Denmark, 6 million wealthy people, 4% economic growth, 1.5% inflation, 2.9% unemployment, national debt of 25% of GDP and budget in surplus. How did it all go so right?
It's not an unfunded mandate running on deficit spending.
So probably it won't be wiped away by a global monetary crisis that forces us to cut deficit spending and reduce pensions.
The highest total tax rate in the world perhaps?
Denmark is like all the other Nordic countries culturally, except they have much easier direct geographic lines to Central Europe. So it’s basically what you get when you combine the Nordic model (tiny homogenous Lutheran population) with more advantageous geography. Finland is Denmark with extremely unfortunate geography.
The Nordic model was created by socialist and labor movements in the 20th century. Finland, a tiny homogeneous Lutheran population, even had a brutal civil war over this. Nothing to do with religion or ethnicity.
And it’s everything to do with religion and history, why do you think all the Nordic countries had these same 20th century movements and all have extremely similar governance approaches.
Marxist-Leninist countries typically don't have high taxes. Which is kind of obvious as the state doesn't rely on taxes for income. North Korea claims to have eradicated taxes.
> And it’s everything to do with religion and history, why do you think all the Nordic countries had these same 20th century movements and all have extremely similar governance approaches.
Shared history sure: they were geographically very close to each other, or even under shared rulers (e.g. Finland under Sweden for half a millenium), Scandinavian languages are essentially dialects of each other, they were all part of the wider European socialist and labor movements etc. The religion and Lutheran churches opposed development if anything.
The Nordic system is not very radically different from the continental Europe in general, more a matter of degree.
Perhaps, with major conceptual gymnastics, state ownership can be seen as "taxing" potential private capital gains. But this is kind of the point of state socialism.
Societal coherence has been aided by the isolation, and here is the hot take: this cannot exist in "diverse" societies. Not because of bullshit genetic superiority justifications, but because no diverse society has so far demonstrated the capacity to have a shared purpose, coherence and high degrees of trust.
And yes, I do find monoculture societies (including denmark) very boring, and I believe diversity has other great benefits. But societal stability and long term prosperity in that sense? Doesn't look like it.
Before someone mentions the US as a counterexample, do not forget that all the prosperity of the US came from basically seizing an underutilised (in the industrial sense) resource rich continent, and now it is falling apart by internal divide.
And if you gave me a choice between a world divided in small Denmarks or between the contemporary re-armament of the west due to the election of a populist buffoon combined with decades of mismanagement of a unipolar world, I wouldn't think twice.
I don't know much about Denmark but somehow I doubt that this attitude extends to taxing rich pensioners more (since they didn't contribute enough).
I feel they could do better than that with all this wealth.
What we should be doing is aggressively cutting the cost of living so that people who want to can afford to retire while still maintaining some reasonable quality of life. The number one thing that would help is to set policies that make it easier to build more housing because that's the largest expense for most people.
With what money? The poor folk don't have any by definition, the middle class is being squeezed out of existence, which leaves... who...?
You buy something dirt cheap for less than 80k USD. It's not great, it's old run down. But if you do minimal repairs and don't live the high life, you can get by with very little.
But if you want a new car and nice comfy house in a decent location, with all the modern amenities, well, that's expensive.
brother rusted out farm houses 2 hours from any office building, let alone one that hires programmers are like 350k in rural states. Idk where you live, but it ain't Earth.
EDIT: reporting back from Steele, looks like there's an undeveloped acre next to a highway and a power junction for ~75K, it's under 80k so I guess you know where to find me pitching my tent.
For those who don't want to click, a house in Des Moines for $125000 - this was the very first house that came up when I searched des moines real estate, I didn't bother to look farther.
https://www.boligsiden.dk/tilsalg/villa?sortBy=timeOnMarket&...
I'm not suggesting that this high life or secret to happiness. Just that of you want to work less, you can choose to spend less.
What does '1925' mean? No more shein plastic semi-disposable clothes that fall within what 1920's would consider sci-fi dystopian, universal basic income disposable clothes? Or hormone/chemical saturated 'food' that they wouldn't recognize as such? Or huge McMansions made of literal urea board and plastic extruded chemical 'luxury vinyl' floors? Brand new technology such mass produced cars, affordably available to the average person?
Only half of US households had electricity. I imagine many of the ones that were electrified didn’t have washing machines.
Likewise, about half of US households had indoor plumbing. So we’re not talking about giving up multiple bathrooms, we’re potentially talking about giving up bathrooms, period. Do you enjoy outhouses? I don’t.
Only one spouse working? That’s a myth. Who do you think was making those tailored clothes, washing the dishes, washing clothes by hand, and all that? Maybe you mean only one spouse getting paid to work, which is quite different.
You’re looking at a life in a small, drafty house that’s very cold in the winter and excessively hot in the summer (my houses were like that in the 1980s, even), crapping in an outhouse, and washing clothes by hand. But you won’t be washing a lot of clothes, because you’ll probably only have one or two sets.
If this lifestyle sounds attractive to you, you can have it right now for quite cheap.
Organic fresh food you'll have no fridge to keep in.
I bet you'll not be able even start a 1925 car without proper training.
I, on the other hand, prefer 2020 standard of life so I’m going to keep working.
In principle I think some kind of wealth tax on fortunes above a certain level would be a good idea. But there are a lot of practical implementation problems in terms of identifying and valuing illiquid assets. Like for example I have friends who own forestry land (for softwood timber harvesting) in a foreign country. Those assets have some value but trade infrequently so there's no reliable market price. And they probably hold the assets through a foreign corporation rather than directly in their own names. What is a "fair" amount for them to pay in taxes, and how would the government enforce that in a consistent and cost-effective manner?
1) I'm amazing, I can solve any problem, I'm enlightened by my own intelligence, I'm the mover and shaker who drives all worldly productivity, and I do it by wrangling the newest technologies in the most imaginative creative and intelligent ways, no problem is too great for my superior intelligence!
2) Pay taxes? Ah but, uhh, that's impossible; like ... who decides? There, there's a dealbreaker for you! Hah! And anyway how much? I.. I... there's complexity, don't you know how difficult and complex it is to ... own a forest? Nobody could make a decision, I can see already that the combined might of a nation's experts could not come up with a figure, forget AI, this is just ... give up already, come on, some problems are forever out of reach.
Making kids easier to have really only has two real options:
1. Go back down the development timeline of a nation and remove rights from women (bad).
2. Implement more social programs to incentivize children.
The reason we need to do 2 now and not in the past is we've developed. Women have rights now, and we need real reasons for them to have kids, not fake reasons like we had in the past.
Pretty much the only people holding up births in the US is young people who accidentally got banged up. That demographic has only been shrinking as access to contraceptives and education goes up.
We don’t want to remove privileges from people, we want to add on incentives. Currently, there’s a million and one incentives not to have kids.
the later you retire the less money you need. So if you are not personally ready why did you fund that much while if you sant to go sooner you need to save anyway.
Retirement age in Australia is 67. A report from 2024 going on the 2022/23 FY said the average age at retirement (of all retirees) was 56.9 years. People typically plan for 65.
Couldn't find Danish data, but 43% in AU rely on a government pension. 27% on superannuation or similar (I assume this will grow a bit). Those reporting no personal income is down from 24% to 12% over the last 10 years.
Here, companies compulsorily pay 11.5% into super funds for staff.
All that said, I'd rather see more support for people living in their prime rather than being tied to a desk. I don't see the point in purely waiting until retirement.
Their model obviously works well.
How does the US compare / contrast?
Canada is close in some respects.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
What makes Canada's immigration policy sensible in your mind?
e.g. some examples from this list (% immigrant population): - Qatar (76%) - Australia (30%) - Canada (23%) - Belgium (20%) - USA (15.2%) - Denmark (14.2%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_im...
Denmark’s economic prosperity comes from investment in free higher education for all, generally healthy lifestyles and the flexicurity-model, which provides a flexible labour market and promotes risk-taking.