I was getting some ideas from the text. Scandinavian countries have probably the world's best institutions. I'm talking here specifically about courts, laws, police. Also lack of corruption, excellent education, and a good labor market. In a world like this, debt becomes really just a number on paper. They can take huge mortgages and pass them on to their children (alongside with the property of course).
Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
111–120 of 153 posts
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're benefiting so much, why are they poor? Clearly wealthier people are getting more benefit.
Does someone below the poverty level qualify for more government assistance than a middle class person?
Does a middle class person have more choices in how they want to live their life?
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#113When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job, it makes sense to get a loan to buy a place to live and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net. Hard to get a loan, so end up renting for longer, and in turn have…
> and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. But a mortgage is debt … ? I’m not sure this accounts for it. Paying a mortgage “instead” implies it’s merely a replacement. But in reality the debt is 2-4x higher than other OECD countries. This stat makes it sound rather unsustainable: >Four in 10 mortgage borrowers in Sweden are not paying off their debt, and those that are repaying the principal do so at a rate that…
Ops, I meant rent, not debt. Too late to edit now.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where's the irony? Do you think HN is a good representation of the US population as a whole?
Assuming you are posting in good faith, the irony to me is that this whole discussion is even happening, stemming from the post: > Where the hell are people "moving across the continent every few years"? Because the answer is right here , on this very website. They are asking us* to prove our existence. Perhaps it'd be more correct to call it incongruity. Perhaps also more correct to have replied directly to the "Whe…
>They are asking us* to prove our existence.
This is a strawman.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…
Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deepe…
the very idea of fixing anything with taxes is wrong
primary role of land is to not have any civilized role, just supporting nature and thanks to nature humans (as they are naturally part of it),
land under cities and any density populated areas is area of human civilization, but usually not humane civilization, people tend to fix human artificially created problems with artificially created solutions usually creating new problems later
land shouldn't be hoarded if every national has his own piece of it guaranteed (only inheritable) then there is no legitimisation for hoarding more
but the piece should be big enough to let person feed himself from it
then the rest can be city land for lending by nation to companies and all the rest is the shared coowned land like forests for mushroom collecting, limited hunting or fishing
If no corporation or foreigner can hoard your land you fixed most of the problem already
we decide our health and lifespan with everyday choices at shop and choosing place of living, working and it's water, air and soil quality
ofc some of us get born with a better starting point but that's what maintaining common standards is for
saving in inflative currency is irrational itself
retirement system is a lottery game to keep people focused on working and paying taxes only, schooling to make obedient workers and alimentary system is a divorce maker to break society into individual atoms
it's to block any need to group spontaneously, plan own future yourself, organise organically and oppose actual system
people use their things best for themselves never for societal benefit especially that there is no one universal definition of societal benefit
if every person has own idea about it it means you would give big share to some individual(s) who would build their idea of societal benefit that could contradict majority's sense of their benefit and common benefit
btw if you make it uncommon it by definition becomes non common
but I still like your sense of need of meritocracy and helping those more capable - still most important part lacking here is keeping them bound with bottom of pyramid they come from and serve, sharing fruits if their skills so the bottom would proliferate yielding new exceptional units lifting everything up continuously.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#116Not Northern Europe, but Czech Resident here. There has been an explosion in house prices here, a truly wild one. I bought my place for 3.6m CZK about 7 years back and according to a recent valuation practices is "worth" nearly double this now. It is fucking wild, and tbh I kind of hate it.
Why are housing prices going up in countries that are shrinking?
It depends on location.
Finland for example has like 3-5 areas where prices are going up or are stable. In others like dying towns and such housing is sometimes essentially worthless. Or even negative value. Like there are row houses(a special company owned by tenants/individual landlords), can't get loans for needed renovations. Because value of building is less than the renovations cost.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has been going on for decades in the Netherlands, I bought a (newly built) home in 1996 when the country still used the Dutch Guilder and sold it for the same amount in €uros in 2002. One Euro translates to 2.21 Guilders, i.e. the house sold for more than double the price in 6 years time. For what I got for a relatively modest semidetached house on 220 m² of land in the Netherlands I could buy a 22 hectare farm…
Sweden is a pretty sparsely populated large country and there's quite a wide range of property prizes reflecting this. In denser areas the prizes are probably more akin to those in the Netherlands. Just took a quick look at hemnet.se and right now you could get a farm for anything between ~30,000€ to ~10,000,000€.
Also Sweden like Finland is quite long country. And when you go north the value of land really drops as productivity drops specially when you get to beyond artic circle.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#118This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentiv…
> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of…
Well Sweden doesn't have a property tax in those situations
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not nonsense, you just looked at the extreme case on the other side. You can try to make arguments like that for the "richest" people, but what about everyone else? Someone making $1 below the Medicaid income limit should pay a ton more in taxes than someone making $1 above it because they get back a lot more in return?
If they're benefiting so much, why are they poor? Clearly wealthier people are getting more benefit.
> Clearly wealthier people are getting more benefit.
No. Their wealth doesn’t come from government provided services.
Re: Why northern Europe is so indebted (2021)
#120When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job, it makes sense to get a loan to buy a place to live and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net. Hard to get a loan, so end up renting for longer, and in turn have…
In the absence of credit, if everyone had to pay with everything in cash, almost no one would have a home or car. It's stability of ability to service debt that matters, not the debt itself. High debt / income ratio at the micro level is bad, of course.
People can’t pay in cash due to other people paying with debt, which artificially inflates prices.