EDITORIAL • Multiculturalism and immigration have for years been promoted as the future, where diversity, population growth, and an international character are supposed to create dynamism and prosperity. But Malmö is a story that shows how reality actually works.

The outcome from the new coalition led by the Social Democrats, Left Party, and Green Party has now arrived: municipal tax will be increased by 30 öre to raise more money for, among other things, schools, care services, and climate initiatives. The increase will be one of the new majority’s first major measures.

It is at least an interesting economic development, considering what left-liberals have promised us for decades.

Malmö already receives about 7.1 billion kronor per year from the municipal equalization system. The city itself explains that the compensation is partly due to low tax capacity, a high proportion of students and unemployed people, as well as greater needs for social interventions.

Against that background, the old and new slogans about how much we need immigration, and how everything will turn into an economic gain “in the long run” just as soon as population grows and the city becomes more multicultural, become somewhat comical.

If the development were the obvious economic success it is so often described as, the question should rather be what Malmö should do with its growing prosperity – not how much more needs to be taken from Malmö residents’ wallets.

That the city for quite some time has been almost uninhabitable is perhaps no news for those who do not enjoy self-punishment—at least for Swedes who remember the Malmö that once was.

But higher taxes will, of course, be yet another burden for a city that, quite the opposite, should want to increase its attractiveness for people who work, run businesses, and actually pay municipal taxes.

The Malmö model thus appears to continue: first, the story of success. Then, the bill. No one should be surprised. This, after all, is the result every single time the multiculturalist experiment meets the famous reality.