401–410 of 485 posts
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Only 25% of the working German population earns less than around 2300€, 1800€ is, at minimum , a 22% reduction in salary for 75+% of the workers. The median is about ~4100€, so more than half of a pay cut for 50% of the working population. So yes, it's a good amount but still much less than the minimum 80% here in Sweden.
1800€ net, 2700€ gross.
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Folks love to talk about these marginal 'perks' in Social Democracies, and the benefits experienced by the least fortunate, but you never hear about the costs of these programs or their impact on the finances of the average household. All these great benefits are, of course, funded via massive taxation of the middle and upper classes. You can see the (relative) impact in the data, which reveal household incomes to be…
Surprisingly large differences in household debt! What are the major contributors to these differences? USA seems to be in the middle. Right next to Germany, which one might think more similar to the Nordic countries compared to US. Where as Canada is higher than Finland.
The government offers heavy incentives that promote owning a house/apartment, making renting long term a pretty bad economic option. If you plan to live somewhere for more than 2-3 years it's cheaper to own than to rent.
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It's the government paying. Up to a fixed amount. But most high earners are in a position where the company will pay the difference as a perk. If it were companies having to pay, that would probably lead to some aversion about hiring people without children in the right age. But that's probably an aversion lots of companies in other countries have about women. "Will they have kids and leave the workforce soon?". I st…
Can confirm, social media is checked to make certain someone isn't pregnant or trying to get pregnant.
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We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pre…
> I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. My company leaves that decision to the couple. The couple chooses who is primary and secondary. My wife got 12 weeks as the primary caregiver. Our situation is a bit weird because we work for the same company.
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>133 days of being paid to sit at home and take care of your kids, which most Americans do for free Do Norwegians work, ever? How do Norwegian businesses make money? You've heard that American businesses are failing left right and center. They can't even make a profit, and they don't pay their employees health insurance or vacation, let alone paternity/maternity.
Someone must be getting all the money that corporations save in the US in contrast to Norway...
Keep in mind that the top 5 companies in the US are doing wildly better than the top 3000, who are in turn doing wildly better than the x hundreds of thousands of small businesses we have in the US.
I can assure you that the average waiter or call center worker is not getting the same benefits as a Google employee, and I can further assure you that the average restaurant (pre covid ofc) doesn't have the same profit per capita as any publicly traded company.
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We have 12 weeks for "primary care giver" and 6 weeks for "secondary care giver". I'm very curious about how a company could determine or enforce which spouse is primary and which is secondary. From the bit of reading I've done on legal blogs, companies open themselves up to legal liability if they so much as permit a culture in which it's assumed that women are primary care givers and men are secondary much less pre…
I've seen this a lot in the US, and at least in the North East, it seems like a lot of companies are moving away from this model. It's a really difficult policy to even enforce without being discriminatory against men. At this point in my career I take it as a red flag against the company. Women obviously still face many more hurdles than men when it comes to workplaces and an expanding family, and both genders deser…
28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant. All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mou…
28 days? That's barely enough to get your head off from work tbh. I just finished 133 days (at 80% pay) of paternity leave here in Norway, and the last part was def more rewarding than the start as you hit your new stride and regular work life grew ever more distant. All the organised toddler activities shut down because of covid19. Bought one of those child carrier backpacks, and we've been exploring forests and mou…
Good for you, but that really doesn't add much to the discussion... Norway has > 800x the oil reserves per capita of France and has not gone through what you could call a political crisis over the past few years regarding aligning the spending level of its welfare state with the economic and budgetary realities, with years of protests and riots, some of which are still ongoing. In the face of this it's quite a bold m…
We didn't go from zero to 28 days of paternity leave. We doubled it, from 14 to 28.
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I don’t see why you are counting future earnings rather than present earnings. Thought experiment: imagine next year from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, literally every 25-year old stops working and simultaneously everyone who was due to retire in that year has their retirement delayed by one year. The total size of the workforce remains constant. If this became a permanent feature of society [0], GDP, average corporate income…
I take your point on not accounting for interest growth. Well explained. Thank you. My actual retirement is my defined contribution 401(k) account. The amount I put in now grows until I draw it down in retirement. There’s no one who will give me a year of their 401(k) drawdown, of course. What 401(k) money I and my wife don’t spend is part of our estate and inherited just like any other type of private savings. Defin…
Thanks for the compliment, I’m glad to see I’m improving :)
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It's the government paying. Up to a fixed amount. But most high earners are in a position where the company will pay the difference as a perk. If it were companies having to pay, that would probably lead to some aversion about hiring people without children in the right age. But that's probably an aversion lots of companies in other countries have about women. "Will they have kids and leave the workforce soon?". I st…
If you want to force an even split or not depends on if you see the system as something that enables people to make choices that are good, or something that makes them do what you think is good (for the parents in question or for the society in general). I know a couple that had two children. He wanted a third child. She wanted a PhD. The current Swedish system enabled them to have a child and let him take virtually…
It's a difficult thing to balance. Ideally one should be able to split as wanted, based on one's life situation. But when one is free to choose, one often can find that the freedom is only imaginary. There will be pressure from society/employers/etc to do it a certain way. Lots of countries where it's expected that the father forego all paternity leave, or his career at the company will be done.