Without experiencing much travel in my own life to learn about different cultures and trains of thought, I was pretty naïve when it came to discussing different topics and issues on a global scale.
Speaking in a very general sense, I never really thought about other countries all that much. This was because these countries didn't really have much of an impact on me. American politics pretty much dictate the American news cycle and global politics, at least generally speaking. When the U.S. presidential election was happening last year, the entire world tuned in, not just Americans. You often don’t see that happening in the reverse in the United States. It wasn’t until I went to Sweden that I started to think about how there are multiple ways of approaching things, many of them very different to the practices in the U.S.
For example, when I was in Sweden, I started to learn about their taxation system and the specific ways the country would use the money. Sweden collects much higher taxes than the U.S., and I saw the tax benefits with my own eyes. The infrastructure and transportation were far more advanced than that any city in the U.S. that I’ve ever seen or heard about. I saw parents and young children everywhere, because all families are entitled to one-year of parental leave on the government’s behalf. There is free healthcare, so getting access to basic treatments was as simple as one should think, all because of their tax system.
One specific example that comes to mind when recognizing different perspectives is how Sweden is managing its approach to relations with their equivalent of native people, called Sami people.
