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Comment by antientropic | Hacker News Reader

The article is about household debt. Nordic households aren't bailing out southern Europe.

First, Nordic households are taxpayers, not a third party just watching the EU giving someone's elses money to yet someone else.

Second, European middle class is already pretty juiced. Total level of taxation is pretty high and real estate is becoming unbearably expensive. This is a huge problem; with some exceptions (Germany), Europeans think of themselves as middle class when they own at least one home or apartment, and this used to be well possible until at least 2015. But a combination of overregulation (not enough being built) and cheap capital is killing this dream.

Individual home ownership is not a good metric for the state of the middle classes, and the exception Germany illustrates it well: With renter-friendly regulations and high shares of public or semi-public (cooperatives etc.) ownership of homes, there often is no need to own housing, neither for financial nor for security reasons. In fact the rising home ownership rates in Germany are a symptom of the detoriating situation of the market, leading to more gentrification and rising rents in many regions.

The EU is though and the EU gets its money from its member states who in turn take it from its people in the form of taxation. The Nordic countries are major contributors to the EU and have high taxes.

Norway is not in the EU, so clearly that hasn't anything to do with the stats.

Isn't Norway in the EEA, hence has to contribute to the fund regardless?

Norway follows the EU regulations without right to vote on them and has access to common market (but not the customs union). It contributes only to EU programs it elected to participate in: largely security, humanitarian and educational.

I said Nordic, not Norway. Also the EU isn't actually something you are either a member of, or not. There are many treaties and Norway is a signatory to many of them. As a result, Norway does in fact contribute to the EU.

I said Norway because it's a Nordic country which is not a EU member, and serves as a counterexample to your statement.

It in fact does not contribute to the EU programs it didn't elect to willingly, that's one of the perks of EEA.

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/european-policy/Norways...

The Nordic private debt has nothing to do with the EU; I'm not sure about Iceland and the Danish territories in the Atlantic, but Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have fairly insane housing markets in the urban areas, and the current record-low interest rates are just pouring the proverbial petrol onto the fire at the moment.

A few generations ago, many people paid of their mortgage within 15 years of buying property. Now, it's usually 30-40 years due to the rapidly inflating prices. It's obvious, to me at least, that this contributes to higher private debt.

Please read when I said again because you are replying to something I did not say.

Sad to see the crap brexit-generated misinformation spreading.

Direct and indirect contributions to EU coffers are minimal as % of state expenditure, particularly once you look at the outsized returns in the wider economy. When German banks lend money to Greece to buy their tanks, public debt exposition grows in theory but in practice German coffers win twice. That's why Northern European countries are the big winners of the Common Market. If you have an issue with how this dynamic allocates the resulting "loot", you should take it up with Northern European leaders who allow most of the returns to stay in the private sector.

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