21–30 of 188 posts
Black Swan was a big deal, but this article massively overstates the average Dane's faith in the system. The welfare state is certainly not reverred as a religion, and the current state of it is always a hot discussion topic with pulls in either direction. Unlike what this article suggests, tax fraud is also relatively common (one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation…
I'm fully aware that Sweden and Denmark are different countries (I lived in Denmark for 3 years), but this reminded me of the reel of Swedes playing every time I visit IKEA, where they talk about how corruption is absolutely unthinkable in Swedish society. And there's also this tidbit from the article: > Other Scandinavian nations also reeled upon watching The Black Swan. After the series premiered in Sweden, a crimi…
Black Swan was a big deal, but this article massively overstates the average Dane's faith in the system. The welfare state is certainly not reverred as a religion, and the current state of it is always a hot discussion topic with pulls in either direction. Unlike what this article suggests, tax fraud is also relatively common (one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation…
The Black Swan documentary is primarily about sleazy private sector actors in Denmark. The only remotely state affiliated individuals in the documentary is a business man who was a former small city council member and a bankruptcy lawyer who has previously contracted for Danish government organizations. The system worked fine and the Danish equivalent of the FBI, the NSK, already had ongoing cases of investigations into a lot of the uncovered material.
The only "common" tax fraud in Denmark is when a house needs some minor fixing before being put on sale. Many Danish people will pay their friend's friend to do it for them "under the table" and not as formally contracted and taxed work. This is becoming increasingly harder.
However this is far from the massive systemic corruption in many other countries.
I'm fully aware that Sweden and Denmark are different countries (I lived in Denmark for 3 years), but this reminded me of the reel of Swedes playing every time I visit IKEA, where they talk about how corruption is absolutely unthinkable in Swedish society. And there's also this tidbit from the article: > Other Scandinavian nations also reeled upon watching The Black Swan. After the series premiered in Sweden, a crimi…
Today some active politicians simultaneously perform as senior advisers and the like for so called public affairs, i.e. lobbying, firms. That is, in the open. The leader of one of the largest parties in parliament and kind of part of the current government had a mob leader as guest at his wedding a while back.
There's an agreement among the largest parties to blame the fallout on immigrant minorities. They still disagree about whether to also put blame on sexual and gender minorities, as well as indigenous minorities. I expect them to start agreeing more during the next election.
Same filmmaker exposed US, UK, Apartheid collaboration and involvement in the spread of HIV in Africa, and the assassination of the SecGen of the UN, Dags Hammerskjold
I saw the documentary and highly recommend it, but one thing that irks me is that apparently there are no reports or investigations on this other than the movie itself? Seemed odd to me for such a larger-than-life-conspiracy …
It's a sensitive topic in the Occident, many powerful people would prefer their friends never face scrutiny or justice due to involvement with those crimes.
If you starve a wealthy man for 2 weeks he will be ready to cannibalize. If you create a metric upon which you place a lot of economic-value, soooner or later it will get gamed and corrupted. If you remove checks and balances humans being unpredictable will turn on each other.
One can choose to ignore this fact, but at the cost of endless grief to oneself and those around.
Black Swan was a big deal, but this article massively overstates the average Dane's faith in the system. The welfare state is certainly not reverred as a religion, and the current state of it is always a hot discussion topic with pulls in either direction. Unlike what this article suggests, tax fraud is also relatively common (one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation…
This isn't true and sounds like something written by terminally online reddit libertarians. The Black Swan documentary is primarily about sleazy private sector actors in Denmark. The only remotely state affiliated individuals in the documentary is a business man who was a former small city council member and a bankruptcy lawyer who has previously contracted for Danish government organizations. The system worked fine…
But at least the tax agency seems quite keen on investigating abuses. I remember Klarna has to pay a huge fine for trying because of trying to abuse tax loopholes a few years ago.
[1] I define tax dodging as using legal tax loopholes in order to pay less tax. A lot of those tax rules are not even complicated, they were just set up with a specific type of person in mind to let them pay less tax.
[2] The most popular ones that middle class Swedes use are delaying paying property capital gains, 30% tax deduction on loan interest payments, special rules for private pension and using ISK investment accounts (which allow you to avoid capital gains). None of them are illegal, just heavily favor some demographics. It is not that hard for a upper middle class Swede to avoid the maximum 56% income tax rate and the 30% capital gains tax.
I'm fully aware that Sweden and Denmark are different countries (I lived in Denmark for 3 years), but this reminded me of the reel of Swedes playing every time I visit IKEA, where they talk about how corruption is absolutely unthinkable in Swedish society. And there's also this tidbit from the article: > Other Scandinavian nations also reeled upon watching The Black Swan. After the series premiered in Sweden, a crimi…
I'm fully aware that Sweden and Denmark are different countries (I lived in Denmark for 3 years), but this reminded me of the reel of Swedes playing every time I visit IKEA, where they talk about how corruption is absolutely unthinkable in Swedish society. And there's also this tidbit from the article: > Other Scandinavian nations also reeled upon watching The Black Swan. After the series premiered in Sweden, a crimi…
"Sweden's sudden awakening to corruption - From small arrangements between friends to large-scale bribery and embezzlement, Swedes are discovering the extent of a phenomenon they had underestimated" - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/05/08/s...