America: one of the highest median household disposable incomes on earth. 25% higher than Norway, 30% higher than Germany and 50% higher than Sweden.
America: owner of 45% of all global private wealth.
America: half the unemployment rate of the EU and Eurozone.
America: a higher median income than Finland, with half the unemployment rate. Finland I'll note has been in a soft-depression for nearly a decade, with net negative growth over that time. Their economy is a disaster.
America: median house two to three times larger than what's typical in Scandinavia, at a much lower median cost as well.
America: drastically lower household debt to income ratio than Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands.
America: where more people have moved up and out of the middle class, than have moved down out of it, for 40 years running. So much so, that it's contracting the middle class, and the majority of those people are moving upwards.
America: nearly twice the GDP per capita of the Eurozone.
America: adding an economy the size of Germany in the time - eight years - that Europe's economy has had zero growth.
America: household poverty line nearly twice as high as the EU and Eurozone. A line so high, that 70% of all UK households would fall short of the US household poverty line (per the guardian).
>America: one of the highest median household disposable incomes on earth. 25% higher than Norway, 30% higher than Germany and 50% higher than Sweden.
Careful here...
You need to subtract:
- cost of health care (even if you are a W-2 employee, you still have to pay, typically 30% of the cost, self-employed people may end up $25K/year for a family of 4)
- cost of higher education - $250K/child for private college, $!20K/child state college
- additional taxes, like real-estate, excise taxes
- hidden taxes: telecom, airport/FAA (sometimes half of the price of the ticket), etc.
- absurd real-estate prices (on the coasts)
While the US is probably still ahead, the difference is not as big as you stated.
> cost of higher education - $250K/child for private college, $!20K/child state college
US households have better balance sheets than most highly developed European nations. So that's obviously not making the impact that people would like to claim it is. The median student loan for all people with student loans, is a mere $13,000.
> cost of health care
I agree, that's why the US has such low taxes on the middle class compared to most of Europe. However, the median US household has $15,000 more in disposable income than for example Sweden. That's a dramatic sum, that can easily cover health insurance - and in fact enables the US to be the vast consumer engine that it is. Simultaneously the median household net worth is higher in the US than Sweden or Germany.
As a significant counter point, a vast number of Americans are receiving compensation at their jobs in the way of health insurance coverage. That isn't counted at all in the US disposable income numbers and it's an extremely large number financially.
> additional taxes, like real-estate, excise taxes
That's a rather ridiculous inclusion. Most of Europe is overflowing with similar taxes, including very high VAT taxes.
> hidden taxes: telecom, airport/FAA (sometimes half of the price of the ticket)
Those referenced costs are comically trivial compared to the extreme disposable income gap in question between the US and most European nations.
> absurd real-estate prices (on the coasts
That's a pretty narrow example. Real estate costs are not absurd along most of the US coast in fact. South Carolina, Oregon, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Virginia, North Carolina, half of California, most of Washington - all of those are perfectly reasonable for the most part (most of Florida for example is not absurdly priced).
Unlike in Europe, you can possess an extremely high standard of living in the majority of the country by just avoiding half a dozen cities. Want to move to Boise Idaho? You can have a household disposable income higher than Sweden, with real estate costs 25% that of Sweden. In Europe, you can't just choose to move to Portugal, much less Czech, much less Bulgaria, and expect to have an income as high as in Germany or Sweden, in order to take advantage of lower cost real estate.
> However, the median US household has $15,000 more in disposable income than for example Sweden. That's a dramatic sum, that can easily cover health insurance
Insurance? Sure. I mean, a young, single person pays a bit above $250 in CA for a plan that meets ACA "Bronze" criteria, which pays about 60% of total cost. So minimal health insurance for a household should be easily doable under $15K per year. OTOH, total health expenses for a household would probably bring you right up to that $15K number, eating up the entire difference.
And healthcare isn't the only place where the US fails to provide services that governments elsewhere in the developed world provide.
Most Americans are not paying out of pocket for their health insurance through the ACA. That's one of the biggest myths about the American health care market. The majority of Americans are either being covered by medicaid / medicare, or are mostly covered by health insurance at their job.
Americans receive compensation to the tune of over a trillion dollars per year via health insurance coverage at their place of work. None of that gets counted in the US income figures.
Of course most Americans are paying for their health insurance - just indirectly. This is actually a very smart system designed to keep people in the dark about how much things cost.
If people had to pay $2500/month for a family of 4 or $80 for a single aspirin in a hospital, they would go ballistic on day one. Also - health premiums go up 10-15% EVERY YEAR.
That;s why your annual raise is 3% or less.
> US households have better balance sheets than most highly developed European nations. So that's obviously not making the impact that people would like to claim it is. The median student loan for all people with student loans, is a mere $13,000.
When you have a strong safety net, your don't need that higher balance sheet because the chances of needing it due to catastrophic events are vastly higher. I would be far less scared of being indebted in a Nordic country than in the US.
> As a significant counter point, a vast number of Americans are receiving compensation at their jobs in the way of health insurance coverage. That isn't counted at all in the US disposable income numbers and it's an extremely large number financially.
Yeah, and you lived scared out of your fucking mind if you have some sort of condition where if you lose your job your health can be compromised. What if you have children?
Also, American health coverage is an absolute piece of crap.
> Want to move to Boise Idaho? You can have a household disposable income higher than Sweden, with real estate costs 25% that of Sweden. In Europe, you can't just choose to move to Portugal, much less Czech, much less Bulgaria, and expect to have an income as high as in Germany or Sweden, in order to take advantage of lower cost real estate.
Yeah, but you have to live in Boise, Idaho. Something tells me that the average European metropolis is far more relevant culturally. This fact is not lost in the younger generation that keeps moving to the big cities.
One man's high cost of health care is another man's high salary opportunities in healthcare and pharma industries. Becoming a US-certified doctor is the golden ticket in many medical schools around the world.
'Social Mobility' cannot be compared between USA and small Euro nations.
'Social Mobility' within Denmark, a country smaller than Los Angeles, is pretty good.
What if you compared 'Social Mobility' across the EU.
Do you think that poor people in Croatia, Sicily and Greece are 'mobilizing' up past the Swedish middle class?
No.
Also - America has large ethnic groups. America is really 5 nations: Europeans, Asians, Latinos, Blacks, and 'everyone else'. By almost every measure, America is different for these people, it's tough to compare. I'm not saying it's right, rather alluding to what it is.
Finally - I would say having lived in the US and Europe - that there is without a doubt more opportunity in America than in Europe overall. No question about that.
The elite in most European nations come from pretty good families. They go to the top schools and have their careers guaranteed.
Anyone in America can be successful.
Obviously, that's not a pragmatic statement, as poor kids from the ghetto often have no appreciation of this and simply don't work towards great outcomes - but this is the reality.
Anyhow - the gini coefficient for 'all of Europe' I suggest is definitely lower than the US, and this is because it's nary impossible for poor Spaniards/Greeks/Sicilians to rise to higher than the European upper middle class.
That's not the point of the Gini index. You could use this logic on anything, because you're just saying that it doesn't measure something that it doesn't measure.
The fact that you are putting Spain, Greece and Italy as example of poor EU countries already shows you have an alarming lack of knowledge about the EU at least. Spain and Italy are average countries in the EU, GDP per capita-wise. Greece is lower than average, but far away from the poorest ones (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/3/3...)
In Europe anyone can go to a top school. In my case, my mother is a cleaner and my family is low-middle class: I was able to go to the best university of my country anyway. Most of people in my university were like me. In most of countries of Europe the money just doesn't matter for education purposes: if you are good enough for that university, you go there.
And for a Spaniard is quite possible to rise higher than the European upper middle class. I know many, many cases.
> if you are good enough for that university, you go there.
As someone who grew up in EU but now I live in the US, this is something that seriously bugs me. What lesson should I teach my kids when they go to college? "Son, no matter how hard you study, or you don't study, all that matters is daddy's money to get you into college."
this is just really not the case in the US. Top universities have need blind admissions - they will subsidize for you to attend. There are in state tuition universities that are affordable, there are grants, scholarships, etc. Percentage of Americans with college degrees is really not any lower than in Europe
That's misleading. While it's over half, and while those to do receive aid receive a substantial amount, it's very far from "about everybody":
Undergraduate Cost And Financial Aid
Families with students on scholarship pay an average of $11,500 annually toward the cost of a Harvard education. More than 65 percent of Harvard College students receive scholarship aid, and the average grant this year is $46,000.
If you are good enough (prepared enough is a better term, probably) for a university in the U.S., odds are that you go there. Is there a disparity in admissions based on wealth? Absolutely, but I believe a very significant portion of that is due to the attitudes of the wealthy towards education.
You see a large number of transfers from community colleges in the U.S. to top tier schools as well. CCSF feeds into Berkeley, Georgia Perimeter College feeds into Georgia Tech, etc., etc.
The truth is, unless you're hyper-wealthy, your money gets your kid into college through the things that you purchase to further that goal, and the attitudes of children in the same social class.
In Europe anyone can go to a top school? Oh really.
And what results has that supposed premise produced? It's obviously not accurate to begin with: Romanians aren't all going to the best European schools and they do not have access to such.
Let's see the results: half of Europe is so impoverished, the median incomes in those nations wouldn't come close to reaching the poverty level in the US in terms of standard of living. The poverty levels in countries like Moldova, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary etc. are nearly third world they're so bad.
Spain is still struggling to pull itself out of a nearly decade long depression. What results has the supposed free amazing education produced? None that can't be easily bested or matched by the worst economic zones in the US.
Italy has had three (or four depending on how you count it) recessions in the last ten years. Now their entire nation is about to go bust and threatens to take down half the banks in Europe. What results are we seeing from the supposed amazing free education there?
When you actually calculate the end results of what you're proclaiming, the net outcome is horrendous. So what benefit has any of it produced? Absolutely nothing worthwhile.
> It's obviously not accurate to begin with: Romanians aren't all going to the best European schools and they do not have access to such.
Your "obviously" is certainly not obvious. I live in Denmark, and my experience is exactly the opposite: there are MANY Eastern European students in the top Danish universities. Ironically, a degree in Denmark (0 cost) is cheaper than a degree in Eastern Europe: and yes, education in Denmark -and other European countries- is for free for EU citizens. Damn, my own girlfriend is from Lithuania and got her Master from Aalborg University.
I will try to give you an example with data: the best university in Scandinavia for Engineering is DTU (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/faculty-r...). In 2014, it admitted 1403 MsC students; of those, 538 (38%) were "international" (http://www.dtu.dk/english/About/FACTS-AND-FIGURES/Education). DTU doesn't offer data about the particular region of origin of the international students, but I do suspect that most of them are Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans. It's like this for Aalborg University (3rd best in Eng. in Scandinavia): 79% of its international students are Europeans, with 40% of the total being from Eastern Europe (http://www.en.aau.dk/about-aau/figures-facts/students/intern...). Going back to my personal anecdote: when my girlfriend finished her Master degree in Denmark, we went to celebrate with her colleagues: a Pole and two Latvians. No, Eastern Europeans studying in good universities in Scandinavia are not uncommon, by any means.
> Let's see the results: half of Europe is so impoverished, the median incomes in those nations wouldn't come close to reaching the poverty level in the US in terms of standard of living. The poverty levels in countries like Moldova, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary etc. are nearly third world they're so bad.
If you are going to define "Europe" as the continent, I shall be able to define "America" as the continent too. How is the poverty level in Paraguay? Criminality in Ciudad Juárez? Life expectancy in Bolivia? Violence in Caracas?
I thought we were being serious and comparing US with EU; it's already a very favourable comparison for you.
> What results has the supposed free amazing education produced? None that can't be easily bested or matched by the worst economic zones in the US.
The results are multiple. I think I can group many of them under one word: social peace. Spain's homicide rate is 0.7; Italy's is 0.8. US is 3.3. The most peaceful state in the US, New Hampshire, is still more dangerous than Spain or Italy: 0.9. The highest homicide rate in the whole EU is for Lithuania, with 5.5. In the States it would be slightly worse than average in between Michigan and Alaska, very far from the 10.3 of Louisiana.
IMO, the States is an amazing place if you are a highly-skilled professional or an entrepreneur. If you are poor, not so much: no free healthcare, much higher crime, very high impr...
My friends are from all over Europe, and America, India and China.
> Obviously, that's not a pragmatic statement, as poor kids from the ghetto often have no appreciation of this and simply don't work towards great outcomes - but this is the reality.
Ah, it's their fault.
> impossible for poor Spaniards/Greeks/Sicilians to rise to higher than the European upper middle class.
I'm sure you'd argue they don't work towards 'great outcomes'.
But you know what. I really don't see anything super good (or super bad) about living in the US versus Europe. Governments are roughly equally ineffective at solving real problems, people are on average nice. All in all, it's a toss-up.
>> Obviously, that's not a pragmatic statement, as poor kids from the ghetto often have no appreciation of this and simply don't work towards great outcomes - but this is the reality.
>Ah, it's their fault.
That's not what he said. There are many reasons for this, mostly parenting and culture.
Social mobility is by definition that your own future shouldn't be determined by your parents. So "parenting" is not really a valid excuse if you want social mobility.
Great point. Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past. For example, Belgium performed mass genocide in Congo, enslaved the people and stole the natural resources in the country. So, today people in Belgium live comfortably, since the modern Belgium is built on top of African slaves' pile of bones.
About half of GDP of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria is taxes. It's easy to talk about redistribution after you've pillaged the entire world.
lol. Please tell me more about how Nordic people never established any colonies. The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies in and of themselves.
Finland is another Nordic country, though not a Scandinavian country. Finland has never had an empire. It was too busy being controlled by Sweden and Russia. This means the Finns are Nordic people. Hence getgoingnow's statement cannot be true for all Nordic countries.
That said, cplanas is correct. Finland had no colonies, and for the other Nordic countries the colonies provided only a small revenue source. They surely did not "owe large part of their success to colonization in the past" as getgoingnow claims. Eg, Sweden's wealth historically comes from copper and iron, and Sweden was a poor country. Norway's w
I see you switched from "Nordic countries" to "Nordic people" and then to "Normans", to then imply that successful Norman conquests and colonization lead to a significant economic gain to the Nordic countries. I do not think that's a meaningful connection for the current discussion.
First, I do not like how you imply there is only one type of colonization. There's settler colonialism, like how the Bantu migrations displaced the Pygmy populations in early Congo history, or how the Norse/Danes controlled the region known as the Danelaw, or how the Norse settled in France, and assimilated (switched to Catholicism and to the French language), or how the Norse colonized Iceland.
There's also exploitation colonialism, which England and Spain are two of the best known examples. But the Norse conquest of England, which might have enriched some of the Norse in France, never went back to "the Nordic countries". Where then is the source of the revenue stream that getgoingnow implied was a basis for the success of the modern Nordic countries?
Second, the connection from "Normans" to "Nordic countries" doesn't work that way. The term "Nordic" is a relatively recent term that refers to a list of modern countries and territories; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries . It does not refer to Brittany, where the Normans lived, nor to Britain or southern Italy, which the Normans conquered.
Third, "Nordic people" has a variety of meanings (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_people ). It can refer to the Germanic people as a whole, or the people who live in the specific Nordic countries, or a term from scientific racism from the late 1800s, or the Norse, or more specifically the Vikings. I think your introduction of that term confuses the topic more than it helps. Which definition do you mean to use, and why not stay with "Nordic countries"?
Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?
Then again, you wrote "The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies". I must have missed that part of history where they covered how the Normans colonized the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and lead to the Portuguese colonies.
> Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?
You could well say that... but I'm not sure how it makes the assertion true that nordic countries/people didn't have colonies. It's actually something that I've picked up on from my studies of history that many colonizers derive from Germanic roots. (My hunch which I can't prove / haven't investigate much is that the germans picked up on it from the romans)
I didn't mean to suggest that there's only one kind of colonization, I'm actually a huge fan of the idea that there are many types, and that some of them were beneficial.
Also, I don't really buy into the idea that colonization was responsible for the success of the nations that did the colonizing. I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy just as slavery in the Southern US lead to widespread poverty when compared to the North.
Yes, that was an absolute statement which you disproved handily, not all colonies were created by nordic / germanic peoples.
The very language we are communicating in is a testament to the colonization of England (or whatever the fuck it was called before it was colonized) by Nordic/Germanic people/countries. It's a colonization similar to America by Britain, where the colonists decided to give the middle finger to the motherland, similar to the way the English just gave the finger to their original colonizers in Denmark.
And there was no need for you to introduce a absolute statement as the previous nuanced statement was correct.
> the colonization of England
There have been many waves of colonization of England: Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Norse, and the Norman French come quickly to mind. The colonization of England is far different from the combination of English, French, and Spanish colonization of the Americas.
I think you overemphasize bloodlines when you focus on immigration and "people". The Romans were a diverse set of peoples from across the Roman Empire, with people as far away as Africa living in England. The Christianization of England, or the spread of the concept of the divine right of kings, or of democracy, was not due to immigration of bodies but to an immigration of ideas. The rise of Sweden as an invading superpower in the 1600s was due in part to the Reformation, which let the Swedish king confiscate money from church land, and not simply from some intrinsic nature of the people.
"England" comes from the Angels. In modern use it refers to the area in the southern part of Great Britian, and corresponds mostly to where the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were, ie, not Wales and not Scotland. There was no name before the Angles as there was no reason to highlight that specific area.
England as a short-hand for Great Britain was called Britannia by the Romans, and Albion, from a Celtic language through the Roman.
> "I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy..."
Which brings the topic back to the original discussion. getgoingnow wrote "Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past".
Do you think it's true that the Nordic countries (modern Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland) owe their success to colonization? If so, which colonization, and what was the return which lead to modern success?
If you want to talk about pillaging the world, you have to talk about Spain, whose mines in Mexico and Peru supplied the bullion that powered the entire world economy for hundreds of years.
Leopold II's ineffective and bloody adventures in a part of Africa everyone else had already ignored hardly rate.
Not sure why this got downvoted, its a reasonable point if cynical.
You could say the same thing about America though, there are still many wealthy families that can trace wealth back to slave ownership. In addition we massacred the Native Americans and took control of a massive wealth of natural resources. None of us came into life on a level playing field. We aren't necessarily responsible for the actions of our ancestors but I think we have to acknowledge the cumulative effect that they had on our world.
We will just go in blame circles forever as long as we cling to the notion that we are particularly responsible for our good or bad fortune (beyond on average minor changes based on personal choices - and I say minor once you average it out over the entire population, some people might experience drastic changes by making a fortuitous decision but many other people made significant efforts that do not result in large gains).
If we can get over this notion and agree that everyone should have equal access to food, water, housing, security, and education no matter what, then we can put all this who did what to who bullshit behind us. Even if there are cumulative cultural issues related to past discrimination they would be so much easier to deal with once the brunt of inequality has been dealt with.
I am not particularly optimistic for this though because people who either by ability or a lucky roll of the dice become wealthy (or already were already) have such a massive psychological hurdle to overcome to accept that what happened to them simply cannot happen to anyone, regardless of ability or work ethic.
I don't have the link handy, but The Economist had a cover story a while ago about how Europe (Nordics in particular) has now much higher social mobility than the US.
Social mobility measures based on income (PPP) percentiles are misleading because they don't account for the hugely different income variances between countries. In countries with low income variances like Denmark, a small change in your absolute income will be deemed "socially mobile" whereas a much larger increase absolute income in countries with high income variances like the US will be deemed as not "socially mobile" even when it is vastly better for the average individual in absolute income terms.
Individuals don't care about their ability to change their percentile, they care about their ability to change their total income. I think most individuals would prefer a "non-mobile" $60k increase in income versus a "mobile" $40k increase in income. You can't spend percentiles.
This is a good point, but I think individuals care a lot more about their percentile than you would expect - their benchmark for whether their income is 'a lot' or 'a little' is how much they see the people around them making.
Of course, you can't have very much social mobility in high income variance countries anyway if you want to preserve those precious income inequalities.
>Individuals don't care about their ability to change their percentile, they care about their ability to change their total income. I think most individuals would prefer a "non-mobile" $60k increase in income versus a "mobile" $40k increase in income. You can't spend percentiles.
I highly dispute this. Take it as a completely different world view but I think if people were given a choice:
1 >a nominal income of $100k for you and a nominal income of $200k for all your neighbours
2 >a nominal income of $75k for you and a nominal income of $60k for all your neighbours
A lot of people would opt for choice 2. I myself am not sure whether I'd go for 1 or 2.
>"Individuals don't care about their ability to change their percentile, they care about their ability to change their total income"
This is completely wrong. People care intensely about their pecking order (looks, money, accolades, etc). Beyond this, there are purely functional reasons to care about your relative income. Limited resources lead to competition.
Nobody cares if their GPA is higher than their parent's was. They care if it's higher than their peers who are trying to get into the same universities. Ditto for housing prices. What matters isn't the dollar value of the property you can afford, only whether or not you can afford to be in a top school district. Politicians don't win by being able to spend more on campaigns than politicians of the previous generation either. They care if they can spend enough to win against their current opponents.
In human society, the relative comparison dwarfs the absolute.
But these percentiles are a zero sum game (the distribution of percentiles is always uniform 0-100).
Which makes me wonder why one would laud upward mobility in percentiles, when any such upward mobility must be balanced out by equal and opposite downward mobility.
Because the lack of downward mobility suggests the same problem as the upward mobility: your success in life is based on your parents income not your own merits.
If you want a meritocracy you have to accept that untalented/unmotivated kids of rich parents may become relatively poor.
Hmmm. I think if the dream were killed, then there would be nothing for people to lodge a complaint against. Nothing to look forward to and so people might grow comfortable in their poverty, for example.
Imagine, there is no dream. You get what you have. There is no chance for anyone who has not achieved. Don't even try, there is no chance.
I think we'd be worse off with that mindset. I imagine Russia, Venezuela, etc. feel a bit like this. You're there to eek out a living with little chance of thinking things could change for you.
What makes you think that it's not already like that for certain classes? Income mobility is historically low. Also why would people grow comfortable in their poverty? What exactly does that mean? That they've made peace with the fact that they have to choose between being dead or being broke? As long as there is poverty there will always be complaints.
Go to a poor country. See how people go about the days. It's as if there is a "place" and people "know" their place.
If you don't believe in having a stationary "place" you seek more, you tell your progeny there is more, if only they try. Go, don't be like your father or mother, go make something of yourself.
Just because you don't believe in a stationary place doesn't mean you don't have one. Plenty of people may believe in the American Dream but that doesn't mean it's real. Plus even if you don't believe in upward mobility it still doesn't mean you're happy where you are. Shitty conditions are shitty conditions regardless of whether or not you think you can get out of them if that's even possible.
Maybe it's also about what it buys you? Also, https://www.nordisketax.net/main.asp?url=files/suo/eng/i07.a... claims it's at worst 31.75%, not 60%, and that's not even the average. Plus if you're rich, not all or even most of your wealth comes from personal income anyway, so there's that. And ~20% VAT or equivalent seems quite common over the developed world.
The national tax percentage is 32 % (actually 31.75 %) only for the amount that exceeds the "high earner" threshold, i.e. you pay it for the part that you earn in excess of 72,300 € per year.
(That income puts you in top 4 % of earners in Finland.)
The municipal tax varies between 16.50 % (Kauniainen) and 22.50 % (Savonlinna).
I don't know the details for Finland, but Sweden has a similar system that works out like this:
If a company has agreed to pay you $100k, that's after any payroll tax has been paid, so they pay ~ $120k, you get (gross) $100k.
Of the remaining $100k, you pay 0 on the first ~ $2600, 31% on the portion between $2600 and $62k, 51% between $62k and $88k, and 56% above $88k. Do the math, it comes out to about $38500 in income tax.
There is no wealth tax or inheritance tax. You get free university education, free universal health care, great public transport, 480 days of parental leave (that can be split among the parents mostly how you like, and used for up to 8 years), and you get a child allowance of ~ 120 euro each month for each child until that child is 16.
You only pay 32% of average income tax if your income is approaching infinity. So your post-tax income is approaching infinity as well, you have more money than you could ever need, and so does everyone else, because your taxes sponsor other people. Welcome to utopia! :D
That 32 % is the state tax, but municipal etc taxes are on top of that.
Realistic example of where I live: if gross salary is 100,000 €, the employer pays around 120 k€ (including payroll taxes) and the take-home pay after taxes is 57,610 €.
So the employee gets a little less than half of what the employer pays.
(>100 k€ is the bracket of top 1.6 % of employees.)
The nominal percentage however excludes social "insurances" which are effectively taxes.
Overall, taxation is very simple for a regular employee; typically the pay-as-you-earn system takes your taxes during the year and in next February you get a slip detailing the income of last year. Most years I don't need to file a tax return at all because the PAYE system has done it correctly. There are very few deductions to apply.
There are some other items where taxes are noticeably higher than in the US. Gasoline costs around 1.35 €/l (5.66 $/gal).
The "what it buys you" part is actually very interesting and probably undermeasured. I am fairly certain that the "bang for the bucket" you get from you taxes in smaller countries is much higher. Of course that's total speculation. I wonder what metrics one could use to measure return value on paid taxes and then calculate value/tax dollar paid in different countries.
I dunno, I feel richer in Europe than I did in California. Rent in places I like living is cheaper, and I save a good $300-$600 per month on automobile costs. I also save several thousand a year on flights to Europe, since that's pretty much where I like to vacation anyway.
Also, I'm fortunate enough to work in tech which has pretty good PTO policies (for now), but my spouse does not, and 4+ weeks of vacation for her as well, letting us see more of the world, makes me feel wealthier than a bigger paycheck.
Oh, I'm not expected to answer emails on the weekend either. And I can cycle without fearing for my life every. damn. day - the US detests cyclists and disregards their deaths.
That is no excuse for a death sentence. Many cyclists do this in the Netherlands too and in the period that I have lived there, I haven't seen them treated that way on the roads.
If a car hits a cyclist or pedestrian in Holland, the car is -by definition- at fault. See [1] link in dutch.
Free translation of the first part:
Cyclist or pedestrians are seen as the weaker traffic participants. Because they are fragile in traffic the law has a special rule on collisions with a motorized vehicle.
The driver in the car is responsible for the damage of the cyclist without his guilt having to be proven.
The article i linked to discussed some of the exceptions. It is very difficult for the driver to prove. For example hitting a cyclist who crossed a red light is still your fault. Only cases where the driver could not possibly do anything to prevent the accident are considered.
Could you share a little more about your transition to Europe from California? I'm interested in doing such a move myself but I'm not sure if I can justify it yet.
Were you working in SF? Where in Europe are you now? Were you making an above average salary?
I have long argued for a non means-tested welfare state that is not a safety net but a foundation on which to build your life.
Here in the UK there is much resentment to people who receive benefits. I have been someone who lived on benefits because I could, not because I needed to. I spent that time learning new skills and overall have been a net contributor.
But I also know people who have no intention of personal improvement who plan to spend their entire lives on handouts.
I look at the US and see a system that seems designed to breed crime, poverty and prostitution.
Don't trick yourself into thinking the Nordic model is the greatest though. I spent 6 months there in Finland and predict a lot of social pain in the next decade. Growing unemployment will put strain on the social services. Multinationals have been allowed in which means profits sucked abroad via Wal-mart, Lidl and a host of others.
The brain drain to other parts of the EU will also grow, if the students I met fulfil their ambitions.
"I look at the US and see a system that seems designed to breed crime, poverty and prostitution."
While at the same time producing the highest GDP per captia in the world, the most number of people with college education, and leadership in probably 80% of global industries?
The US doesn't 'breed' anything - communities 'breed' themselves.
I suggest the US could do a little better with the social safety net, and possibly some basic healthcare guarantees, but having 60% taxes, 30% payroll tax and 20% VAT meaning the average worker putting 75% of their income directly towards government spending is not going to work either.
The 'Nordic Model' can only work in small countries, with small, tight ethnic groups and cultural foundations.
Nordic Countries almost all have Monarchies, State Churches (Sweden gives 1% of it's tax revenues to their Christian State Church - could you imagine that in the US?). I'm not saying 'faith' is an important factor, rather pointing out the relatively cohesive social identity.
And yes, you are right: UK and Germany are sucking up talent like vacuums.
United Nations (2014)[6] lists US as 12th, which is not bad. But, has been falling for a while. Norway for example seems to be ahead by ~30% despite a huge safety net.
And the lesson of Norway is: "Find a gigantic amount of oil."
:P
The point that the US does not have the highest GDP per capita in the world is well-taken (what it has the highest is overall GDP). But Norway's path to prosperity is not generalizable.
US actually found a ginormous amount of oil, which is a large part of why it's GDP is that high. We currently out produce Saudi Arabia and regained #1.
PS: The US problem was it got addicted to the stuff pumping most of it out early while the price was low and then stuck paying more during price spikes.
Sorry, redid my math. Even if you assume 5.4k/person from oil with zero costs there is a 30k/person per year difference in nominal GDP. And a much larger gap in PPP.
Well, sure. And Sweden and Denmark have pretty comparable GDPs to the US, and Finland is notably lower than the US.
What's your narrative here? Is the Norway vs. Sweden difference due to something OTHER than oil? They're very similar countries! If you're seeing the Norway vs. Sweden thing as due to something other than oil, what are you arguing is unique to Norway? If you do agree that Norway's GDP/capita advantage over its neighbors is due to oil, you have to accept that a resource advantage that produces a few thousand dollars/year in direct purchase, basically stimulates AD to the point where the entire economy goes up and snowballs into a few tens of thousands of dollars per year.
To be clear, I don't think that our views are wildly distinct. I'm not a hater of the Nordic countries. But Norway is an outlier from the other Nordics, and the only plausible explanation I can come up with for its outlier status is oil. So I don't think it's a very useful reference point.
Norway and Sweden are different in a few ways. Norway is a NATO member but not an EU member, meaning it participates in a military alliance while protecting its large fishery and insulating its oil economy from the EU. Sweden is the opposite, it's an EU member but not a NATO member, favoring military independence and looser cooperation while being an integral part of the EU. Consequently, Sweden has been historically much more welcoming of immigrants (including, to borrow Canadian terminology, 'visible minorities'), while Norway has been less so. Despite this, since Sweden has almost double the population of Norway, Norway's percentage of immigrants per total residents is actually slightly higher.
In Norway's case, oil makes a wealth of difference.
Norway has a) a tiny population and b) a gigantic supply of oil.
All the countries above the U.S. on that Wikipedia list are tiny countries that have a specialized economy (oil for Norway and Qatar, financial services for Switzerland and Liechtenstein).
You see exactly the same pattern when you look within the United States:
Sort the GDP (PPP) per capita column in descending order. It's Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Brunei, Kuwait, Norway, United Arab Emirates, San Marino, Switzerland, United States.
+ Luxembourg is not only a tax haven, it's also a major EU capital and EU employees pay no tax. Most 'workers' in Lux live outside the country in France, and drive in every day. Finally, it's 200K people. Brooklyn is 5x bigger than Lux.
PS I lived there.
+ Switzerland is also a tax haven, with 1/3 of all off-shore private wealth in the entire world sitting there, with taxes going to local citizens. And it's one of the most socially conservative places on Earth, very low taxes in some areas.
+ Qatar and Norway are tiny populations with massive amounts of Oil, and otherwise extremely inefficient business sectors. Of course I'm sure you're aware that Qatar is not in Europe :).
I lived in Europe and the US, there is no comparison as to where wealth is created. I like living in Europe much more than the US for a variety of reasons, but it's not a place for social mobility, or to create wealth. Not by a stretch.
I live about 30 minutes North of Atlanta and go there once a week for hospital treatments. A lot of people drive through Atlanta on the popular streets and think, wow this place is wonderful! I love it here. What they don't realize is if you turn down 2-3 streets off the main road, its nothing but shambles and poverty.
In Finland some people choose to be homeless - in summer. When winter comes they no longer choose to be homeless or they will freeze to death. So anyone who wants an apartment will get one.
In the welfare state homelessness is not really a reflection of poverty. It is more a proxy for mental health or drug addiction.
If you can do a reasonable impression of someone interested in looking for a job then you will get your rent paid directly to a landlord and about $100 per week put into a bank account.
> While at the same time producing the highest GDP per captia in the world, the most number of people with college education, and leadership in probably 80% of global industries?
Producing these things and breeding crime, poverty and prostitution are not mutually exclusive.
The people receiving the benefits of the high GDP are not the same people that are committing crimes and living in poverty.
Also "the highest GDP per captia in the world" is not correct. By most accounts (IMF, World Bank, UN) the US is around the bottom half of the top 10, both nominal and PPP adjusted. Certainly high but not on top by any account.
That the nordic societies are nice, is of course without question.
But the U.S is a different animal. If you want to live a complacent life, squeeze out a few children, work 9-5 for the rest of your life, without taking any risks, the nordics are a great choice.
If you want to create something extraordinary, take huge risks, maximize your potential, tap into unprecedented resources in the form of engineering know-how, scientific capital, venture capital etc, then you are without question better of in the U.S.
There is a reason why the Googles/IBMs/Facebooks/Bell Labs/MIT's/Skunk Works/DARPAs/NASAs of the world are ALL American. Technological and scientific dominance does not go hand-in-hand with a dull society where 99 % are just complacent.
The american dream seems to have changed more towards taking from others to give to ones self. I notice a difference in "safety nets" now compared to say end of ww1. Very different times, and it affects many things.
"Safety nets" is an unfortunate term. It's pejorative in an American sort of way because it implies that you screwed up. We should instead think of these things as a platform that everyone deserves, and everyone gets.
>Quality of life has never been higher for any social class
even if this were true (source?) it doesnt matter when there is a steady move toward lower social class on average for the overwhelming majority of Americans
Yes, the middle class IS shrinking, but the amazing thing is people are leaving to the upper classes at a 2:1 ratio.
> The study shows that as the number of middle-class Americans fell (from 61 percent of the population to 51 percent of the population), the percentage of Americans who are upper income surged from 14 percent of the population to 20 percent of the population.
Notice how that link is not specific about what counts as upper class and middle class.
It is not the case that people in the "lower" classes decided not to get any skills. It is that the economy changes over time and their skills are no longer compensated well and, in general, US society is not good at accommodating people to change their skill-sets to move into a new career. You might have anecdotes about people who made such a career change, but for society as a whole, it is too difficult.
Why so must fascination about a homogeneous society that has population of City of Houston? I will not take some of these articles of Scandinavian fetish any seriously any more.
Don't really know how to feel. It's kinda like it's disingenuous hype. Sure most of all these "omg look at Finland" facts are mostly true, but they come at a cost.
It's a pain in the ass to have a business or a high salary here. Everything is expensive and you could end up paying 60% taxes of your salary, after the employer pays taxes on your salary. The bureaucracy can get ridiculous too, it's like they don't want to have businesses here. The system works with a small population but I don't think it could ever scale.
Basically, if you're ok with being nothing more then middleclass, it's a great place to live, but the ambitious people who really bring in the money and pay the majority of taxes aren't living nearly as good as they could elsewhere.
I keep looking at the salaries of US jobs with my title and I'd make so much more money there, and have more left after all the taxes. Then again I had a free education and the healthcare is pretty much free and decent.
Maybe it's one of those "grass is greener etc." type deals.
Well, as someone whose life in .fi hasn't been so terribly great so far, I find the hype a bit irritating. Everything is so amazing, except for those for whom it isn't. Opportunities certainly aren't equal. "The Nordic approach of basic universal social policies—that allow everyone to fulfill their potential, allow everyone to work, allow true equality of opportunity" is just bull.
And just like a lot of other European countries now, we have a bad unemployment problem (and the statistics lie; they coerce people into various programmes that result in them not showing up as unemployed, even though they don't have an actual job). There are signs that suggest the social "safety web" won't hold up; government budget is really tight and cuts are made here and there. Benefits are not increased as cost of living gets higher. I don't know what the statistics say, but there are lots of alcoholics. And again not sure what the statistics say today, but afaik .fi has ranked pretty poorly with regard to cases of depression and suicide. Maybe all is not so well?
And then there's this touchy wtf-worthy subject of the generation that boomed after war retiring. Supposedly there aren't enough of us to fill their positions so we need immigrants. Meanwhile, as I said, unemployment is pretty sickening.
Eh, today I learned that one finnish person that played with us on the internet might have commited suicide sometimes in the past year. The nordic countries are definitely less of a paradise the hypetrain makes them
A software dev living in Finland. From what I gather (by reading HN) I could easily get 10 times bigger salary in the US, buy a bigger house and a nicer car for less than I can here.
But personally I care about neither. What I care about is a stress free life. Since I have low living expenses, the safety net would easily cover all the costs of my current life style and that life is available for everyone (barring mental illness such as alcoholism which seems to be a problem). I live within a walking distance from the city centre, my work and groceries. Public transport is great, although I don't use it since I can just bike everywhere. Or if I need to use a car I can just rent a brand new merc for the weekend. And nothing of that would change even if I never worked a day in my life again.
Also there's about zero chance of ever landing a jail sentence, or getting harassed by a cop.
Really? And you say that about a country that has had a civil war between members of this ethnically homogenous population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War). You are seriously mistaken that ethnic diversity is the only or even a major cause of social issues.
Nordic countries are not 99% ethnically homogeneous.
Over 20% of Swedes have foreign background. Either immigrants or or their parents were immigrants. They come from Middle East, Former Yugoslavia, Somalia etc.
The problem isn't that the US is heterogenous, the problem is that the US has a massive problem with racism, freedom of and from religion.
Maybe even worse than that though are people like you, who can't even openly admit that obvious problem and only mention it in some euphemistic indirect way.
"the problem is that the US has a massive problem with racism"
I think this is too simplistic. The US is a country of some 320 million people and the experience of racism undoubtedly varies enormously across cities and states. A blanket statement like this can't convey the complexity of the situation.
I live in the UK, where we've seen a horrible rise in racism after the EU referendum. But what country in the EU can honestly say they don't have serious problems with racism in their society?
Across EU nations, there are many racist political parties, not at the fringes, but actively shaping and influencing political discourse.
I really don't think we in Europe are in a superior position when it comes to issues of racism. In fact, I'd argue we're probably less likely to acknowledge or consider it a problem.
Having moved to the US from Germany, not a Nordic country, but a country with a much tighter social net that works comparatively well, I agree that it probably wouldn't work in the US. I think a social net works best if there is enough empathy in society to keep people happy with paying for those who need the net as well as keeping people from exploiting it too much. Of course there will always be someone unhappy with paying or someone exploiting he system, but it only works if that remains relatively rare. That is much easier if you have a relatively high empathy for each other which is easier in fairly homogenous populations. The US seems to have a very split society along all kinds of groups. There seems to be a strong fault line between large coastal cities and the middle of the country, racial divides, Republicans vs Democrats etc. These divides seem much larger to me than anything I know from Germany and I can only imagine that they are even smaller in the less populous, Nordic countries.
The Nordic countries aren't spontaneously homogeneous though. It's because we (social democracy mostly) worked hard to make it so. As the Nordic countries are becoming more like everywhere else we also see the rise of things like populist parties and racial divides.
I am in the US and I would be happy to chip in to help pay for health expenses of a poor person, who has no family, etc.
What I am NOT willing to do, however, is pay enormous overhead to the the insurance/healthcare/bill-processing complex which sucks out the blood out of this country.
I bet most people in the US object not to some kind of a social contract to help the less fortunate, but to the completely broken system.
There'll always be a few against. What matters is more than 50% agree on it.
Health insurance is a PITA here. Physio in Canada charged me $60/ session. Here it's $240 per session. Insurance pays about 100 but I still pay $140 out of my pocket.
America has a crazy obsession of being rich that people will easily screw others to make a buck. It's a very stark difference to Australia and Canada.
I'm not even sure the Nordic countries themselves think their model would scale. At least in Helsinki, they also enjoy having a low cost neighbor to the south in order to go tax free shopping.
Diversity, as understood as a possible problem for social cohesion, is not about race: it's about culture. And the vast majority of Americans in the US have only one culture: the American one. The exception for this is first (and sometimes second) generation immigrants. That's why I use the native vs foreign born statistic.
> And the vast majority of Americans in the US have only one culture: the American one.
I don't think there is one unifying American culture. There are some common cultural elements, but there are fairly distinct regional (as well as racial/ethnic) cultures in the US.
> If the US would not share a culture, intra-US migration would be a big issue, as it is in the EU.
Migration (and simply interaction) across some of the internal cultural divides (especially the ones closely tied to race/ethnicity) is a big deal (you know those big problems with race/ethnicity the US has -- that's a big part of them). The regional variations are less of a big deal not because the regional cultures aren't distinct, but because the regional cultural areas are far bigger than in Europe, and the US has better inter-region support structures, which -- outside of rare major crises -- reduce mass internal migrations across those regional cultural divides.
(When there have been mass internal migrations, culture clashes and problems with migrants similar to those seen in Europe have occurred in the US, but I don't think there's been a big internal dislocation of that type since the 1930s Dust Bowl.)
Ah, there are many different cultures among the people who are born with American citizenship. It's common-sense to me that most of the races have their own culture. (Although, admitting that it's common sense to me makes me wonder why sociology we have to back it up.) A lot of my friends in high school were Chinese-American. They spoke without accent, and most of their families actually came via Taiwan, but their culture and values and family structure were distinctly different. Also, shoes-off in their home!
And even among whites, there are distinct cultures. I was confused why I didn't enjoy living in Massachusetts, until I read this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-see... and it started to make more sense. I've got Borderer roots :)
I don't want to leap to conclusions, but this argument always seems like a dog whistle to me. What is it about cultural heterogeneity that you think would make this sort of a model unsustainable?
Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast is doing a three-part series critiquing the state of American education and its effect on social mobility. The first part (released last week) gives a personal perspective of a child who passes on an opportunity for social advancement to instead provide family support. As far as I understand it, the next parts are looking at the incentives that that shape college budgets.
Finn here (though lived the past 12 years in the UK).
In my experience, the one thing that by far works best to enable social mobility, and that I think Nordic and some central European countries have done quite well, is free, high quality education - from primary school to university.
Especially as we move further and further to knowledge based economic growth, this is crucial, not just for social mobility, but well being and success of whole countries.
Market forces are great at optimising some things, some not so great. Things that require long term focus - basic research, education, environmental issues - are best handled, and paid for by governments.
There is a great deal of information (in studies and research) that shows post-secondary schooling is a good investment for the individual, but that does not mean that increasing the average amount of schooling is good for the country. A number of people are now making the argument that greater 'educational' achievement is mostly just signalling status, intelligence, socialization, and work ethic, not actually teaching people anything useful. If this view is correct, increasing the amount of education that the average citizen receives is just wasting their time (as most people do not enjoy their time in class), at great expense to them and the average taxpayer.[1]
> If this view is correct, increasing the amount of education that the average citizen receives is just wasting their time (as most people do not enjoy their time in class), at great expense to them and the average taxpayer.[1]
Even accepting your first premise, this does not follow. Even if degrees are 100% signalling and 0% actual education, it's still the right choice for the individual because that signalling has value. The alternative is that people who have the positive qualities that are signaled but not the money for the degree cannot get the jobs which require those characteristics and have good pay.
Subsidizing a signal serves to make the signal more expensive, and does not increase its utility; all Western governments are subsidizing education, and hurting their citizenries by doing so. Some proponents of the signalling theory have gone as far as to advocate for a tax on education.
I think that is very country specific, and depends on the quality of the education too.
Educating scientists and engineers (and other valued professions, like teachers who all have higher education) definitely improved the productivity of Nordic countries - and allowed them to build high tech industries relatively quickly.
Curious: how hard is it for people to get access to free university education there?
My home country - Brazil - offers free university education, and actually our federal universities are the best in the country. While there are quotas for certain socially disadvantaged groups of people (e.g. racial quotas), the sad reality is that regular seats are taken mostly by rich kids whose parents can afford to pay them prep courses - because the admissions process is incredibly difficult. So our free higher education system ends up doing a poor job in helping upward social mobility, and people who are not well-off end up going to private colleges whose schedules allow them to work and pay for their tuition.
If Finland is like Norway, and I understand the system correctly (I'm an immigrant) that isn't much of an issue. Culture here allows for free time for kids (not much homework), and so long as folks can pass the admission tests and there is space, they can go. The biggest issue might be living expenses - but there is a (too low) stipend and loans. The loans can be grants if you don't have money or can be forgiven in some fields if you move and work up north for a certain amount of time.
Depends on the subject you want to study - as the govt pays for education the policymakers influence the course sizes to funnel students towards subjects they deem beneficial.
It can be difficult to get in, sometimes too much so, people try multiple times. But the education and the degrees themselves in return are very high quality - many universities in the UK take in almost everyone and the degrees don't really teach the students that much.
There are almost no private colleges in Finland so I haven't seen the phenomenon you describe.
So many people talk about it in sheer numbers, but you know what sounds nice? Having time off to spend with your kids (as a man!), more balanced relationships and not worrying about healthcare if you get laid-off.
Exactly, which is why the Finns are diligent in maintaining a good standard of living for their worst off. They work hard to hold their government accountable to the people.
Or did you have something else in mind? Such as taking credit for the sacrifices of generations past?
my perspective is on the opposite side of modern european social liberal standards.
individuals should only hold themselves accountable. the effort to establishing universal well-being assumes political enforcement and coercion. it's a process of ceding individual sovereignty to a political entity.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadWhat it is said to represent are qualities like social mobility in which America ranks amongst the very worst of the other 48 developed nations.
America: one of the highest median household disposable incomes on earth. 25% higher than Norway, 30% higher than Germany and 50% higher than Sweden.
America: owner of 45% of all global private wealth.
America: half the unemployment rate of the EU and Eurozone.
America: a higher median income than Finland, with half the unemployment rate. Finland I'll note has been in a soft-depression for nearly a decade, with net negative growth over that time. Their economy is a disaster.
America: median house two to three times larger than what's typical in Scandinavia, at a much lower median cost as well.
America: drastically lower household debt to income ratio than Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands.
America: where more people have moved up and out of the middle class, than have moved down out of it, for 40 years running. So much so, that it's contracting the middle class, and the majority of those people are moving upwards.
America: nearly twice the GDP per capita of the Eurozone.
America: adding an economy the size of Germany in the time - eight years - that Europe's economy has had zero growth.
America: household poverty line nearly twice as high as the EU and Eurozone. A line so high, that 70% of all UK households would fall short of the US household poverty line (per the guardian).
Careful here...
You need to subtract:
- cost of health care (even if you are a W-2 employee, you still have to pay, typically 30% of the cost, self-employed people may end up $25K/year for a family of 4)
- cost of higher education - $250K/child for private college, $!20K/child state college
- additional taxes, like real-estate, excise taxes
- hidden taxes: telecom, airport/FAA (sometimes half of the price of the ticket), etc.
- absurd real-estate prices (on the coasts)
While the US is probably still ahead, the difference is not as big as you stated.
US households have better balance sheets than most highly developed European nations. So that's obviously not making the impact that people would like to claim it is. The median student loan for all people with student loans, is a mere $13,000.
> cost of health care
I agree, that's why the US has such low taxes on the middle class compared to most of Europe. However, the median US household has $15,000 more in disposable income than for example Sweden. That's a dramatic sum, that can easily cover health insurance - and in fact enables the US to be the vast consumer engine that it is. Simultaneously the median household net worth is higher in the US than Sweden or Germany.
As a significant counter point, a vast number of Americans are receiving compensation at their jobs in the way of health insurance coverage. That isn't counted at all in the US disposable income numbers and it's an extremely large number financially.
> additional taxes, like real-estate, excise taxes
That's a rather ridiculous inclusion. Most of Europe is overflowing with similar taxes, including very high VAT taxes.
> hidden taxes: telecom, airport/FAA (sometimes half of the price of the ticket)
Those referenced costs are comically trivial compared to the extreme disposable income gap in question between the US and most European nations.
> absurd real-estate prices (on the coasts
That's a pretty narrow example. Real estate costs are not absurd along most of the US coast in fact. South Carolina, Oregon, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Virginia, North Carolina, half of California, most of Washington - all of those are perfectly reasonable for the most part (most of Florida for example is not absurdly priced).
Unlike in Europe, you can possess an extremely high standard of living in the majority of the country by just avoiding half a dozen cities. Want to move to Boise Idaho? You can have a household disposable income higher than Sweden, with real estate costs 25% that of Sweden. In Europe, you can't just choose to move to Portugal, much less Czech, much less Bulgaria, and expect to have an income as high as in Germany or Sweden, in order to take advantage of lower cost real estate.
Insurance? Sure. I mean, a young, single person pays a bit above $250 in CA for a plan that meets ACA "Bronze" criteria, which pays about 60% of total cost. So minimal health insurance for a household should be easily doable under $15K per year. OTOH, total health expenses for a household would probably bring you right up to that $15K number, eating up the entire difference.
And healthcare isn't the only place where the US fails to provide services that governments elsewhere in the developed world provide.
Americans receive compensation to the tune of over a trillion dollars per year via health insurance coverage at their place of work. None of that gets counted in the US income figures.
If people had to pay $2500/month for a family of 4 or $80 for a single aspirin in a hospital, they would go ballistic on day one. Also - health premiums go up 10-15% EVERY YEAR. That;s why your annual raise is 3% or less.
When you have a strong safety net, your don't need that higher balance sheet because the chances of needing it due to catastrophic events are vastly higher. I would be far less scared of being indebted in a Nordic country than in the US.
> As a significant counter point, a vast number of Americans are receiving compensation at their jobs in the way of health insurance coverage. That isn't counted at all in the US disposable income numbers and it's an extremely large number financially.
Yeah, and you lived scared out of your fucking mind if you have some sort of condition where if you lose your job your health can be compromised. What if you have children?
Also, American health coverage is an absolute piece of crap.
> Want to move to Boise Idaho? You can have a household disposable income higher than Sweden, with real estate costs 25% that of Sweden. In Europe, you can't just choose to move to Portugal, much less Czech, much less Bulgaria, and expect to have an income as high as in Germany or Sweden, in order to take advantage of lower cost real estate.
Yeah, but you have to live in Boise, Idaho. Something tells me that the average European metropolis is far more relevant culturally. This fact is not lost in the younger generation that keeps moving to the big cities.
= The student loan debt is close to 1.3 TRILLION in 2016, almost TWICE the credit card debt (already substantial at 700 BILLION)
= With a delinquency rate of ~20% (compared to 2% in real-estate)
= The class of 2015 graduated with $35,051 in student debt on average, the most in history.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-growing-student-lo...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-delinquencies-decli...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/credit-card...
'Social Mobility' cannot be compared between USA and small Euro nations.
'Social Mobility' within Denmark, a country smaller than Los Angeles, is pretty good.
What if you compared 'Social Mobility' across the EU.
Do you think that poor people in Croatia, Sicily and Greece are 'mobilizing' up past the Swedish middle class?
No.
Also - America has large ethnic groups. America is really 5 nations: Europeans, Asians, Latinos, Blacks, and 'everyone else'. By almost every measure, America is different for these people, it's tough to compare. I'm not saying it's right, rather alluding to what it is.
Finally - I would say having lived in the US and Europe - that there is without a doubt more opportunity in America than in Europe overall. No question about that.
The elite in most European nations come from pretty good families. They go to the top schools and have their careers guaranteed.
Anyone in America can be successful.
Obviously, that's not a pragmatic statement, as poor kids from the ghetto often have no appreciation of this and simply don't work towards great outcomes - but this is the reality.
Anyhow - the gini coefficient for 'all of Europe' I suggest is definitely lower than the US, and this is because it's nary impossible for poor Spaniards/Greeks/Sicilians to rise to higher than the European upper middle class.
FYI I'm not blaming them, rather indicating that for whatever reason, opportunity is not grasped.
As can anyone in Europe, no?
EDIT: must have read too fast, above point stands.
Multi-nationality is not unique to the US.
In Europe anyone can go to a top school. In my case, my mother is a cleaner and my family is low-middle class: I was able to go to the best university of my country anyway. Most of people in my university were like me. In most of countries of Europe the money just doesn't matter for education purposes: if you are good enough for that university, you go there.
And for a Spaniard is quite possible to rise higher than the European upper middle class. I know many, many cases.
As someone who grew up in EU but now I live in the US, this is something that seriously bugs me. What lesson should I teach my kids when they go to college? "Son, no matter how hard you study, or you don't study, all that matters is daddy's money to get you into college."
Undergraduate Cost And Financial Aid
Families with students on scholarship pay an average of $11,500 annually toward the cost of a Harvard education. More than 65 percent of Harvard College students receive scholarship aid, and the average grant this year is $46,000.
http://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance
You see a large number of transfers from community colleges in the U.S. to top tier schools as well. CCSF feeds into Berkeley, Georgia Perimeter College feeds into Georgia Tech, etc., etc.
The truth is, unless you're hyper-wealthy, your money gets your kid into college through the things that you purchase to further that goal, and the attitudes of children in the same social class.
And what results has that supposed premise produced? It's obviously not accurate to begin with: Romanians aren't all going to the best European schools and they do not have access to such.
Let's see the results: half of Europe is so impoverished, the median incomes in those nations wouldn't come close to reaching the poverty level in the US in terms of standard of living. The poverty levels in countries like Moldova, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary etc. are nearly third world they're so bad.
Spain is still struggling to pull itself out of a nearly decade long depression. What results has the supposed free amazing education produced? None that can't be easily bested or matched by the worst economic zones in the US.
Italy has had three (or four depending on how you count it) recessions in the last ten years. Now their entire nation is about to go bust and threatens to take down half the banks in Europe. What results are we seeing from the supposed amazing free education there?
When you actually calculate the end results of what you're proclaiming, the net outcome is horrendous. So what benefit has any of it produced? Absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Your "obviously" is certainly not obvious. I live in Denmark, and my experience is exactly the opposite: there are MANY Eastern European students in the top Danish universities. Ironically, a degree in Denmark (0 cost) is cheaper than a degree in Eastern Europe: and yes, education in Denmark -and other European countries- is for free for EU citizens. Damn, my own girlfriend is from Lithuania and got her Master from Aalborg University.
I will try to give you an example with data: the best university in Scandinavia for Engineering is DTU (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/faculty-r...). In 2014, it admitted 1403 MsC students; of those, 538 (38%) were "international" (http://www.dtu.dk/english/About/FACTS-AND-FIGURES/Education). DTU doesn't offer data about the particular region of origin of the international students, but I do suspect that most of them are Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans. It's like this for Aalborg University (3rd best in Eng. in Scandinavia): 79% of its international students are Europeans, with 40% of the total being from Eastern Europe (http://www.en.aau.dk/about-aau/figures-facts/students/intern...). Going back to my personal anecdote: when my girlfriend finished her Master degree in Denmark, we went to celebrate with her colleagues: a Pole and two Latvians. No, Eastern Europeans studying in good universities in Scandinavia are not uncommon, by any means.
> Let's see the results: half of Europe is so impoverished, the median incomes in those nations wouldn't come close to reaching the poverty level in the US in terms of standard of living. The poverty levels in countries like Moldova, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary etc. are nearly third world they're so bad.
If you are going to define "Europe" as the continent, I shall be able to define "America" as the continent too. How is the poverty level in Paraguay? Criminality in Ciudad Juárez? Life expectancy in Bolivia? Violence in Caracas?
I thought we were being serious and comparing US with EU; it's already a very favourable comparison for you.
> What results has the supposed free amazing education produced? None that can't be easily bested or matched by the worst economic zones in the US.
The results are multiple. I think I can group many of them under one word: social peace. Spain's homicide rate is 0.7; Italy's is 0.8. US is 3.3. The most peaceful state in the US, New Hampshire, is still more dangerous than Spain or Italy: 0.9. The highest homicide rate in the whole EU is for Lithuania, with 5.5. In the States it would be slightly worse than average in between Michigan and Alaska, very far from the 10.3 of Louisiana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...
IMO, the States is an amazing place if you are a highly-skilled professional or an entrepreneur. If you are poor, not so much: no free healthcare, much higher crime, very high impr...
> Obviously, that's not a pragmatic statement, as poor kids from the ghetto often have no appreciation of this and simply don't work towards great outcomes - but this is the reality.
Ah, it's their fault.
> impossible for poor Spaniards/Greeks/Sicilians to rise to higher than the European upper middle class.
I'm sure you'd argue they don't work towards 'great outcomes'.
But you know what. I really don't see anything super good (or super bad) about living in the US versus Europe. Governments are roughly equally ineffective at solving real problems, people are on average nice. All in all, it's a toss-up.
>Ah, it's their fault.
That's not what he said. There are many reasons for this, mostly parenting and culture.
About half of GDP of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria is taxes. It's easy to talk about redistribution after you've pillaged the entire world.
The Nordic countries had no (or negligible) colonies. The Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans
Finland is another Nordic country, though not a Scandinavian country. Finland has never had an empire. It was too busy being controlled by Sweden and Russia. This means the Finns are Nordic people. Hence getgoingnow's statement cannot be true for all Nordic countries.
That said, cplanas is correct. Finland had no colonies, and for the other Nordic countries the colonies provided only a small revenue source. They surely did not "owe large part of their success to colonization in the past" as getgoingnow claims. Eg, Sweden's wealth historically comes from copper and iron, and Sweden was a poor country. Norway's w
I see you switched from "Nordic countries" to "Nordic people" and then to "Normans", to then imply that successful Norman conquests and colonization lead to a significant economic gain to the Nordic countries. I do not think that's a meaningful connection for the current discussion.
First, I do not like how you imply there is only one type of colonization. There's settler colonialism, like how the Bantu migrations displaced the Pygmy populations in early Congo history, or how the Norse/Danes controlled the region known as the Danelaw, or how the Norse settled in France, and assimilated (switched to Catholicism and to the French language), or how the Norse colonized Iceland.
There's also exploitation colonialism, which England and Spain are two of the best known examples. But the Norse conquest of England, which might have enriched some of the Norse in France, never went back to "the Nordic countries". Where then is the source of the revenue stream that getgoingnow implied was a basis for the success of the modern Nordic countries?
Second, the connection from "Normans" to "Nordic countries" doesn't work that way. The term "Nordic" is a relatively recent term that refers to a list of modern countries and territories; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries . It does not refer to Brittany, where the Normans lived, nor to Britain or southern Italy, which the Normans conquered.
Third, "Nordic people" has a variety of meanings (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_people ). It can refer to the Germanic people as a whole, or the people who live in the specific Nordic countries, or a term from scientific racism from the late 1800s, or the Norse, or more specifically the Vikings. I think your introduction of that term confuses the topic more than it helps. Which definition do you mean to use, and why not stay with "Nordic countries"?
Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?
Then again, you wrote "The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies". I must have missed that part of history where they covered how the Normans colonized the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and lead to the Portuguese colonies.
You could well say that... but I'm not sure how it makes the assertion true that nordic countries/people didn't have colonies. It's actually something that I've picked up on from my studies of history that many colonizers derive from Germanic roots. (My hunch which I can't prove / haven't investigate much is that the germans picked up on it from the romans)
I didn't mean to suggest that there's only one kind of colonization, I'm actually a huge fan of the idea that there are many types, and that some of them were beneficial.
Also, I don't really buy into the idea that colonization was responsible for the success of the nations that did the colonizing. I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy just as slavery in the Southern US lead to widespread poverty when compared to the North.
Yes, that was an absolute statement which you disproved handily, not all colonies were created by nordic / germanic peoples.
The very language we are communicating in is a testament to the colonization of England (or whatever the fuck it was called before it was colonized) by Nordic/Germanic people/countries. It's a colonization similar to America by Britain, where the colonists decided to give the middle finger to the motherland, similar to the way the English just gave the finger to their original colonizers in Denmark.
https://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm
And there was no need for you to introduce a absolute statement as the previous nuanced statement was correct.
> the colonization of England
There have been many waves of colonization of England: Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Norse, and the Norman French come quickly to mind. The colonization of England is far different from the combination of English, French, and Spanish colonization of the Americas.
I think you overemphasize bloodlines when you focus on immigration and "people". The Romans were a diverse set of peoples from across the Roman Empire, with people as far away as Africa living in England. The Christianization of England, or the spread of the concept of the divine right of kings, or of democracy, was not due to immigration of bodies but to an immigration of ideas. The rise of Sweden as an invading superpower in the 1600s was due in part to the Reformation, which let the Swedish king confiscate money from church land, and not simply from some intrinsic nature of the people.
"England" comes from the Angels. In modern use it refers to the area in the southern part of Great Britian, and corresponds mostly to where the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were, ie, not Wales and not Scotland. There was no name before the Angles as there was no reason to highlight that specific area.
England as a short-hand for Great Britain was called Britannia by the Romans, and Albion, from a Celtic language through the Roman.
> "I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy..."
Which brings the topic back to the original discussion. getgoingnow wrote "Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past".
Do you think it's true that the Nordic countries (modern Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland) owe their success to colonization? If so, which colonization, and what was the return which lead to modern success?
Leopold II's ineffective and bloody adventures in a part of Africa everyone else had already ignored hardly rate.
You could say the same thing about America though, there are still many wealthy families that can trace wealth back to slave ownership. In addition we massacred the Native Americans and took control of a massive wealth of natural resources. None of us came into life on a level playing field. We aren't necessarily responsible for the actions of our ancestors but I think we have to acknowledge the cumulative effect that they had on our world.
We will just go in blame circles forever as long as we cling to the notion that we are particularly responsible for our good or bad fortune (beyond on average minor changes based on personal choices - and I say minor once you average it out over the entire population, some people might experience drastic changes by making a fortuitous decision but many other people made significant efforts that do not result in large gains).
If we can get over this notion and agree that everyone should have equal access to food, water, housing, security, and education no matter what, then we can put all this who did what to who bullshit behind us. Even if there are cumulative cultural issues related to past discrimination they would be so much easier to deal with once the brunt of inequality has been dealt with.
I am not particularly optimistic for this though because people who either by ability or a lucky roll of the dice become wealthy (or already were already) have such a massive psychological hurdle to overcome to accept that what happened to them simply cannot happen to anyone, regardless of ability or work ethic.
Individuals don't care about their ability to change their percentile, they care about their ability to change their total income. I think most individuals would prefer a "non-mobile" $60k increase in income versus a "mobile" $40k increase in income. You can't spend percentiles.
I highly dispute this. Take it as a completely different world view but I think if people were given a choice:
1 >a nominal income of $100k for you and a nominal income of $200k for all your neighbours
2 >a nominal income of $75k for you and a nominal income of $60k for all your neighbours
A lot of people would opt for choice 2. I myself am not sure whether I'd go for 1 or 2.
There are two reasons for why people invariably choose 2>
- people are competitive and want to feel superior to others (or at least above average)
- the price of everything adjusts to median income, so if you live in a $60K state/country with a $75K income, everything is more affordable for you.
This is completely wrong. People care intensely about their pecking order (looks, money, accolades, etc). Beyond this, there are purely functional reasons to care about your relative income. Limited resources lead to competition.
Nobody cares if their GPA is higher than their parent's was. They care if it's higher than their peers who are trying to get into the same universities. Ditto for housing prices. What matters isn't the dollar value of the property you can afford, only whether or not you can afford to be in a top school district. Politicians don't win by being able to spend more on campaigns than politicians of the previous generation either. They care if they can spend enough to win against their current opponents.
In human society, the relative comparison dwarfs the absolute.
Which makes me wonder why one would laud upward mobility in percentiles, when any such upward mobility must be balanced out by equal and opposite downward mobility.
If you want a meritocracy you have to accept that untalented/unmotivated kids of rich parents may become relatively poor.
Imagine, there is no dream. You get what you have. There is no chance for anyone who has not achieved. Don't even try, there is no chance.
I think we'd be worse off with that mindset. I imagine Russia, Venezuela, etc. feel a bit like this. You're there to eek out a living with little chance of thinking things could change for you.
If you don't believe in having a stationary "place" you seek more, you tell your progeny there is more, if only they try. Go, don't be like your father or mother, go make something of yourself.
I don't think so.
20% payroll tax.
24% VAT.
That it is 'common' does not mean it is fair.
If a company has $100K allocated to pay you, $20K goes to payroll tax. Of $80K remaining, you take home 40% of that, which is $32K.
Suppose 2/3 of your take home goes towards consumer goods meaning that you're paying an additional $5K on VAT ~= $25K direct take home.
So for $100K salary, you get $25K.
And that's before property tax, wealth tax, inheritance taxes, and massive taxation hidden into other things such as fuel etc..
It's too much by any stretch.
(That income puts you in top 4 % of earners in Finland.)
The municipal tax varies between 16.50 % (Kauniainen) and 22.50 % (Savonlinna).
The church tax varies between 1 and 2 %.
But actually what happens is that you don't understand how progressive taxes work, how different things have different VAT rates, and so on.
If a company has agreed to pay you $100k, that's after any payroll tax has been paid, so they pay ~ $120k, you get (gross) $100k.
Of the remaining $100k, you pay 0 on the first ~ $2600, 31% on the portion between $2600 and $62k, 51% between $62k and $88k, and 56% above $88k. Do the math, it comes out to about $38500 in income tax.
There is no wealth tax or inheritance tax. You get free university education, free universal health care, great public transport, 480 days of parental leave (that can be split among the parents mostly how you like, and used for up to 8 years), and you get a child allowance of ~ 120 euro each month for each child until that child is 16.
Too much? Yeah right.
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/10/median-...
Realistic example of where I live: if gross salary is 100,000 €, the employer pays around 120 k€ (including payroll taxes) and the take-home pay after taxes is 57,610 €.
So the employee gets a little less than half of what the employer pays.
(>100 k€ is the bracket of top 1.6 % of employees.)
There's a handy calculator at the tax office pages: http://prosentti.vero.fi/VPL2016/Sivut/LaskennanTulos.aspx?k...
The nominal percentage however excludes social "insurances" which are effectively taxes.
Overall, taxation is very simple for a regular employee; typically the pay-as-you-earn system takes your taxes during the year and in next February you get a slip detailing the income of last year. Most years I don't need to file a tax return at all because the PAYE system has done it correctly. There are very few deductions to apply.
There are some other items where taxes are noticeably higher than in the US. Gasoline costs around 1.35 €/l (5.66 $/gal).
General VAT is 24 %.
Also, I'm fortunate enough to work in tech which has pretty good PTO policies (for now), but my spouse does not, and 4+ weeks of vacation for her as well, letting us see more of the world, makes me feel wealthier than a bigger paycheck.
Oh, I'm not expected to answer emails on the weekend either. And I can cycle without fearing for my life every. damn. day - the US detests cyclists and disregards their deaths.
to be fair, many cyclists in the US ignore traffic laws wholesale
Free translation of the first part: Cyclist or pedestrians are seen as the weaker traffic participants. Because they are fragile in traffic the law has a special rule on collisions with a motorized vehicle. The driver in the car is responsible for the damage of the cyclist without his guilt having to be proven.
[1] http://www.anwb.nl/juridisch-advies/aanrijding-en-dan/aanspr...
Were you working in SF? Where in Europe are you now? Were you making an above average salary?
I'd be happy to talk. Drop me a line at (what you can guess is my first name)@robertlawson.net. Public key at http://robertlawson.net/my-public-key/ .
Here in the UK there is much resentment to people who receive benefits. I have been someone who lived on benefits because I could, not because I needed to. I spent that time learning new skills and overall have been a net contributor.
But I also know people who have no intention of personal improvement who plan to spend their entire lives on handouts.
I look at the US and see a system that seems designed to breed crime, poverty and prostitution.
Don't trick yourself into thinking the Nordic model is the greatest though. I spent 6 months there in Finland and predict a lot of social pain in the next decade. Growing unemployment will put strain on the social services. Multinationals have been allowed in which means profits sucked abroad via Wal-mart, Lidl and a host of others.
The brain drain to other parts of the EU will also grow, if the students I met fulfil their ambitions.
While at the same time producing the highest GDP per captia in the world, the most number of people with college education, and leadership in probably 80% of global industries?
The US doesn't 'breed' anything - communities 'breed' themselves.
I suggest the US could do a little better with the social safety net, and possibly some basic healthcare guarantees, but having 60% taxes, 30% payroll tax and 20% VAT meaning the average worker putting 75% of their income directly towards government spending is not going to work either.
The 'Nordic Model' can only work in small countries, with small, tight ethnic groups and cultural foundations.
Nordic Countries almost all have Monarchies, State Churches (Sweden gives 1% of it's tax revenues to their Christian State Church - could you imagine that in the US?). I'm not saying 'faith' is an important factor, rather pointing out the relatively cohesive social identity.
And yes, you are right: UK and Germany are sucking up talent like vacuums.
United Nations (2014)[6] lists US as 12th, which is not bad. But, has been falling for a while. Norway for example seems to be ahead by ~30% despite a huge safety net.
Of course by PPP we seem to be stuck at ~25: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IMF_ranked_countries_b...
:P
The point that the US does not have the highest GDP per capita in the world is well-taken (what it has the highest is overall GDP). But Norway's path to prosperity is not generalizable.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...
ED: bad math.
PS: The US problem was it got addicted to the stuff pumping most of it out early while the price was low and then stuck paying more during price spikes.
The US's GDP would be yet higher if it could sustain an increase in petroleum production by 75% or so.
What's your narrative here? Is the Norway vs. Sweden difference due to something OTHER than oil? They're very similar countries! If you're seeing the Norway vs. Sweden thing as due to something other than oil, what are you arguing is unique to Norway? If you do agree that Norway's GDP/capita advantage over its neighbors is due to oil, you have to accept that a resource advantage that produces a few thousand dollars/year in direct purchase, basically stimulates AD to the point where the entire economy goes up and snowballs into a few tens of thousands of dollars per year.
To be clear, I don't think that our views are wildly distinct. I'm not a hater of the Nordic countries. But Norway is an outlier from the other Nordics, and the only plausible explanation I can come up with for its outlier status is oil. So I don't think it's a very useful reference point.
In Norway's case, oil makes a wealth of difference.
All the countries above the U.S. on that Wikipedia list are tiny countries that have a specialized economy (oil for Norway and Qatar, financial services for Switzerland and Liechtenstein).
You see exactly the same pattern when you look within the United States:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per...
The top of that list is also dominated by oil (Alaska and North Dakota) and financial services (Delaware, New York).
Note that Alaska has a per capita GDP considerably higher than Norway, Switzerland, or Qatar (only being beaten by Luxembourg).
Also, I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
shows all those countries well below the United States. The only ones above it are, again, oil and financial services countries.
Though, several other places don't seem to agree with those numbers. So, they may be off.
^2 PPP is calculated by dividing GDP (nominal) by GDP (PPP), expressed as a percentage.
PS I lived there.
+ Switzerland is also a tax haven, with 1/3 of all off-shore private wealth in the entire world sitting there, with taxes going to local citizens. And it's one of the most socially conservative places on Earth, very low taxes in some areas.
+ Qatar and Norway are tiny populations with massive amounts of Oil, and otherwise extremely inefficient business sectors. Of course I'm sure you're aware that Qatar is not in Europe :).
I lived in Europe and the US, there is no comparison as to where wealth is created. I like living in Europe much more than the US for a variety of reasons, but it's not a place for social mobility, or to create wealth. Not by a stretch.
It seems to me, although I haven't lived it, that food stamps cause more problems than cash handouts.
US: 633782 / 314000000 => 202 homeless per 100,000
Finland: 7877 / 5363000 => 147 homeless per 100,000
Based off of numbers from (YMMV, maybe someone can check my math):
http://www.housingfirst.fi/en/housing_first/homelessness_in_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+finland+in+2010
https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+usa+in+2012
If you can do a reasonable impression of someone interested in looking for a job then you will get your rent paid directly to a landlord and about $100 per week put into a bank account.
Producing these things and breeding crime, poverty and prostitution are not mutually exclusive.
The people receiving the benefits of the high GDP are not the same people that are committing crimes and living in poverty.
Also "the highest GDP per captia in the world" is not correct. By most accounts (IMF, World Bank, UN) the US is around the bottom half of the top 10, both nominal and PPP adjusted. Certainly high but not on top by any account.
But the U.S is a different animal. If you want to live a complacent life, squeeze out a few children, work 9-5 for the rest of your life, without taking any risks, the nordics are a great choice.
If you want to create something extraordinary, take huge risks, maximize your potential, tap into unprecedented resources in the form of engineering know-how, scientific capital, venture capital etc, then you are without question better of in the U.S.
There is a reason why the Googles/IBMs/Facebooks/Bell Labs/MIT's/Skunk Works/DARPAs/NASAs of the world are ALL American. Technological and scientific dominance does not go hand-in-hand with a dull society where 99 % are just complacent.
Quality of life has never been higher for any social class, even with unfortunate income inequality.
even if this were true (source?) it doesnt matter when there is a steady move toward lower social class on average for the overwhelming majority of Americans
> The study shows that as the number of middle-class Americans fell (from 61 percent of the population to 51 percent of the population), the percentage of Americans who are upper income surged from 14 percent of the population to 20 percent of the population.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48754974
71% of Americans are middle class or better, amazing. Most of those in the lower classes are those who decided not to get any skills.
It is not the case that people in the "lower" classes decided not to get any skills. It is that the economy changes over time and their skills are no longer compensated well and, in general, US society is not good at accommodating people to change their skill-sets to move into a new career. You might have anecdotes about people who made such a career change, but for society as a whole, it is too difficult.
It's a pain in the ass to have a business or a high salary here. Everything is expensive and you could end up paying 60% taxes of your salary, after the employer pays taxes on your salary. The bureaucracy can get ridiculous too, it's like they don't want to have businesses here. The system works with a small population but I don't think it could ever scale.
Basically, if you're ok with being nothing more then middleclass, it's a great place to live, but the ambitious people who really bring in the money and pay the majority of taxes aren't living nearly as good as they could elsewhere.
I keep looking at the salaries of US jobs with my title and I'd make so much more money there, and have more left after all the taxes. Then again I had a free education and the healthcare is pretty much free and decent.
Maybe it's one of those "grass is greener etc." type deals.
And just like a lot of other European countries now, we have a bad unemployment problem (and the statistics lie; they coerce people into various programmes that result in them not showing up as unemployed, even though they don't have an actual job). There are signs that suggest the social "safety web" won't hold up; government budget is really tight and cuts are made here and there. Benefits are not increased as cost of living gets higher. I don't know what the statistics say, but there are lots of alcoholics. And again not sure what the statistics say today, but afaik .fi has ranked pretty poorly with regard to cases of depression and suicide. Maybe all is not so well?
And then there's this touchy wtf-worthy subject of the generation that boomed after war retiring. Supposedly there aren't enough of us to fill their positions so we need immigrants. Meanwhile, as I said, unemployment is pretty sickening.
But personally I care about neither. What I care about is a stress free life. Since I have low living expenses, the safety net would easily cover all the costs of my current life style and that life is available for everyone (barring mental illness such as alcoholism which seems to be a problem). I live within a walking distance from the city centre, my work and groceries. Public transport is great, although I don't use it since I can just bike everywhere. Or if I need to use a car I can just rent a brand new merc for the weekend. And nothing of that would change even if I never worked a day in my life again.
Also there's about zero chance of ever landing a jail sentence, or getting harassed by a cop.
So I'm pretty proud of the society we have built.
Over 20% of Swedes have foreign background. Either immigrants or or their parents were immigrants. They come from Middle East, Former Yugoslavia, Somalia etc.
Maybe even worse than that though are people like you, who can't even openly admit that obvious problem and only mention it in some euphemistic indirect way.
I think this is too simplistic. The US is a country of some 320 million people and the experience of racism undoubtedly varies enormously across cities and states. A blanket statement like this can't convey the complexity of the situation.
I live in the UK, where we've seen a horrible rise in racism after the EU referendum. But what country in the EU can honestly say they don't have serious problems with racism in their society?
Across EU nations, there are many racist political parties, not at the fringes, but actively shaping and influencing political discourse.
I really don't think we in Europe are in a superior position when it comes to issues of racism. In fact, I'd argue we're probably less likely to acknowledge or consider it a problem.
What I am NOT willing to do, however, is pay enormous overhead to the the insurance/healthcare/bill-processing complex which sucks out the blood out of this country.
I bet most people in the US object not to some kind of a social contract to help the less fortunate, but to the completely broken system.
I feel like there is quite a few who are fundamentally against the idea.
Health insurance is a PITA here. Physio in Canada charged me $60/ session. Here it's $240 per session. Insurance pays about 100 but I still pay $140 out of my pocket.
America has a crazy obsession of being rich that people will easily screw others to make a buck. It's a very stark difference to Australia and Canada.
Foreign-born population of Sweden: 16% Foreign-born population of Norway: 13.9% Foreign-born population of USA: 13.1%
https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...
or convenient in the sense of you having little to offer as a retort?
I don't think there is one unifying American culture. There are some common cultural elements, but there are fairly distinct regional (as well as racial/ethnic) cultures in the US.
If the US would not share a culture, intra-US migration would be a big issue, as it is in the EU.
Migration (and simply interaction) across some of the internal cultural divides (especially the ones closely tied to race/ethnicity) is a big deal (you know those big problems with race/ethnicity the US has -- that's a big part of them). The regional variations are less of a big deal not because the regional cultures aren't distinct, but because the regional cultural areas are far bigger than in Europe, and the US has better inter-region support structures, which -- outside of rare major crises -- reduce mass internal migrations across those regional cultural divides.
(When there have been mass internal migrations, culture clashes and problems with migrants similar to those seen in Europe have occurred in the US, but I don't think there's been a big internal dislocation of that type since the 1930s Dust Bowl.)
And even among whites, there are distinct cultures. I was confused why I didn't enjoy living in Massachusetts, until I read this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-see... and it started to make more sense. I've got Borderer roots :)
Part 1: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/04-carlos-doesnt-reme...
In my experience, the one thing that by far works best to enable social mobility, and that I think Nordic and some central European countries have done quite well, is free, high quality education - from primary school to university.
Especially as we move further and further to knowledge based economic growth, this is crucial, not just for social mobility, but well being and success of whole countries.
Market forces are great at optimising some things, some not so great. Things that require long term focus - basic research, education, environmental issues - are best handled, and paid for by governments.
[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/why_the_college....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
Even accepting your first premise, this does not follow. Even if degrees are 100% signalling and 0% actual education, it's still the right choice for the individual because that signalling has value. The alternative is that people who have the positive qualities that are signaled but not the money for the degree cannot get the jobs which require those characteristics and have good pay.
Educating scientists and engineers (and other valued professions, like teachers who all have higher education) definitely improved the productivity of Nordic countries - and allowed them to build high tech industries relatively quickly.
My home country - Brazil - offers free university education, and actually our federal universities are the best in the country. While there are quotas for certain socially disadvantaged groups of people (e.g. racial quotas), the sad reality is that regular seats are taken mostly by rich kids whose parents can afford to pay them prep courses - because the admissions process is incredibly difficult. So our free higher education system ends up doing a poor job in helping upward social mobility, and people who are not well-off end up going to private colleges whose schedules allow them to work and pay for their tuition.
It can be difficult to get in, sometimes too much so, people try multiple times. But the education and the degrees themselves in return are very high quality - many universities in the UK take in almost everyone and the degrees don't really teach the students that much.
There are almost no private colleges in Finland so I haven't seen the phenomenon you describe.
https://www.contentcreamery.com/articles/what-s-so-special-a...
Or did you have something else in mind? Such as taking credit for the sacrifices of generations past?
individuals should only hold themselves accountable. the effort to establishing universal well-being assumes political enforcement and coercion. it's a process of ceding individual sovereignty to a political entity.