6 ms·

We Could Be Denmark

30 points by ergot 10y ago

hprotagonist 10y ago
I'm pretty convinced that there are critical upper bounds to population size and national surface area that guarantee that approaches that work great for small, tractable nations just cannot scale. So step 0: Reduce the population of the US to the population of the metro Atlanta area (5.7 million in 2010). Step 1: reduce the area of the US to the state of Maine (roughly).
- vorotato 10y ago
  So you mean we can do it on a state level and it'll work?
  - hprotagonist 10y ago
    To some extent. Ever visited Vermont?
    - bhups 10y ago
      Were states to implement such systems at the state level, I fully expect the smaller states to consolidate and form alliances of their welfare systems so as to achieve economies of scale faster.
      - hprotagonist 10y ago
        Hey, that's almost like an _exchange_ of some kind...
        bhups 10y ago
        My hypothetical was for them to socialize it with a shared single-payer system. Think about it this way: all of the small states in New England decide to create a government run insurance (like Denmark) by pooling all of their taxpayers. An exchange would be more like a multi-payer system rather than a single-payer system.
- orf 10y ago
  UK has 60,000,000 people and it manages.
bhups 10y ago
Ethnic homogeneity isn't the only reason comparing the US to Denmark doesn't make much sense, it's also due to population. Denmark is a tiny country with a population of 5.7 million people. That's about the population of Wisconsin. The United States is a federation of self-governing states within which there are open borders and free trade...just like the European Union. The United States has a population of 320 million people, while the EU has a population of a similar order of magnitude: around 500 million. To many voters, the idea of enacting broad social welfare programs in the United States sounds just as infeasible as enacting similar programs in the whole European Union. California is different from Ohio, both of which are different from Georgia. If we want to use Denmark and the Nordic countries as examples for our policies, we should move towards the republican (small r) idea of decentralization so that the states can enact such systems. Today, I pay roughly 30% of my income in taxes to the federal government, and 10% of my income in taxes to the state government. This should be the other way around - 10% to the Federal government and maybe 30% to my state. Maybe Wisconsin can have a single payer healthcare system, California can have a universal multi-payer system (like Germany), and Texas can have a universal multi-payer system like that in Switzerland. TL;DR - We could be more like the European Union.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  The EU has actual laws about things like paid time off, wages, and health-care though. Oh, and privacy, and human rights. And it has parliamentary systems that represent people more than the current American system. I agree with the article that we ought to be able to impose some useful minimums in the USA, just like in the EU.
  - troels 10y ago
    Not that you're wrong, but this is just to remind you that the EU isn't a country. Especially worker-laws varies quite a bit between countries. Surprising perhaps, the nordic countries have very liberal worker-laws, compared to other european countries. For example, there is no minimum wage in Denmark, and most workers are more or less employed as fire-at-will.
fdsaaf 10y ago
While it's true that, a priori, there's no reason that ethnic homogeneity should be a prerequisite for a welfare state, this idea is misleading because it supposes that all ethnic groups contribute to the welfare state equally. I know that it's modern dogma that all groups are equal in all respects, but hear me out: what if they're not? What if, for whatever reason, ethnic group A subsidizes B's existence? This difference will damage the social cohesion necessary for a welfare state to exist. In the real world, we observe huge group differences in productivity, educational attainment, conscientiousness, fecundity, and other characteristics, and in the real world, we see that mixing groups does indeed damage social cohesion. I understand that this observation is unpopular --- but this unpopularity doesn't make it wrong. I don't think it's politically possible to create a strong welfare state in a country populated by identifiable groups with differing socioeconomic contributions to the common good. Others have commented that it's the size of the country that makes welfare impossible --- that it just doesn't work over a certain size. As a practical theory, I think that's true, but I don't think size itself is the root cause. I think that as a country's population increases, the visibility of low-contributing groups increases, and it's this visibility that reduces the will to create a global welfare state.
- troels 10y ago
  I think this is quite right. But this is even true if the racism is unfounded. The mere illusion that some ethnic groups are low-contributing will weaken the cohesion of society. So in this backwards way, racism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - fdsaaf 10y ago
    The way out of this trap is to emphasize the shared identity of people in the country instead of encouraging them to think of themselves as members of distinct ethnic groups within that country. It's for that reason that the identity politics of today's social justice advocates infuriates me. These activists can't see that their divisiveness is actually bringing them further from their goals.
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lacampbell 10y ago
Alternate title: We Could Be Venezuela.
Eupolemos 10y ago
Dane here. Our health insurance - an important part of our welfare system - started out as a guild benefit for workers, then it were a part of unions and finally something on a national level (I skipped a few steps). The absolutely must have part is "solidarity". What does that even mean? It means you feel part of something tight where you owe the others, in that "something", your help and compassion, even financially. Ethnic homogeneity isn't needed, but solidarity is. It is a feeling nurtured and grown over many years and it is easily broken if abused. It requires eternal vigilance, to keep that feeling of "we owe each other" alive despite all the distrust. It is a constant battle against unpleasant emotions and real abuse, and you need to pick the fight in a way that ensures that you can win it. Denmark is almost too big to keep that alive.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I agree with your comment completely. But I can't help but think of the immense wealth created since long before the Constitution on the basis of dividing people: slavery, racism, yellow journalism, welfare (for "those people")...you get the idea. There is a lot of money in keeping Americans at each other's throats.
- kiliantics 10y ago
  Yep, there are many good articles that cover this: the working and living conditions in Europe and the US diverged thanks to the gutting of the big unions in the 70s, while they stayed strong in places like Germany. There are several metrics that correlate to support this idea.
chvid 10y ago
Maybe. But identity politics mixed with big welfare surely is a recipe for disaster.
nitwit005 10y ago
It's tempting to think we can mimic the example of a small country, but it's unfortunately quite difficult to know if the policies mattered, or if it has to do with cultural and economic forces that the government doesn't have much influence over. Imagine you take the US, and you just cut it into small "nations" arbitrarily. Despite having the same laws and policies, you'd see a huge amount of diversity when it comes to crime rates, wealth, income distribution, and so on.
fedups 10y ago
The tradeoffs of homeogeneity and diversity in democracy strikes me as an extremely important topic now, and I was looking forward to the article addressing the most comprehensive study on the issue (that I know of) by Robert Putnam [0]. Unfortunately it seems the author simply acknowledges this as the predominant view, takes a single study on immigration to "prove(!)" the idea wrong, and then credits Nordic success to the "Class struggle" as a mere assertion. But perhaps I missed something. [0]- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

30 points by ergot 10y ago

I'm pretty convinced that there are critical upper bounds to population size and national surface area that guarantee that approaches that work great for small, tractable nations just cannot scale. So step 0: Reduce the population of the US to the population of the metro Atlanta area (5.7 million in 2010). Step 1: reduce the area of the US to the state of Maine (roughly).

vorotato 10y ago
So you mean we can do it on a state level and it'll work?
- hprotagonist 10y ago
  To some extent. Ever visited Vermont?
  - bhups 10y ago
    Were states to implement such systems at the state level, I fully expect the smaller states to consolidate and form alliances of their welfare systems so as to achieve economies of scale faster.
    - hprotagonist 10y ago
      Hey, that's almost like an _exchange_ of some kind...
      - bhups 10y ago
        My hypothetical was for them to socialize it with a shared single-payer system. Think about it this way: all of the small states in New England decide to create a government run insurance (like Denmark) by pooling all of their taxpayers. An exchange would be more like a multi-payer system rather than a single-payer system.
orf 10y ago
UK has 60,000,000 people and it manages.

bhups 10y ago

Ethnic homogeneity isn't the only reason comparing the US to Denmark doesn't make much sense, it's also due to population. Denmark is a tiny country with a population of 5.7 million people. That's about the population of Wisconsin. The United States is a federation of self-governing states within which there are open borders and free trade...just like the European Union. The United States has a population of 320 million people, while the EU has a population of a similar order of magnitude: around 500 million. To many voters, the idea of enacting broad social welfare programs in the United States sounds just as infeasible as enacting similar programs in the whole European Union. California is different from Ohio, both of which are different from Georgia. If we want to use Denmark and the Nordic countries as examples for our policies, we should move towards the republican (small r) idea of decentralization so that the states can enact such systems. Today, I pay roughly 30% of my income in taxes to the federal government, and 10% of my income in taxes to the state government. This should be the other way around - 10% to the Federal government and maybe 30% to my state. Maybe Wisconsin can have a single payer healthcare system, California can have a universal multi-payer system (like Germany), and Texas can have a universal multi-payer system like that in Switzerland. TL;DR - We could be more like the European Union.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
The EU has actual laws about things like paid time off, wages, and health-care though. Oh, and privacy, and human rights. And it has parliamentary systems that represent people more than the current American system. I agree with the article that we ought to be able to impose some useful minimums in the USA, just like in the EU.
- troels 10y ago
  Not that you're wrong, but this is just to remind you that the EU isn't a country. Especially worker-laws varies quite a bit between countries. Surprising perhaps, the nordic countries have very liberal worker-laws, compared to other european countries. For example, there is no minimum wage in Denmark, and most workers are more or less employed as fire-at-will.

fdsaaf 10y ago

While it's true that, a priori, there's no reason that ethnic homogeneity should be a prerequisite for a welfare state, this idea is misleading because it supposes that all ethnic groups contribute to the welfare state equally. I know that it's modern dogma that all groups are equal in all respects, but hear me out: what if they're not? What if, for whatever reason, ethnic group A subsidizes B's existence? This difference will damage the social cohesion necessary for a welfare state to exist. In the real world, we observe huge group differences in productivity, educational attainment, conscientiousness, fecundity, and other characteristics, and in the real world, we see that mixing groups does indeed damage social cohesion. I understand that this observation is unpopular --- but this unpopularity doesn't make it wrong. I don't think it's politically possible to create a strong welfare state in a country populated by identifiable groups with differing socioeconomic contributions to the common good. Others have commented that it's the size of the country that makes welfare impossible --- that it just doesn't work over a certain size. As a practical theory, I think that's true, but I don't think size itself is the root cause. I think that as a country's population increases, the visibility of low-contributing groups increases, and it's this visibility that reduces the will to create a global welfare state.

troels 10y ago
I think this is quite right. But this is even true if the racism is unfounded. The mere illusion that some ethnic groups are low-contributing will weaken the cohesion of society. So in this backwards way, racism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- fdsaaf 10y ago
  The way out of this trap is to emphasize the shared identity of people in the country instead of encouraging them to think of themselves as members of distinct ethnic groups within that country. It's for that reason that the identity politics of today's social justice advocates infuriates me. These activists can't see that their divisiveness is actually bringing them further from their goals.
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lacampbell 10y ago

Alternate title: We Could Be Venezuela.

Eupolemos 10y ago

Dane here. Our health insurance - an important part of our welfare system - started out as a guild benefit for workers, then it were a part of unions and finally something on a national level (I skipped a few steps). The absolutely must have part is "solidarity". What does that even mean? It means you feel part of something tight where you owe the others, in that "something", your help and compassion, even financially. Ethnic homogeneity isn't needed, but solidarity is. It is a feeling nurtured and grown over many years and it is easily broken if abused. It requires eternal vigilance, to keep that feeling of "we owe each other" alive despite all the distrust. It is a constant battle against unpleasant emotions and real abuse, and you need to pick the fight in a way that ensures that you can win it. Denmark is almost too big to keep that alive.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I agree with your comment completely. But I can't help but think of the immense wealth created since long before the Constitution on the basis of dividing people: slavery, racism, yellow journalism, welfare (for "those people")...you get the idea. There is a lot of money in keeping Americans at each other's throats.
kiliantics 10y ago
Yep, there are many good articles that cover this: the working and living conditions in Europe and the US diverged thanks to the gutting of the big unions in the 70s, while they stayed strong in places like Germany. There are several metrics that correlate to support this idea.

chvid 10y ago

Maybe. But identity politics mixed with big welfare surely is a recipe for disaster.

nitwit005 10y ago

It's tempting to think we can mimic the example of a small country, but it's unfortunately quite difficult to know if the policies mattered, or if it has to do with cultural and economic forces that the government doesn't have much influence over. Imagine you take the US, and you just cut it into small "nations" arbitrarily. Despite having the same laws and policies, you'd see a huge amount of diversity when it comes to crime rates, wealth, income distribution, and so on.

fedups 10y ago

The tradeoffs of homeogeneity and diversity in democracy strikes me as an extremely important topic now, and I was looking forward to the article addressing the most comprehensive study on the issue (that I know of) by Robert Putnam [0]. Unfortunately it seems the author simply acknowledges this as the predominant view, takes a single study on immigration to "prove(!)" the idea wrong, and then credits Nordic success to the "Class struggle" as a mere assertion. But perhaps I missed something. [0]- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....