5 ms·

Good thing your post wasn't a bug-report, although you do mention that something doesn't work. You didn't describe any symptoms or argue why the Danish system

Good thing your post wasn't a bug-report, although you do mention that something doesn't work. You didn't describe any symptoms or argue why the Danish system no longer works or what precisely doesn't work, so it would be great if you could give some examples, facts and figures. Are you talking about unemployment? Average wealth? Class mobility? Freedom? Pollution? Any country that has a model that works better? US, UK, China, France, Singapore? In what way?

vidarh 13y ago
Scandinavians love to whine about how our countries are falling apart. Until someone writes an article about how we're best at something, then we'll temporarily use the opportunity to gloat before going back to complaining. It appears to be some weird inferiority complex.
- Svip 13y ago
  How is this different from any other country?
  - morsch 13y ago
    The damned Scandinavians get to be best at stuff that matters. :)
  - vidarh 13y ago
    In my opinion, it is massively different in tone. I'm Norwegian, and I live in the UK and have spent quite a lot of time in the US. While people in the UK and US will also complain loudly, the character is entirely different in that outside of Scandinavia the self-criticism is more "if we don't fix this things will go to hell", whereas in Scandinavia a lot of the self-criticism implies we're competing with war-torn third world countries about who gets to be the butthole of the world and are likely to win. The focus of self-criticism in Scandinavia seems to me to be hugely disproportionately focused on describing us as doing horribly compared to everyone else in a way that seems to indicate a huge inferiority complex, where self-criticism other places seems to in general be more internally focused. Of course there are exceptions.
    - ThomPete 13y ago
      I don't understand this. The claim of the article and many others implies that Denmark is near perfect system. That is what we are critiquing, not whether it's better or worse than other places. It's just not as rosy red as it's portrayed and some of the claims in that article are flat out wrong. I can say that both as someone who been an employee and an employer.
    - vacri 13y ago
      Sounds very much like Australia, too. Pick just about any quality-of-life measure, and the top 5 will usually be a smattering of scandinavia and Australia... yet the public perception is we're just terrible, the worst place in the world for -foo-. The funny thing is, referring to the inferiority complex, there's this amorphous mythical country in Europe that doesn't have a name and we can never measure up to - we're just provincials, unlike those cultured people over there, wouldn't life be so much better if... (oh, just don't look at quality of life measures!)
      - mseebach 13y ago
        It's not that we don't have great quality of life - we do. It's that we're not going to keep it for long: the baby boomers (the group currently aged ~58-68) are retiring from high-paying (high tax revenue) jobs with little demand on public services to little or no income and higher demands on public services. There will be decades of lower revenue combined with higher expenses, and we have a history of poor growth.
  - pietro 13y ago
    It isn't. National pride is a bug.
- fetbaffe 13y ago
  That is because of the Marxist doctrine teaching people to hate your own country and culture - until Anglo-Saxons love it, then its okay to gloat because Marxist hate Anglo-Saxon culture even more.
mseebach 13y ago
Unemployment: The numbers are under-reported because it's very, very easy to get shoved away on a benefit that doesn't count as unemployment, although someone of your condition would be considered unemployed in other countries. The Danish "employment ratio" (number of employed people as a fraction of the total population) is very high compared to the rest of Europe, but only until you remember that housewives are almost inexistent. Average wealth: Pretty decent, but stagnant and falling rapidly relative to other western countries. Class mobility: Very high in relative term, very low in real terms. There's a very short way to the top (and the bottom) so it's pretty easy to get there. The top just isn't very high up, so you're still upper middle class compared to other countries. Should you happen to break out of the middle class, the Jantelov-based scorn will be severe. Freedom: Not great. Especially suspicion of tax evasion ("black work") routinely trumps basic civil liberties. The tax authorities were granted blanket permission to enter private property without a warrant if there is visible building activity. Pollution: Very high "green" taxes on energy has made comparably cheap wood burning stoves very popular. This is then the cause of very high levels of particle pollution, especially in the winter. Education: The extreme egalitarianism that is found across society is particularly pervasive in the educational system leading to a painfully low quality education from kindergarden to university. This has been made particularly acute by a political focus on educating the "knowledge society" which has re-wired secondary and upper education to focus almost exclusively on quantity. I think the danish model could work fairly well, but the political system (and a more than willing electorate) has shown itself to be completely incapable of even minor reforms to substantially address the mentioned issues.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
I believe the standard neoliberal answer to such questions is: DOOM DOOMITY DOOM DOOM DOOM privatize industries DOOM deregulate DOOM financialize DOOM beat down wages DOOM outsource and globalize DOOM DOOM MOTHERFUCKER DOOM. Not surprisingly, once you've gone down the list and done everything there, you're doomed.

vidarh 13y ago

Scandinavians love to whine about how our countries are falling apart. Until someone writes an article about how we're best at something, then we'll temporarily use the opportunity to gloat before going back to complaining. It appears to be some weird inferiority complex.

Svip 13y ago
How is this different from any other country?
- morsch 13y ago
  The damned Scandinavians get to be best at stuff that matters. :)
- vidarh 13y ago
  In my opinion, it is massively different in tone. I'm Norwegian, and I live in the UK and have spent quite a lot of time in the US. While people in the UK and US will also complain loudly, the character is entirely different in that outside of Scandinavia the self-criticism is more "if we don't fix this things will go to hell", whereas in Scandinavia a lot of the self-criticism implies we're competing with war-torn third world countries about who gets to be the butthole of the world and are likely to win. The focus of self-criticism in Scandinavia seems to me to be hugely disproportionately focused on describing us as doing horribly compared to everyone else in a way that seems to indicate a huge inferiority complex, where self-criticism other places seems to in general be more internally focused. Of course there are exceptions.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    I don't understand this. The claim of the article and many others implies that Denmark is near perfect system. That is what we are critiquing, not whether it's better or worse than other places. It's just not as rosy red as it's portrayed and some of the claims in that article are flat out wrong. I can say that both as someone who been an employee and an employer.
  - vacri 13y ago
    Sounds very much like Australia, too. Pick just about any quality-of-life measure, and the top 5 will usually be a smattering of scandinavia and Australia... yet the public perception is we're just terrible, the worst place in the world for -foo-. The funny thing is, referring to the inferiority complex, there's this amorphous mythical country in Europe that doesn't have a name and we can never measure up to - we're just provincials, unlike those cultured people over there, wouldn't life be so much better if... (oh, just don't look at quality of life measures!)
    - mseebach 13y ago
      It's not that we don't have great quality of life - we do. It's that we're not going to keep it for long: the baby boomers (the group currently aged ~58-68) are retiring from high-paying (high tax revenue) jobs with little demand on public services to little or no income and higher demands on public services. There will be decades of lower revenue combined with higher expenses, and we have a history of poor growth.
- pietro 13y ago
  It isn't. National pride is a bug.
fetbaffe 13y ago
That is because of the Marxist doctrine teaching people to hate your own country and culture - until Anglo-Saxons love it, then its okay to gloat because Marxist hate Anglo-Saxon culture even more.

mseebach 13y ago

Unemployment: The numbers are under-reported because it's very, very easy to get shoved away on a benefit that doesn't count as unemployment, although someone of your condition would be considered unemployed in other countries. The Danish "employment ratio" (number of employed people as a fraction of the total population) is very high compared to the rest of Europe, but only until you remember that housewives are almost inexistent. Average wealth: Pretty decent, but stagnant and falling rapidly relative to other western countries. Class mobility: Very high in relative term, very low in real terms. There's a very short way to the top (and the bottom) so it's pretty easy to get there. The top just isn't very high up, so you're still upper middle class compared to other countries. Should you happen to break out of the middle class, the Jantelov-based scorn will be severe. Freedom: Not great. Especially suspicion of tax evasion ("black work") routinely trumps basic civil liberties. The tax authorities were granted blanket permission to enter private property without a warrant if there is visible building activity. Pollution: Very high "green" taxes on energy has made comparably cheap wood burning stoves very popular. This is then the cause of very high levels of particle pollution, especially in the winter. Education: The extreme egalitarianism that is found across society is particularly pervasive in the educational system leading to a painfully low quality education from kindergarden to university. This has been made particularly acute by a political focus on educating the "knowledge society" which has re-wired secondary and upper education to focus almost exclusively on quantity. I think the danish model could work fairly well, but the political system (and a more than willing electorate) has shown itself to be completely incapable of even minor reforms to substantially address the mentioned issues.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

I believe the standard neoliberal answer to such questions is: DOOM DOOMITY DOOM DOOM DOOM privatize industries DOOM deregulate DOOM financialize DOOM beat down wages DOOM outsource and globalize DOOM DOOM MOTHERFUCKER DOOM. Not surprisingly, once you've gone down the list and done everything there, you're doomed.