As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do so. Because that's how Sweden works: you can't be super rich, but you can also not be really poor.
So he doesn't eat meat regularly because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. Yes, some types of meat are very expensive here, but other more common types are as cheap as Broccoli or Cheese. The true reason is the one he let slip: he doesn't know how to cook it. And more importantly: he doesn't care, because he has access to a lot of other good stuff that he can just put in a frying pan for 5 minutes and eat it (Swedes have an extremely low level of requirement for food; they will eat raw vegetables or crappy kebab-based fast food everyday if it saves them a few minutes). A really poor person does not have access to any food without busting their ass off 12 hours a day in some horrible, exploitative job that nobody else wants to do.
Oh, he doesn't drive because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. He has an m-f-ing electric bike. Tell a poor person from Colombia or Venezuela that a poor person in Sweden has an electric bike. They will laugh on your face, then ask you to please take them with you to Sweden. It's preposterous. The true? They don't need a car. I have been here for 6 years, with two kids, and I only bought my first car last month. All cities have bike lanes everywhere, which are safe because the cars actually respect them, and the public transportation is amazing. How far do you think a person can go in São Paulo or Bogotá in a bike before they are run over by a car? Oh, yeah, and also because in those cities you have live 50km away from your actual office if you want to pay less than 80% of your salary in rent.
This guy has the guts to say 1500 dollars a month is "ridiculously low for such a large family". I cannot keep reading. That's enough.
Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world.
Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”. It could literally be a joke.
I would love to tell them to grow up. Sitting on 200,000 is rich even in Sweden. Sounds like they’re just lazy as shit.
Downshifting is nothing an upshifting immigrant like yourself should be expected to understand. Keep on keeping on dude, show them lazy basterds how it's done!
So he doesn't eat meat regularly because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. Yes, some types of meat are very expensive here, but other more common types are as cheap as Broccoli or Cheese. The true reason is the one he let slip: he doesn't know how to cook it. And more importantly: he doesn't care, because he has access to a lot of other good stuff that he can just put in a frying pan for 5 minutes and eat it (Swedes have an extremely low level of requirement for food; they will eat raw vegetables or crappy kebab-based fast food everyday if it saves them a few minutes). A really poor person does not have access to any food without busting their ass off 12 hours a day in some horrible, exploitative job that nobody else wants to do.
Oh, he doesn't drive because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. He has an m-f-ing electric bike. Tell a poor person from Colombia or Venezuela that a poor person in Sweden has an electric bike. They will laugh on your face, then ask you to please take them with you to Sweden. It's preposterous. The true? They don't need a car. I have been here for 6 years, with two kids, and I only bought my first car last month. All cities have bike lanes everywhere, which are safe because the cars actually respect them, and the public transportation is amazing. How far do you think a person can go in São Paulo or Bogotá in a bike before they are run over by a car? Oh, yeah, and also because in those cities you have live 50km away from your actual office if you want to pay less than 80% of your salary in rent.
This guy has the guts to say 1500 dollars a month is "ridiculously low for such a large family". I cannot keep reading. That's enough.