But that is not all. Even the public health sector and the state-run social services are getting into difficulties in the face of a demographic shift which is drastically increasing the proportion of the elderly, and cost increases which are connected with the technologizing of medicine and the equal rise in expectations and demands. Care', writes Martin Lagergren in a study of the allocation of time by professional helpers in the Swedish welfare system, ‘is above all a question of time spent by somebody for somebody else.' The study has calculated, by means of a simulated model, that the limits of financial feasibility will soon be reached.29 What then? Where is the unpaid, urgently needed time to come from? Are measures in which the state taxes the free time' of its citizens, just as income is taxed now, the solution, or is it to be found in the horrific vision of a fully automated hospital, with electronically connected home-care services which transmit the nurse's smile via a screen?
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Politics of Time