Satisfying enough to ignore the date?

I am always fed up with lefties (especially in Ireland...where I'm from) waxing lyrical about how great everything is in socialist Scandinavia; where they apparently have their cake and eat it with their brilliant public services, generous welfare state; funded by high levels of taxation that somehow don't diminish the overall wealth of these great countries (ahem!).

So I was delighted to find this article in the NY Times painting a somewhat different and more balanced picture.

Then I saw that the article was dated 2005.

That took the lustre off it somewhat....but I still feel cheered up!