatment I get from others when I’m alone is extremely different compared to if I’m with a Swede. My non-white friends get way worse treatment and comments behind their backs.

As for being safe - in my neighborhood yes but I’ve been harassed many times around the city and even in public transport. It even reached a point when people around me had to call the police in a few cases. I also always get asked whether I was harassed by Swedes so I’ll just add that most of the people (not all of course) harassing me were blond and spoke perfect Swedish. Never asked them where they were born and raise though as I was too busy trying to get out of a bad situation. And yes there are ghettos here but I don’t go there as I never had to

Healthcare - my experience is quite bad. I moved here with a prescription and diagnosis and it took me eight months to get help again. I’ve been told to just go private since it’s better and faster. My subsequent experiences with healthcare were similar - basically endless waiting time and just told to go elsewhere, referred from place to place to place forever.

I see that so many people assume they can find my medical history from my previous posts. Some also assume about my adhd and that I came to Sweden looking for stimulants. No, I didn’t move here looking for them. I’m receiving dms in addition to the many comments here asking about my conditions and claiming it was self-inflicted even... I haven’t and I won’t talk about it online and I hope people respect that. The few posts I have online about my health are open and you’re welcome to read them. I definitely won’t disclose anything more. If anything all the disrespectful comments, targeted messages, calling me things and prying show me that sharing my experience is not a good idea.

Sick leave - I actually find it very unfair that if you’re sick the first day isn’t paid. I know some think this is a better system but I’m tired of colleagues coughing around me or working from home with fever because they don’t want to be on sick leave. Then for two weeks you get 80% of your salary and after that you get money from the social system. When I was sick for more than two weeks (yes it happens when you live somewhere for eight years) I waited for four months to even get my application started. I know people who are high earners and were sick for more than a year and just went back to work because they couldn’t afford to be on sick leave anymore since they were earning half their regular salary (if you’re sick for a longer period of time then the sick leave payment decreases). I also know maaaany cases where people were laid off while on parental leave or sick leave. All this makes me say that I don’t have any confidence in the safety net here and I don’t want to risk paying most of my income in taxes and have little savings since I know my savings are my only real safety net and I won’t get much if I get seriously sick some day.

Social life - it’s hard to make Swedish friends in my experience and almost nobody around me has Swedish friends. I think integrating here and having a social life is incredibly difficult. I made some very good friends over the years but almost all of them were immigrants and left for other countries so I had to start trying to integrate again and again.

This post gathered more than 575 comments in less than two hours and I’ve been trying to do my best to answer all questions and provide a summary in my edit in the post of the most common questions instead of saying the same things over and over. I’ll try my best to answer everything as soon as possible. I initially set aside four hours for this AMA but I’ll need additional time later to go through it all.

Edit 2: i really tried my best to answer all the questions directly as a comment or provided a summary in my post as some questions were overlapping. I know that probably some people think my answers were not detailed enough etc but I tried my best during the four hours I allocated to this AMA.

I’m going to randomly check some of the notifications even after the AMA is closed but won’t focus as much on replying to each because it’s no longer an active AMA, and i don’t have the time for all the hundreds of new notifications.

I got a lot of hate in some comments and dms and I see some comments were deleted since they were found to be disrespectful. If anything, it makes me feel that sharing my opinion and experience is not welcomed by many even on Reddit. To those, sending me some kindness - thank you, it’s really appreciated.

Take care everyone and as I wrote many times, I hope for more kindness and tolerance in the world!

The idea that there is only a limited amount of resources available to a people when building a state is inaccurate, because inputs compound on each other, education leads to the ability to more science and build better infrastructure and hold a more helpful participatory democracy- and governments do not have to choose between welfare and skillful diplomacy. To imply that these are limited functions is to imply that certain countries cannot attain certain qualities of life because of limited government resources. For example, the conservative insistence that we must invest heavily in the military and that role is why we cannot have healthcare/welfare is not true, because we can obviously have both (even though I disagree that we should) and further investments do not put a drag on the whole system they actually support it. Infrastructure allows mobility of workers which helps businesses like subsidies would etc. It's a bizarre exercise that wasn't even a particularly good statement of values, and implies that states have to make sacrifices between these things when most often they do not.

Go to https://country.dougdoug.com/ to design your dream country.

Go to https://phummylw.github.io/ draft your World Leaders (must pick a council of 3).

Take screenshots and share your results!

Ok- I know this is mainly a yard thing, but I wanted to ask since Aiden’s part of LS and it’s more business orientated. Basically chubby cattle/chubby group is also a crypto nft type grift. Which was surprising to me- I mean don’t get me wrong foods hella good but I saw that they’ve been selling nfts and shit. Just wondering if Aiden knew about this.

https://preview.redd.it/fupm6zbtc01h1.png?width=1592&format=png&auto=webp&s=78b15cd5a414578d3a6b1b927800330187b8c272

Nelson Mandela ($5) and John F. Kennedy ($2) because they are good leaders (to my understanding).

Margaret Thatcher ($3) because there aren't really any options I wanted left. Even though I've heard British people talk about how much she sucked, I do believe in representative democracy and she would give Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy someone to debate. She also wouldn't attempt a coup, unlike some of the other options.

Let me preface this by saying this by saying I have listened to every single episode plus the patreon exclusives, and it's the pod(s) I look forward to the most every week, and I listen to 5-10 other podcasts a week.

I don't like how frequently everyone keeps interjecting while another person is speaking to make a quip!!! I know they are all entertainers who have built their chops on this, and I love them individually for their merits, but like damn!! This is supposed to be a ""serious"" podcast talking about real topics, and no more than 2.5 sentences in to a poignant point that any of the three are trying to make - right at the point when my zoomer brain is ready to engage in the subject - someone butts in to make a joke and it really kills my flow, right when I feel like I'm starting to understand something! And then it's a 10 second riff period before we get back on topic, but please, my brain is already so rotted I've already lost half of what the previous topic was! It's the most frustrating listening experience for me. Most of the jokes are very funny, and I enjoy them a lot, and it's the primary reason I enjoy this podcast more than my typical econ/politics/gov rotation, but damn, sometimes I just want to hear the whole line of thought in one go!!!

Thoughts?

Somewhat similar to their other segments involving the scams & failed businesses, I think it would help become less tunnel visioned by America, as an international viewer, especially when it’s a slower news week

I’ve been a semi-regular listener to the podcast for a while now. As someone who hates AI personally, I’ve still appreciated the previous earnest efforts from the group to present AI honestly, and highlight the positives while not shying away from the glaring negatives of its development. However, the placement of the anthropic ad (as well as the fact that they’re sponsored by an ai company to begin with) on this latest episode really bothered me.

Doing a whole segment discussing a court case between two of Anthropic’s largest competitors with the general takeaway being (and this is an oversimplification, I know) “both sides are disingenuous greedy losers” followed up immediately by an ad for Anthropic paints the whole segment in a different light, no matter how earnest the segment was. As soon as you disclose that this episode is sponsored by someone who would benefit from everyone sharing the opinion that OpenAI and XAI are both greedy losers and instead are propping up Claude, it calls into question their ability to be honest about any ai segments going forward. Sure, if there’s a scandal of any kind with ChatGPT or Grok, they can cover it no problem, but would they be able to cover any scandal involving Claude/Anthropic the same way?

Now obviously, I doubt it’s up to them to decide which sponsors they have for any given episode, and that it’s determined by Vox. But if they have any control at all, I would hope they turn away from sponsorships like Anthropic moving forward, at the VERY least on episodes where they cover AI, since it makes it harder to believe the integrity of their coverage of those topics in that context.

What are your thoughts on this idea for a social media platform? They discussed at length for a bit towards the end of the most recent episode but I’m curious about a general public opinion.

Personally I like the idea of it. But i have a couple of logistical concerns. Namely l that a private company may not be allowed to gather the ID data of all their users (despite the fact that all of these companies have far more info on us than just our driver’s licenses).