Why so must fascination about a homogeneous society that has population of City of Houston? I will not take some of these articles of Scandinavian fetish any seriously any more.
Why do you think that the Nordic model can't scale?
The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
21–30 of 160 posts
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's also about what it buys you? Also, https://www.nordisketax.net/main.asp?url=files/suo/eng/i07.a... claims it's at worst 31.75%, not 60%, and that's not even the average. Plus if you're rich, not all or even most of your wealth comes from personal income anyway, so there's that. And ~20% VAT or equivalent seems quite common over the developed world.
32% national, 22% municipal and 8% social security = 62%. 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, y…
The national tax percentage is 32 % (actually 31.75 %) only for the amount that exceeds the "high earner" threshold, i.e. you pay it for the part that you earn in excess of 72,300 € per year.
(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 %.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#23The American dream mantra as it is currently being regurgitated in America is little more than a cheap slogan at best and calculated lie at worst. 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.
False. '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, Asian…
US is more like Russia by the gini.
Multi-nationality is not unique to the US.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#24Why so must fascination about a homogeneous society that has population of City of Houston? I will not take some of these articles of Scandinavian fetish any seriously any more.
Why do you think that the Nordic model can't scale?
Social issues are easy when you have a 99% ethnically homogeneous population without any serious religious divisions either.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#25The American dream mantra as it is currently being regurgitated in America is little more than a cheap slogan at best and calculated lie at worst. 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.
False. '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, Asian…
The fact that you are putting Spain, Greece and Italy as example of poor EU countries already shows you have an alarming lack of knowledge about the EU at least. Spain and Italy are average countries in the EU, GDP per capita-wise. Greece is lower than average, but far away from the poorest ones (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/3/3...)
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.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#26The American dream mantra as it is currently being regurgitated in America is little more than a cheap slogan at best and calculated lie at worst. 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.
False. '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, Asian…
My friends are from all over Europe, and America, India and China.
> 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.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#27The American dream mantra as it is currently being regurgitated in America is little more than a cheap slogan at best and calculated lie at worst. 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.
False. '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, Asian…
Great point. Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past. For example, Belgium performed mass genocide in Congo, enslaved the people and stole the natural resources in the country. So, today people in Belgium live comfortably, since the modern Belgium is built on top of African slaves' pile of bones.
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.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that the Nordic model can't scale?
Social issues are easy when you have a 99% ethnically homogeneous population without any serious religious divisions either.
So, if this is true, that means countries have some scalability issues. Once it's big enough, it's not going to be 100% monochrome anymore.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#29Why so must fascination about a homogeneous society that has population of City of Houston? I will not take some of these articles of Scandinavian fetish any seriously any more.
Why do you think that the Nordic model can't scale?
Having moved to the US from Germany, not a Nordic country, but a country with a much tighter social net that works comparatively well, I agree that it probably wouldn't work in the US. I think a social net works best if there is enough empathy in society to keep people happy with paying for those who need the net as well as keeping people from exploiting it too much. Of course there will always be someone unhappy with paying or someone exploiting he system, but it only works if that remains relatively rare. That is much easier if you have a relatively high empathy for each other which is easier in fairly homogenous populations. The US seems to have a very split society along all kinds of groups. There seems to be a strong fault line between large coastal cities and the middle of the country, racial divides, Republicans vs Democrats etc. These divides seem much larger to me than anything I know from Germany and I can only imagine that they are even smaller in the less populous, Nordic countries.
Re: The American Dream Is Alive in Finland
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that the Nordic model can't scale?
Social issues are easy when you have a 99% ethnically homogeneous population without any serious religious divisions either.
Really? And you say that about a country that has had a civil war between members of this ethnically homogenous population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War). You are seriously mistaken that ethnic diversity is the only or even a major cause of social issues.