151–160 of 160 posts
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Because the lack of downward mobility suggests the same problem as the upward mobility: your success in life is based on your parents income not your own merits. If you want a meritocracy you have to accept that untalented/unmotivated kids of rich parents may become relatively poor.
Well if you really want to optimize for social churn, couldn't you just randomize all the newborn babies at hospitals or something?
freedom is hard earned, neither generously provided, nor enforced. a universally dictated form of "freedom" is a degeneration.
Or did you have something else in mind? Such as taking credit for the sacrifices of generations past?
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If a car hits a cyclist or pedestrian in Holland, the car is -by definition- at fault. See [1] link in dutch. 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 prove…
It looks like the driver does have the possibility of proving that he was not guilty, and if successful limiting his reponsibility to half the damages: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict-liabili...
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Sweden had colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies . Sweden also had slave trade. Denmark/Norway had colonies as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_colonial_empire . Greenland and the Faroe Islands are what remain of the Danish colonial empire. Finland is another Nordic country, though not a Scandinavian country. Finland has never had an empire. It was too busy being controlled by Sw…
> 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? 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 Ge…
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?
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.
I've always wondered how the people that live there feel about the constant "I wish we were like them!".
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.
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I've never seen poverty in developed nations like I did in Atlanta, except maybe in Aborigines of Perth, Australia. It seems to me, although I haven't lived it, that food stamps cause more problems than cash handouts.
Rates of homelessness: 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... https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+finland+in+2010 https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+usa…
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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…
In Europe anyone can go to a top school? Oh really. 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 l…
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.
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I am in the US and I would be happy to chip in to help pay for health expenses of a poor person, who has no family, etc. 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 sys…
> 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.
freedom is hard earned, neither generously provided, nor enforced. a universally dictated form of "freedom" is a degeneration.
Exactly, which is why the Finns are diligent in maintaining a good standard of living for their worst off. They work hard to hold their government accountable to the people. 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never seen poverty in developed nations like I did in Atlanta, except maybe in Aborigines of Perth, Australia. It seems to me, although I haven't lived it, that food stamps cause more problems than cash handouts.
Rates of homelessness: 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... https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+finland+in+2010 https://www.google.com/#q=population+of+usa…
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.