7 ms·

Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in

Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. For example in 2019 by Gini coefficient, the most unequal countries in the world were #1 the Netherlands, #2 Russia, #3 Sweden, and #4 the United States (with Denmark coming in at #8). The data is clearly pretty noisy, but as far as I can see Sweden was again more unequal than the US in 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we... Meanwhile Southern Europe has reasonably high income inequality, but not much wealth inequality. Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America

tossandthrow 1y ago
The thing about the Nordics is that you can not consume that wealth personally without being heavily taxed - when it is tied up in company assets.
- fakedang 1y ago
  Not to mention, flaunting wealth by conspicuous consumption also comes with its own kind of social stigma, even in upper class circles.
  - emptysongglass 1y ago
    Doesn't mean it isn't done. The Lego family was caught flying their private jet all over the world so they sold it and now have exclusive renting rights to a plane in a hangar operated by another company.
    - ahoka 1y ago
      Yes, everything is about the looks in Scandinavia.
    - tossandthrow 1y ago
      There is a strict separation between business and personal consumption. If the Lego family uses business jets to go on vacation, then they need to 1) pay market rate for using the jets and 2) pay full income taxes, VAT etc. Anyhow, when you are rich enough this tripling in cost does not really matter - but it does reflect in the income equality statistics.
- geysersam 1y ago
  Not sure that's true. How do you even "consume" wealth, assuming the wealth is more significant than a few millions in the bank. Nordic countries have high VAT but that's hardly going to hurt you.. On the other hand Sweden has less property tax than the US. I guess if you consume services then that will be more expensive in the Nordics, since tax on salaries is high.
  - flakeoil 1y ago
    I suppose the person means that you have to pay about 50% in taxes to take out the capital/profit from the company before you can use it as a private person.
    - Y-bar 1y ago
      Dividend and capital gains taxes are a flat 30% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Corporate_and_capital_gains_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Corporate_a...)
      - pavlov 1y ago
        In Finland the tax treatment for dividends is even friendlier. If you have a 1.5M balance sheet, you can pay yourself 120k euros in dividends annually at an effective tax rate of only 7.5%. Let’s just say that small businesses and professionals have very good lobbyists. An employee making 120k / year pays over 40% tax. This creates a tremendous incentive for professionals to incorporate and use every trick in the books to build up a larger balance sheet on paper.
        hrududuu 1y ago
        This type of comparison needs to add corporate income tax (20%) in order to be an apples to apples comparison,so 27.5. It's still a stark difference in taxation, and I know of no other country that does what Finland does for dividend taxation. In fact for earned income,things look even uglier when you add in tax-like social security contributions. Perhaps not coincidentally, Finnish companies are also an outlier in paying extremely high dividends.
Teever 1y ago
> many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America A missing piece of the puzzle may be regulatory capture and a strong political/legal structure that resists the worst ambitions of cruel people whether they be wealthy or poor. You can think of wealth like the potential energy of a spring under tension. If used properly it is capable of powering the most amazing and intricate social mechanisms but if poorly regulated it destroys social fabric and the well being of every day people. Things like Citizens United and lobbyists representing cruel wealthy interests running unchecked over American democracy are examples of the socially destructive potential energy of wealth. I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US because they see more opportunity to make money and be cruel in that environment while wealthy people who have some affinity with their nation and the people of it choose to remain and don't or can't lobby for terribly antisocial policies.
- TFYS 1y ago
  > I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US That's an interesting thought! It would make sense that the people who care less about others and more about themselves would find it easier and more beneficial to leave. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the wealth, personality traits and political views of the people who leave.
- api 1y ago
  People need to start getting specific about their grievances. It’s not inequality per se. People don’t care if some people have more than them. There are specific concrete things. For Americans the big ones are: a health problem can destroy your life and your life’s savings, housing costs are too high, and college is too expensive and leaves people in debt. Housing, health care, and tuition. Two out of three of those are better in Europe, mostly: health care and college costs. They are better even if things are on paper more unequal. High housing costs are a disease across the entire developed world.
  - 1y ago
esseph 1y ago
High inequality, but also very high on social support: https://data.worldhappiness.report/table?_gl=1*13j5g4a*_gcl_au*MTY3Mjg1NjM2OS4xNzU2NDI2NTY2 https://data.worldhappiness.report/table?_gl=1*13j5g4a*_gcl_...
keybored 1y ago
> Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America Ask someone from the Nordics about housing prices. Do you think they’ll change the subject?
emptysongglass 1y ago
Exactly and I'm glad to see this the top comment. I live in Denmark. I am Danish. Too many people nurse fantasies of the Nordics as some kind of socialist utopia. The fact is Denmark grows more corrupt by the day. They keep pushing the retirement age so I will be working until I'm 72. Healthcare quality has been dropping for more than 40 years now. The wealthy own the majority of land. We are currently home to a government that is leading the EU in its push for a surveillance mandate that is frankly terrifying in its scope. That same government pushed through the most garbage mega-project I have personally ever witnessed—that we the taxpayers are supposed to fund—despite voter outcry. Digital tenders get sold in backroom deals to a single company that is so ethically bankrupt they've been called out numerous times for workplace violations by our unions. We're all fucked in the global slide toward authoritarianism and the wealthy's capture of the world economy. And while they get fat supping on our labor we're at each other's throats for who can be crowned the greatest victim.
- a0-prw 1y ago
  Yes, but at least Mette Frederiksen got her photo-op in an F16 cockpit with Zelensky!
  - fifilura 1y ago
    Supporting Ukraine against Moscovite aggression is important for all of Europe. Otherwise next they will come for other countries in Europe, as proven by them many times before. This is extremely little money compare to the alternative.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      > important for all of Europe What makes it important for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy or Liechtenstein?
      - 1y ago
zozbot234 1y ago
> Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. If there's so little correlation between income inequality and wealth inequality, why are we even supposed to care about wealth inequality? That wealth is essentially frozen in place. It's hopefully being invested in sensible ways, but no one sensible is going to spend it down anytime soon. The thing with wealth is that once you spend it, it's gone for good - so wealth accumulation, especially on any kind of multi-generational scale, tends to be associated with remarkable frugality.
- nosianu 1y ago
  This take seems to take "wealth" in a Disney Scrooge McDuck cartoon way - having "money". That is not what the truly wealthy have though. Their wealth expressed in terms of money is an abstraction. What they really have is control over real assets. I deliberately say "control", because that is what counts, and ownership is not even that important, often many times indirect, sometimes not even that. The most direct money-equivalent is passive money generating assets like papers with a direct money value, instead of a real world asset. The important stuff is in the real world though, even those papers rely on that. Owning a money generating real world asset like a successful company is not the same as having some bank account worth half a billion. The disadvantage, the company can go broke. The advantage though is that it generates a stream of money for as long as you manage to keep the business running successfully. Here is the point where many "let's redistribute wealth" - something I'm certainly not against - fail: How would you redistribute ownership of companies? I don't see a good outcome of handing control over a company from few hands to many hands. They'll turn into manager-led enterprises and will have less entrepreneurship. Everything becomes a public company, and then wealth will re-concentrate into few hands over time anyway, because only few people are really into this kind of thing and thinking. Instead, there needs to be someway to make it possible for many more people to get reliable incomes, instead of having a lot of control over the economy and the streams of money among few. Getting a bunch of money of assets will not help most people, only for a short time, until those few who love that kind of thing require most assets over time. The prevailing view among the elites seems to be though that the economy needs most people dependent and mostly broke, to force them into the workplaces of the corporations at - for them - low enough cost (salaries). The solution can't be though to break up either the firms or even just the ownership. Ownership by committee is unlikely to be successful. The large corps, when they even have a really well-distributed ownership, and not just a few core owners and a large tail of mini-owners with no real power, are not a model that all companies and organizations can or should follow.
whizzter 1y ago
One thing to note is that the idealized Sweden and many benefits remain because we had a much lower wealth inequality 30 years ago but (mainly) right-wing governments have been very "successful" at removing the barriers that kept the wealth inequality low. - Inheritance tax was abolished in 2005 - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007 - "income tax reduction" was initiated in 2007 Meanwhile our schools have gotten larger classes and worse results, especially the income tax reduction was insidious since it was a nationally mandated tax reduction that mainly hits the tax revenue of cities and regions (ie, political entities that had no part in the laws that lowered their tax revenue). Basically, Sweden has been speed-running into re-making our society into a mini-US and even surpassed the US in some regards. Sweden 2025 isn't the same as in 1985, and policies enacted around 2005 are the ones that are really starting to hit with their secondary effects today (Iirc Denmark has had fairly many right-wing governments over this period as well).
- roenxi 1y ago
  > - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007 I did notice once that IKEA's governance scheme looked like an unusually sophisticated anti-tax structure. It now makes sense why the Swedes would be really interested in dodging taxes.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    The foundation based governance model is common all over Northern Europe because of the reason you pointed out ;). SAAB, Bosch, ThyssenKrup, and others are similarly structured.
    - whizzter 1y ago
      SAAB is publicly traded, however a majority(or nearly) of voting shares are held more or less directly by the Wallenberg family, they have investment/"power companies" as well as their family foundation(s) and control quite a few major companies here.
  - lifestyleguru 1y ago
    > IKEA's governance scheme They are non profit charity designing furniture for the humanity, what taxes are you talking about?
fulafel 1y ago
Rest of the nordic country ranks from that page: Finland #56, Iceland #73, Norway #121
pu_pe 1y ago
The link you shared has data from 2021, which looks completely different than what you shared - and Sweden comes at 12th, but all the other nordic countries are buried way down in the ranking. It's frankly very hard to believe that the nordic countries are more unequal than America when it comes to income, wealth, well-being or pretty much any statistic you can think of.
- fifilura 1y ago
  There is a asterisk in the table that says that the numbers are a mix between wealth inequality and income inequality. I think it makes it very volatile and hard to interpret.
sollewitt 1y ago
There’s that study that found Italian families who were wealthy during the renaissance are still wealthy. Sweden had a very powerful monarchy (the dominant Baltic power at one point) and an aristocracy but never a revolution. I’d expect a lot of wealth inequality based on inherited wealth.
- lifestyleguru 1y ago
  Sweden's wealth inequality was initiated by Thirty Years' War and The Deluge and then only accumulated not impacted by any violent revolution or brutal invasion.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    The Deluge didn't cause wealth inequality in Sweden. Some military leaders were, during Swedish wars, rewarded with increased land holdings, but these were later reduced. Sweden's wealth was also created late. Sweden was a poor country until the early 1900eds.
- mesofile 1y ago
  A number of articles and at least one well-known study have been published highlighting the fact that the ranks of the wealthiest landowning families in Britain are nearly unchanged since Norman times — e.g. https://www.medievalists.net/2014/11/englands-1-remained-since-1066/ https://www.medievalists.net/2014/11/englands-1-remained-sin...
  - lifestyleguru 1y ago
    The British wealth inequality in these rankings was probably delegated to overseas territories in the Caribbean.
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    it’s absolutely insane that the brits never did land reform or seemingly have any interest in it
dahart 1y ago
> there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality Out of curiosity, how is this measured, and is it due to mega rich people not having taxable incomes? Do you have a source for this? Certainly there must be some correlation between making money have having it…
ruthvik947 1y ago
How did the Netherlands go from 0.9 in 2019 to 0.75 in 2021!? You'd need nothing short of a mini-revolution to do that in those timescales

tossandthrow 1y ago

The thing about the Nordics is that you can not consume that wealth personally without being heavily taxed - when it is tied up in company assets.

fakedang 1y ago
Not to mention, flaunting wealth by conspicuous consumption also comes with its own kind of social stigma, even in upper class circles.
- emptysongglass 1y ago
  Doesn't mean it isn't done. The Lego family was caught flying their private jet all over the world so they sold it and now have exclusive renting rights to a plane in a hangar operated by another company.
  - ahoka 1y ago
    Yes, everything is about the looks in Scandinavia.
  - tossandthrow 1y ago
    There is a strict separation between business and personal consumption. If the Lego family uses business jets to go on vacation, then they need to 1) pay market rate for using the jets and 2) pay full income taxes, VAT etc. Anyhow, when you are rich enough this tripling in cost does not really matter - but it does reflect in the income equality statistics.
geysersam 1y ago
Not sure that's true. How do you even "consume" wealth, assuming the wealth is more significant than a few millions in the bank. Nordic countries have high VAT but that's hardly going to hurt you.. On the other hand Sweden has less property tax than the US. I guess if you consume services then that will be more expensive in the Nordics, since tax on salaries is high.
- flakeoil 1y ago
  I suppose the person means that you have to pay about 50% in taxes to take out the capital/profit from the company before you can use it as a private person.
  - Y-bar 1y ago
    Dividend and capital gains taxes are a flat 30% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Corporate_and_capital_gains_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Corporate_a...)
    - pavlov 1y ago
      In Finland the tax treatment for dividends is even friendlier. If you have a 1.5M balance sheet, you can pay yourself 120k euros in dividends annually at an effective tax rate of only 7.5%. Let’s just say that small businesses and professionals have very good lobbyists. An employee making 120k / year pays over 40% tax. This creates a tremendous incentive for professionals to incorporate and use every trick in the books to build up a larger balance sheet on paper.
      - hrududuu 1y ago
        This type of comparison needs to add corporate income tax (20%) in order to be an apples to apples comparison,so 27.5. It's still a stark difference in taxation, and I know of no other country that does what Finland does for dividend taxation. In fact for earned income,things look even uglier when you add in tax-like social security contributions. Perhaps not coincidentally, Finnish companies are also an outlier in paying extremely high dividends.

Teever 1y ago

> many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America A missing piece of the puzzle may be regulatory capture and a strong political/legal structure that resists the worst ambitions of cruel people whether they be wealthy or poor. You can think of wealth like the potential energy of a spring under tension. If used properly it is capable of powering the most amazing and intricate social mechanisms but if poorly regulated it destroys social fabric and the well being of every day people. Things like Citizens United and lobbyists representing cruel wealthy interests running unchecked over American democracy are examples of the socially destructive potential energy of wealth. I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US because they see more opportunity to make money and be cruel in that environment while wealthy people who have some affinity with their nation and the people of it choose to remain and don't or can't lobby for terribly antisocial policies.

TFYS 1y ago
> I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US That's an interesting thought! It would make sense that the people who care less about others and more about themselves would find it easier and more beneficial to leave. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the wealth, personality traits and political views of the people who leave.
api 1y ago
People need to start getting specific about their grievances. It’s not inequality per se. People don’t care if some people have more than them. There are specific concrete things. For Americans the big ones are: a health problem can destroy your life and your life’s savings, housing costs are too high, and college is too expensive and leaves people in debt. Housing, health care, and tuition. Two out of three of those are better in Europe, mostly: health care and college costs. They are better even if things are on paper more unequal. High housing costs are a disease across the entire developed world.
- 1y ago

esseph 1y ago

High inequality, but also very high on social support: https://data.worldhappiness.report/table?_gl=1*13j5g4a*_gcl_au*MTY3Mjg1NjM2OS4xNzU2NDI2NTY2 https://data.worldhappiness.report/table?_gl=1*13j5g4a*_gcl_...

keybored 1y ago

> Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America Ask someone from the Nordics about housing prices. Do you think they’ll change the subject?

emptysongglass 1y ago

Exactly and I'm glad to see this the top comment. I live in Denmark. I am Danish. Too many people nurse fantasies of the Nordics as some kind of socialist utopia. The fact is Denmark grows more corrupt by the day. They keep pushing the retirement age so I will be working until I'm 72. Healthcare quality has been dropping for more than 40 years now. The wealthy own the majority of land. We are currently home to a government that is leading the EU in its push for a surveillance mandate that is frankly terrifying in its scope. That same government pushed through the most garbage mega-project I have personally ever witnessed—that we the taxpayers are supposed to fund—despite voter outcry. Digital tenders get sold in backroom deals to a single company that is so ethically bankrupt they've been called out numerous times for workplace violations by our unions. We're all fucked in the global slide toward authoritarianism and the wealthy's capture of the world economy. And while they get fat supping on our labor we're at each other's throats for who can be crowned the greatest victim.

a0-prw 1y ago
Yes, but at least Mette Frederiksen got her photo-op in an F16 cockpit with Zelensky!
- fifilura 1y ago
  Supporting Ukraine against Moscovite aggression is important for all of Europe. Otherwise next they will come for other countries in Europe, as proven by them many times before. This is extremely little money compare to the alternative.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    > important for all of Europe What makes it important for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy or Liechtenstein?
    - 1y ago

zozbot234 1y ago

> Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. If there's so little correlation between income inequality and wealth inequality, why are we even supposed to care about wealth inequality? That wealth is essentially frozen in place. It's hopefully being invested in sensible ways, but no one sensible is going to spend it down anytime soon. The thing with wealth is that once you spend it, it's gone for good - so wealth accumulation, especially on any kind of multi-generational scale, tends to be associated with remarkable frugality.

nosianu 1y ago
This take seems to take "wealth" in a Disney Scrooge McDuck cartoon way - having "money". That is not what the truly wealthy have though. Their wealth expressed in terms of money is an abstraction. What they really have is control over real assets. I deliberately say "control", because that is what counts, and ownership is not even that important, often many times indirect, sometimes not even that. The most direct money-equivalent is passive money generating assets like papers with a direct money value, instead of a real world asset. The important stuff is in the real world though, even those papers rely on that. Owning a money generating real world asset like a successful company is not the same as having some bank account worth half a billion. The disadvantage, the company can go broke. The advantage though is that it generates a stream of money for as long as you manage to keep the business running successfully. Here is the point where many "let's redistribute wealth" - something I'm certainly not against - fail: How would you redistribute ownership of companies? I don't see a good outcome of handing control over a company from few hands to many hands. They'll turn into manager-led enterprises and will have less entrepreneurship. Everything becomes a public company, and then wealth will re-concentrate into few hands over time anyway, because only few people are really into this kind of thing and thinking. Instead, there needs to be someway to make it possible for many more people to get reliable incomes, instead of having a lot of control over the economy and the streams of money among few. Getting a bunch of money of assets will not help most people, only for a short time, until those few who love that kind of thing require most assets over time. The prevailing view among the elites seems to be though that the economy needs most people dependent and mostly broke, to force them into the workplaces of the corporations at - for them - low enough cost (salaries). The solution can't be though to break up either the firms or even just the ownership. Ownership by committee is unlikely to be successful. The large corps, when they even have a really well-distributed ownership, and not just a few core owners and a large tail of mini-owners with no real power, are not a model that all companies and organizations can or should follow.

whizzter 1y ago

One thing to note is that the idealized Sweden and many benefits remain because we had a much lower wealth inequality 30 years ago but (mainly) right-wing governments have been very "successful" at removing the barriers that kept the wealth inequality low. - Inheritance tax was abolished in 2005 - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007 - "income tax reduction" was initiated in 2007 Meanwhile our schools have gotten larger classes and worse results, especially the income tax reduction was insidious since it was a nationally mandated tax reduction that mainly hits the tax revenue of cities and regions (ie, political entities that had no part in the laws that lowered their tax revenue). Basically, Sweden has been speed-running into re-making our society into a mini-US and even surpassed the US in some regards. Sweden 2025 isn't the same as in 1985, and policies enacted around 2005 are the ones that are really starting to hit with their secondary effects today (Iirc Denmark has had fairly many right-wing governments over this period as well).

roenxi 1y ago
> - Wealth taxation was abolished in 2007 I did notice once that IKEA's governance scheme looked like an unusually sophisticated anti-tax structure. It now makes sense why the Swedes would be really interested in dodging taxes.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  The foundation based governance model is common all over Northern Europe because of the reason you pointed out ;). SAAB, Bosch, ThyssenKrup, and others are similarly structured.
  - whizzter 1y ago
    SAAB is publicly traded, however a majority(or nearly) of voting shares are held more or less directly by the Wallenberg family, they have investment/"power companies" as well as their family foundation(s) and control quite a few major companies here.
- lifestyleguru 1y ago
  > IKEA's governance scheme They are non profit charity designing furniture for the humanity, what taxes are you talking about?

fulafel 1y ago

Rest of the nordic country ranks from that page: Finland #56, Iceland #73, Norway #121

pu_pe 1y ago

The link you shared has data from 2021, which looks completely different than what you shared - and Sweden comes at 12th, but all the other nordic countries are buried way down in the ranking. It's frankly very hard to believe that the nordic countries are more unequal than America when it comes to income, wealth, well-being or pretty much any statistic you can think of.

fifilura 1y ago
There is a asterisk in the table that says that the numbers are a mix between wealth inequality and income inequality. I think it makes it very volatile and hard to interpret.

sollewitt 1y ago

There’s that study that found Italian families who were wealthy during the renaissance are still wealthy. Sweden had a very powerful monarchy (the dominant Baltic power at one point) and an aristocracy but never a revolution. I’d expect a lot of wealth inequality based on inherited wealth.

lifestyleguru 1y ago
Sweden's wealth inequality was initiated by Thirty Years' War and The Deluge and then only accumulated not impacted by any violent revolution or brutal invasion.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  The Deluge didn't cause wealth inequality in Sweden. Some military leaders were, during Swedish wars, rewarded with increased land holdings, but these were later reduced. Sweden's wealth was also created late. Sweden was a poor country until the early 1900eds.
mesofile 1y ago
A number of articles and at least one well-known study have been published highlighting the fact that the ranks of the wealthiest landowning families in Britain are nearly unchanged since Norman times — e.g. https://www.medievalists.net/2014/11/englands-1-remained-since-1066/ https://www.medievalists.net/2014/11/englands-1-remained-sin...
- lifestyleguru 1y ago
  The British wealth inequality in these rankings was probably delegated to overseas territories in the Caribbean.
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  it’s absolutely insane that the brits never did land reform or seemingly have any interest in it

dahart 1y ago

> there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality Out of curiosity, how is this measured, and is it due to mega rich people not having taxable incomes? Do you have a source for this? Certainly there must be some correlation between making money have having it…

ruthvik947 1y ago

How did the Netherlands go from 0.9 in 2019 to 0.75 in 2021!? You'd need nothing short of a mini-revolution to do that in those timescales