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Welfare In Denmark

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Great Dane

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I've got to say I find lists like this highly puzzling: I'm not an economist by any means and I don't follow the business news but I can't understand how the UK (where I currently live) is a better place to do business than the US - the nanny state makes it complicated enough just living here.

Tied with the UK at #5 on the list is Iceland, where I've also lived and studied (albeit for only a month). There are taxes on absolutely everything in Iceland and Reykjavik was recently rated the third most expensive city in the world (following Oslo and Tokyo): because of the taxes, a half-litre of beer (around a pint) goes for $9-10, and a fast food meal is around $12. All around this means that people with the same amount of money that could afford a comfortable middle-class living in the US can only afford a small flat in Reykjavik.

But I also remember hearing that Iceland and Denmark had both recently passed some significant free-market reforms that would substantially lower the income tax rate - I take it this is not the case in Denmark though. But is there some kernel of truth in that rumour? (Sorry I can't remember where I heard it, possibly someone told me it in Iceland.)

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I've got to say I find lists like a href="http://"www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm" target="_blank">this highly puzzling: I'm not an economist by any means and I don't follow the business news but I can't understand how the UK (where I currently live) is a better place to do business than the US - the nanny state makes it complicated enough just living here.
BTW you could edit that link to remove the error. The difference is actually small -- you can order anything bunch of numbers, the question is whether the ordering is particularly significant. On their scoring system, the US and the UK differ only by .1, caused, it would seem, by their judgment of "informal market" and foreign investment. Taxes aren't directly a factor in their analysis -- they play a role in other factors (so, import taxes are relevant to their category "trade policy", the marginal tax rate (related to the sliding scale of tax rated dependent on income) is a factor in "fiscal burden", and can (it seems) be a factor in "regulation". What they are giving you is a generalized "big picture", which is very dependent on a particular set of categories.
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As Bruce Bawer wrote in his book While Europe Slept, the biggest difference between the Swedes and the Danes, is the fact that 5,000 copies of stupid white men by Michael Moore were sold in Denmark and 500,000 copies sold in Sweden.

Really? The latter I find very hard to believe. Sweden's population is only about 9,000,000 - and he's saying 500,000 copies of Moore's book were sold there?? That seems way too high, especially considering that the number of people who read a book is much higher than the number of people who buy it.

As for Moore's Stupid White Men, it does not seem to be holding its value very well in the US. This past year I was at a library book sale in Seattle (a liberal city if ever there was one) and saw five hardcover copies of this book for sale. The several-day sale was almost over, and nobody was rushing to buy them. They just sat there, going begging, for fifty cents each, even though the sale was quite well attended. (That means they're probably off to the shredder, recycler, or whatever they do with books that nobody wants. Many other books last decades before coming to this end, but for Moore's diatribe there is, alas, no market once the hype wears off. In 50 years, I suspect nobody will even remember who he was.)

All of which makes me really wonder how the Swedes could have bought 500,000 of them, when like-new copies can't even be sold for a pittance in a liberal US city.

Edited by Jay P
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  • 1 year later...

The marginal income tax in Denmark is 63% at the $70,000 per year level. This IHT article is about a small brain drain from Denmark.

The author seems to think that Danes owe it to their country to remain there. Nevertheless, the article has an interesting Ayn Rand mention:

New employees at Saxo Bank get a copy of "Winning," the playbook of Jack Welch, the brass-knuckled former chief executive of General Electric, and "Atlas Shrugged," the libertarian manifesto by Ayn Rand, suggesting that the boss has little time for solutions that beat around the bush.
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The discussion of the Danish welfare system has reached its absolute boiling point. In Denmark, we have what is referred to as the “Scandinavian welfare model” which is a welfare system designed to provide the unproductive with unlimited funding. To do so, the Danish government expects the productive individuals of Denmark to bare the wait of the weak, no questions asked :santa: . The Social Democrats have used the Scandinavian welfare system to gain power amongst the working class, depriving the productive of their money. Taxes are set upon how much one makes per year. The more you make, the higher your taxes are :dough: . The maximum one can pay in taxes in Denmark is 67%, to reach the maximum; one has to make approximately 300.000 DKR (approximately $47,000 per year). This has created a huge problem for Denmark and its private sector. People have lost the will to work, the productive do not have the money needed to invest in development and the “Danish elite” have begun to leave the country in pursuit of freedom/wealth.

On top of all of this, our welfare system provides immigrants with a welfare check the moment they enter the country. After seven years in Denmark, still on welfare, they are entitled to even more money. Denmark is the highest paying country to their unproductive immigrants. Our society faces the problem of gangs, mobs, narcotic wars and a whole list of other things.

The Scandinavian welfare model has proven that welfare creates problems that will only contribute to the destruction of its inhibitors.

Will Denmark ever rid itself of its destructive welfare system while Denmark rots from the inside out? :confused: Will Denmark ever be able to understand Objectivism?

For me, this Atlas has shrugged! Farewell Denmark!!!!

Yes, what can I say ?

No question about it. You guys are suiciding on welfare and immigration and its only taken around 40 years.

I think your lunatic liberals have a death wish. To think that you could put to two together is a madness which will spell your end or at least the end of danish culture. You might want to consider a burka for the wife and trade the car in for a donkey to get along in the new denmark.

You have nowhere to run really... all of Western Europe is on the verge of suiciding. England, France, Italy, Germany will probably be in the same spot sooner or later. Europe is still capable of making a Volte Face and the most monumentous decisions but suicidal forces are probably too great. The Occident is dying. Western Liberal humanism contains the seeds of it own destruction.

Edited by markt
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