The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
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....
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.
What 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.
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 imprisonment rate.
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Part 1: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/04-carlos-doesnt-reme...
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.
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.
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.
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://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 :)
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/ .