10 ms·

Oh boy, I'm often reminded of how lucky I am, being born in a Scandinavian country. I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound on how

by tormeh 13y ago

Oh boy, I'm often reminded of how lucky I am, being born in a Scandinavian country. I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound on how bad things can get. I am just so completely unfairly privileged that I sometimes feel guilty about it.

seivan 13y ago
It's getting worse though... I think only healthcare is the biggest advantage.
tinco 13y ago
Don't feel too guilty about it, we pay our taxes and are proud of it. It's their own choosing, they have three major political parties that are all right wing (reps, dems, libs). If a political leader even hints at raising taxes the only valid excuse for it would be to go to war. They despise caring for your citizens so much, they made a slur out of the word 'social'. I'm sorry for making such harsh generalisations about the U.S. folk, but from a European standpoint U.S. anti-social culture is just so outlandish.
- steego 13y ago
  Two parties. (Dems = libs)
  - lylejohnson 13y ago
    He may have been referring to "libertarians" and not "liberals", but I'm not sure it really affects the GP post's point.
  - ap22213 13y ago
    I think he means libertarians, maybe?
    - tinco 13y ago
      I do yes :)
      - doyoulikeworms 13y ago
        While they're the third largest party, they are by no means major. That said, libertarians of various stripes are represented in both parties. Our democratic system is flawed and invariably leads to just two major parties.
- BugBrother 13y ago
  USA has 300 million people, the problems to organize a society does not increase linearly with the population size. I doubt the Scandinavian solutions work even in Scandinavia, long term! It is typically Swedish to judge that different places by your own irrelevant standards.
  - tinco 13y ago
    You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states, most of which are within the scale size of a scandinavian country. Just assuming a more social system wouldn't work just because the U.S. is larger seems rather speculative to me. Have they tried, and did they fail? I am also not swedish :P
    - BugBrother 13y ago
      Every country has different levels of organization. (And I am Swedish.)
    - bmj 13y ago
      You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states, most of which are within the scale size of a scandinavian country. True, but not are as populous as a Scandinavian country. Additionally, it would take a massive (massive!) restructuring of the tax code across the federal, state, and local levels to allow the states to increases taxes enough to provide sufficient services on their own. The federal government would also need to cede a fair of power to the states (think education, health care, social services). I'm not necessarily suggesting this is a bad idea--there are just considerable obstacles to implement such a policy shift.
    - doyoulikeworms 13y ago
      > You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states Each war and crisis has ratcheted up centralized power, typically by way of granting war time powers that never seem to completely fade away. To help illustrate, money is an important proxy to government power, and the federal government spends roughly twice that of all state governments combined ($3.8T vs $2T). > Have they tried, and did they fail? The federal government has welfare programs that can be augmented by the states. California, for example, does this with food stamps (SNAP to CalFresh), health care for the poor (Medicaid to MediCal), and welfare for families (TANF to CalWORKS). To fund these, among other services (e.g., the University of California system), California has the highest state income tax in the nation (topping out at 13.3% for those earning over $1M). I imagine that some states do not go much beyond the minimal federal programs. For example, starting in 2014, Medicaid (health care for the poor) was expanded to cover those earning under 138% of the poverty line (a perfect example of the confusing way in which assistance is determined). Many states chose not to expand Medicaid, so they will not receive additional federal funding for the program. States that did, however, will. On the health care front, some states have attempted to introduce universal health care. California successfully passed a bill, only to be vetoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Only two successful instances come to mind: Vermont and Massachusetts. Vermont passed a single-payer universal health care system in 2011. Unfortunately, I am ignorant of details on its implementation. Massachusetts has "RomneyCare," which has since been augmented to strongly resemble (in my eyes) the Swiss health care scheme. Insurance is mandatory, but coverage cannot be denied. Private insurance is subsidized by government. Health care costs are heavily regulated.
- doyoulikeworms 13y ago
  IMO, "social" is a slur due to Cold War baggage. I think that it's unfair to say that we despise caring for our citizens. We're just really bad at it. We have old age retirement (Social Security; for workers), disability insurance (SSDI; for workers), welfare (TANF; for families), food stamps (SNAP), universal healthcare for the aged (Medicare; 65+), healthcare for the poor (Medicaid), subsidized housing, unemployment benefits, and so on. Much of the aid is temporary. All in all, it's a confusing, rickety system with different rules for different localities. Much of our social spending is devised to be "means tested," so it's confusing as hell to determine what kind of help you can expect based on your income, family size, state, city, etc... It's a mess. Things are improving on the health care front, thankfully. Though, not all states chose to go through with Medicaid expansion. That said, you have certainly painted some truth with your broad brush. As I understand it, many European systems are tilted towards higher taxes, lower economic growth, and more social welfare spending. America's system is tilted towards lower taxes, higher economic growth, and lower social welfare spending. For us, things like social welfare fall by the wayside. From my American perspective, things like economic growth tend to fall by the wayside on your continent (unless you're Norway, blessed with fossil fuels).
- treerock 13y ago
  I found this an interesting article on various tax rates, and the US is surprisingly high[1]. Difficult to compare countries, but (unless you've got kids) the tax you pay in the US is pretty average. And if you are a high earner, it seems you'd be better off in Germany or China. [1]:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114 * What's with the tax breaks for having a couple of kids, are the government really keen for Americans to breed?
- TheCoelacanth 13y ago
  Libertarians aren't a major party. There are a lot of people in the Republican party who call themselves libertarians, but the actual Libertarian party is extremely minor.
notproductive 13y ago
It definitely is nice that you get to live in a Scandinavian Country, it's funny but I know two American girls that have totally changed their lives by meeting Scandinavian guys and moving across the ocean. Anyway I'm just a low level system admin that looks at this stuff and always freaks out. It's ironic because the perceived situation is not unlike how women often feel the need to settle down before their looks go away. When I'm healthy and I can take a step back (I'm 28), I kind of feel like if you are interested in technology you should be able to find work into old age. Maybe the reality truly is something different but I hope not. The people I really feel bad for are Indian H1B workers. At least Chinese have a decent shot at getting citizenship, I know quite a few Microsoft employees (I live in Seattle) and the Indians are basically high paid slaves. They all make more than double my salary, but they can build a whole life here and then if they get too old or their performance suffers they get kicked out. Anyway there are lots of hard things in the world I hope that old IT workers really don't have as much of an issue finding work as seems to be implied on a regular basis by my preferred news outlets
BugBrother 13y ago
First, the US health care system is uniquely dysfunctional. But there are lots of mosquitos in Scandinavia. For instance, the health care is a centralised system. Those never work. Doctors don't have time/incentive to diagnose problems unless they are obvious (or you're related to a politician -- yes, like in Soviet). Many Swedes (how many? No one knows) drag easily cured problems around for years and decades. From my own and friends' experiences -- simple knee problems that stopped favorite exercise, lack of iron/vitamines that gave depressions, hard to recognize allergies that resulted in tiredness, thyroid problems etc. I am here to tell you Scandinavians that it doesn't have to be like that! If you go into a health care place in Romania, you are a valued customer they want to make happy. They will screw you over by giving you extra tests, not telling you something (anything) to get you out the door (because they only have minutes with any given client)! You can't get that for money in Sweden. If you have health care problems, go to East Europe or something for the next vacation. (A recent article on BBC discussed that Polish doctors were working in Britain, because Polish immigrants were spoiled with the health care and the British system seemed similar to Sweden). Please remember this when you're too chronically tired to make enough fuss so the doctors will try to find your problem to get rid of you. (I have experience with the Swedish and partly with the Finnish health care systems, e.g. the Norwegian is a bit different but I don't really know enough to have an opinion.)
- vidarh 13y ago
  The difference is one of philosophy. The Scandinavian systems largely are based on the idea that it is unfair to allow anyone to pay to cut in the healthcare queue given that it is an essential public good. It aligns everyones incentives when it comes to healthcare funding (as individuals at least). Conversely, while the UK NHS is excellent, the wealthy often "opt out" of depending on the NHS (as well as the state schools), and so have little incentive to support NHS funding (and in fact, the Conservatives were strongly against the NHS until they realised just how popular it had become in just a couple of years after it was introduced). The Scandinavian model is inferior from the point of view of those who can afford to pay their way to superior care. It is also strongly dependent on a rough consensus on how much health care is worth, as those who believe health care is worth more does not have an easy option for getting more if they're in a minority, and this is certainly a problem. I'm Norwegian, but I must admit I prefer the UK model - as much as people in the UK complain about the NHS, it's still one of the public services with the highest approval ratings, and so popular it is pretty much untouchable, yet there are "outs" for those who believe they are particularly badly served and it doesn't seem to majorly affect other service allocation in the UK. On the other hand, there are aspects with the UK model that demonstrate exactly what the Scandinavian models tries to prevent: The UK NHS is often accused of a brain drain from Africa and other regions, by hiring large numbers of doctors and nurses away from poor countries.
vidarh 13y ago
I'm Norwegian, and I think a lot of people don't realise how big of a deal this feeling of security can be. I left university to do a startup. It happened literally over the course of a week: We decided we wanted to start an ISP, wrote a business plan, found an angel investor, rented offices that we moved into (as in, we lived in rooms in the office) and got started. While I was certainly willing to take bigger risks then, with no dependents, at no point did things like healthcare or my ability to get food or shelter enter into my considerations, and the extremely low risks for us involved in potential failure made the decision process for deciding to go for it very different on a personal level from the ones I've been involved in later, in the UK and US. We did live on tiny amounts of money for the following two years - the first year we financed with our student loans, while still notionally studying. But the prospect of the business failing and leaving me destitute and without access to healthcare, for example, were not really possible. My worst case prospect of going on social benefits for a while would in fact quite possibly have raised my living standards above how I was living out of choice to try to get the business off the ground. In retrospect, it's a fantastic level of freedom to have to never really have to worry about being put in any truly awful situation. I didn't really realise until I moved to the UK - while the healthcare system here measures up well with the Scandinavian systems, most other things are far less generous here (and contrary to what most people think, I don't pay all that much less tax than I did in Norway)
sbank 13y ago
> I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound on how bad things can get. You are only set for life if the political climate in your country remains the same, and your country can afford the current model in the future, and so on. That is a lot to bet on, in my opinion.

by tormeh 13y ago

seivan 13y ago

It's getting worse though... I think only healthcare is the biggest advantage.

tinco 13y ago

Don't feel too guilty about it, we pay our taxes and are proud of it. It's their own choosing, they have three major political parties that are all right wing (reps, dems, libs). If a political leader even hints at raising taxes the only valid excuse for it would be to go to war. They despise caring for your citizens so much, they made a slur out of the word 'social'. I'm sorry for making such harsh generalisations about the U.S. folk, but from a European standpoint U.S. anti-social culture is just so outlandish.

steego 13y ago
Two parties. (Dems = libs)
- lylejohnson 13y ago
  He may have been referring to "libertarians" and not "liberals", but I'm not sure it really affects the GP post's point.
- ap22213 13y ago
  I think he means libertarians, maybe?
  - tinco 13y ago
    I do yes :)
    - doyoulikeworms 13y ago
      While they're the third largest party, they are by no means major. That said, libertarians of various stripes are represented in both parties. Our democratic system is flawed and invariably leads to just two major parties.
BugBrother 13y ago
USA has 300 million people, the problems to organize a society does not increase linearly with the population size. I doubt the Scandinavian solutions work even in Scandinavia, long term! It is typically Swedish to judge that different places by your own irrelevant standards.
- tinco 13y ago
  You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states, most of which are within the scale size of a scandinavian country. Just assuming a more social system wouldn't work just because the U.S. is larger seems rather speculative to me. Have they tried, and did they fail? I am also not swedish :P
  - BugBrother 13y ago
    Every country has different levels of organization. (And I am Swedish.)
  - bmj 13y ago
    You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states, most of which are within the scale size of a scandinavian country. True, but not are as populous as a Scandinavian country. Additionally, it would take a massive (massive!) restructuring of the tax code across the federal, state, and local levels to allow the states to increases taxes enough to provide sufficient services on their own. The federal government would also need to cede a fair of power to the states (think education, health care, social services). I'm not necessarily suggesting this is a bad idea--there are just considerable obstacles to implement such a policy shift.
  - doyoulikeworms 13y ago
    > You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-governing states Each war and crisis has ratcheted up centralized power, typically by way of granting war time powers that never seem to completely fade away. To help illustrate, money is an important proxy to government power, and the federal government spends roughly twice that of all state governments combined ($3.8T vs $2T). > Have they tried, and did they fail? The federal government has welfare programs that can be augmented by the states. California, for example, does this with food stamps (SNAP to CalFresh), health care for the poor (Medicaid to MediCal), and welfare for families (TANF to CalWORKS). To fund these, among other services (e.g., the University of California system), California has the highest state income tax in the nation (topping out at 13.3% for those earning over $1M). I imagine that some states do not go much beyond the minimal federal programs. For example, starting in 2014, Medicaid (health care for the poor) was expanded to cover those earning under 138% of the poverty line (a perfect example of the confusing way in which assistance is determined). Many states chose not to expand Medicaid, so they will not receive additional federal funding for the program. States that did, however, will. On the health care front, some states have attempted to introduce universal health care. California successfully passed a bill, only to be vetoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Only two successful instances come to mind: Vermont and Massachusetts. Vermont passed a single-payer universal health care system in 2011. Unfortunately, I am ignorant of details on its implementation. Massachusetts has "RomneyCare," which has since been augmented to strongly resemble (in my eyes) the Swiss health care scheme. Insurance is mandatory, but coverage cannot be denied. Private insurance is subsidized by government. Health care costs are heavily regulated.
doyoulikeworms 13y ago
IMO, "social" is a slur due to Cold War baggage. I think that it's unfair to say that we despise caring for our citizens. We're just really bad at it. We have old age retirement (Social Security; for workers), disability insurance (SSDI; for workers), welfare (TANF; for families), food stamps (SNAP), universal healthcare for the aged (Medicare; 65+), healthcare for the poor (Medicaid), subsidized housing, unemployment benefits, and so on. Much of the aid is temporary. All in all, it's a confusing, rickety system with different rules for different localities. Much of our social spending is devised to be "means tested," so it's confusing as hell to determine what kind of help you can expect based on your income, family size, state, city, etc... It's a mess. Things are improving on the health care front, thankfully. Though, not all states chose to go through with Medicaid expansion. That said, you have certainly painted some truth with your broad brush. As I understand it, many European systems are tilted towards higher taxes, lower economic growth, and more social welfare spending. America's system is tilted towards lower taxes, higher economic growth, and lower social welfare spending. For us, things like social welfare fall by the wayside. From my American perspective, things like economic growth tend to fall by the wayside on your continent (unless you're Norway, blessed with fossil fuels).
treerock 13y ago
I found this an interesting article on various tax rates, and the US is surprisingly high[1]. Difficult to compare countries, but (unless you've got kids) the tax you pay in the US is pretty average. And if you are a high earner, it seems you'd be better off in Germany or China. [1]:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114 * What's with the tax breaks for having a couple of kids, are the government really keen for Americans to breed?
TheCoelacanth 13y ago
Libertarians aren't a major party. There are a lot of people in the Republican party who call themselves libertarians, but the actual Libertarian party is extremely minor.

notproductive 13y ago

It definitely is nice that you get to live in a Scandinavian Country, it's funny but I know two American girls that have totally changed their lives by meeting Scandinavian guys and moving across the ocean. Anyway I'm just a low level system admin that looks at this stuff and always freaks out. It's ironic because the perceived situation is not unlike how women often feel the need to settle down before their looks go away. When I'm healthy and I can take a step back (I'm 28), I kind of feel like if you are interested in technology you should be able to find work into old age. Maybe the reality truly is something different but I hope not. The people I really feel bad for are Indian H1B workers. At least Chinese have a decent shot at getting citizenship, I know quite a few Microsoft employees (I live in Seattle) and the Indians are basically high paid slaves. They all make more than double my salary, but they can build a whole life here and then if they get too old or their performance suffers they get kicked out. Anyway there are lots of hard things in the world I hope that old IT workers really don't have as much of an issue finding work as seems to be implied on a regular basis by my preferred news outlets

BugBrother 13y ago

First, the US health care system is uniquely dysfunctional. But there are lots of mosquitos in Scandinavia. For instance, the health care is a centralised system. Those never work. Doctors don't have time/incentive to diagnose problems unless they are obvious (or you're related to a politician -- yes, like in Soviet). Many Swedes (how many? No one knows) drag easily cured problems around for years and decades. From my own and friends' experiences -- simple knee problems that stopped favorite exercise, lack of iron/vitamines that gave depressions, hard to recognize allergies that resulted in tiredness, thyroid problems etc. I am here to tell you Scandinavians that it doesn't have to be like that! If you go into a health care place in Romania, you are a valued customer they want to make happy. They will screw you over by giving you extra tests, not telling you something (anything) to get you out the door (because they only have minutes with any given client)! You can't get that for money in Sweden. If you have health care problems, go to East Europe or something for the next vacation. (A recent article on BBC discussed that Polish doctors were working in Britain, because Polish immigrants were spoiled with the health care and the British system seemed similar to Sweden). Please remember this when you're too chronically tired to make enough fuss so the doctors will try to find your problem to get rid of you. (I have experience with the Swedish and partly with the Finnish health care systems, e.g. the Norwegian is a bit different but I don't really know enough to have an opinion.)

vidarh 13y ago
The difference is one of philosophy. The Scandinavian systems largely are based on the idea that it is unfair to allow anyone to pay to cut in the healthcare queue given that it is an essential public good. It aligns everyones incentives when it comes to healthcare funding (as individuals at least). Conversely, while the UK NHS is excellent, the wealthy often "opt out" of depending on the NHS (as well as the state schools), and so have little incentive to support NHS funding (and in fact, the Conservatives were strongly against the NHS until they realised just how popular it had become in just a couple of years after it was introduced). The Scandinavian model is inferior from the point of view of those who can afford to pay their way to superior care. It is also strongly dependent on a rough consensus on how much health care is worth, as those who believe health care is worth more does not have an easy option for getting more if they're in a minority, and this is certainly a problem. I'm Norwegian, but I must admit I prefer the UK model - as much as people in the UK complain about the NHS, it's still one of the public services with the highest approval ratings, and so popular it is pretty much untouchable, yet there are "outs" for those who believe they are particularly badly served and it doesn't seem to majorly affect other service allocation in the UK. On the other hand, there are aspects with the UK model that demonstrate exactly what the Scandinavian models tries to prevent: The UK NHS is often accused of a brain drain from Africa and other regions, by hiring large numbers of doctors and nurses away from poor countries.

vidarh 13y ago

I'm Norwegian, and I think a lot of people don't realise how big of a deal this feeling of security can be. I left university to do a startup. It happened literally over the course of a week: We decided we wanted to start an ISP, wrote a business plan, found an angel investor, rented offices that we moved into (as in, we lived in rooms in the office) and got started. While I was certainly willing to take bigger risks then, with no dependents, at no point did things like healthcare or my ability to get food or shelter enter into my considerations, and the extremely low risks for us involved in potential failure made the decision process for deciding to go for it very different on a personal level from the ones I've been involved in later, in the UK and US. We did live on tiny amounts of money for the following two years - the first year we financed with our student loans, while still notionally studying. But the prospect of the business failing and leaving me destitute and without access to healthcare, for example, were not really possible. My worst case prospect of going on social benefits for a while would in fact quite possibly have raised my living standards above how I was living out of choice to try to get the business off the ground. In retrospect, it's a fantastic level of freedom to have to never really have to worry about being put in any truly awful situation. I didn't really realise until I moved to the UK - while the healthcare system here measures up well with the Scandinavian systems, most other things are far less generous here (and contrary to what most people think, I don't pay all that much less tax than I did in Norway)

sbank 13y ago

> I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound on how bad things can get. You are only set for life if the political climate in your country remains the same, and your country can afford the current model in the future, and so on. That is a lot to bet on, in my opinion.