Europe has lots of economic basket cases these days, thanks to governments that spend far too much and employ far too many people to do nothing productive. There are, however, some nations that are doing well and one of them is Sweden. “Aha!” statists will say, “that proves that socialism works.” But as Alvaro Vargas Llosa points out in this Independent Institute piece the reason why the Swedish economy is faring well is because the nation has turned sharply away from the welfare state, central planning mode of the 1960s.