>The wording make it sound worse than it is.
Absolutely, and it's BS...
As if most people that go into university in the US get "rich".
The Danish "poor" in the sense that the article mentions (e.g. working/middle class people with no university education) make a much nicer living/lifestyle that lots of US university graduates, and with much less debt as well.
In the US going to college is a lot like going all in on a hand of poker. It might turn out really well (good job, pay of debt quick), really poorly (no job, crushing debt, find work that doesn't require and isn't related to your degree) or somewhere in the middle. The better you are at what you do the more likely it is to turn out well. If you're not financially prepared to lose then losing is going to suck. When going college can be the difference between being running a really good HVAC business and sitting in an air conditioned office designing those components, and there's a huge quality of life difference between the two, going all in seems more worth the risk.
When you're in a society where it financially doesn't matter which career path you pick, you're completely free to pursue a career that will make you happy. I'm not forced to "gamble" on college. I'm free to choose to go to college, if that will make me happy. The only limitations are my abilities, and the quotas on certain educations, because we really don't need that many lawyers or people with degrees in "French 19th century painters".
You equating success with money, and that's not really the case when you're ensured, well almost, that what ever you do, you will pay well enough.
Of cause there are poor people in Denmark, of cause there are people who absolutely hate their job, and there a tons of people that would rather have a well paying miserable job, than a fun low paying job. Denmark is not a countries filled with hippies, where everything is perfect and everyone gets their fair share. There's people who have be extremely careful about how they spend their money, if they don't want to live of pasta the last week of every month. BUT their children, if they have the abilities and the desire, have the option, for free (plus 800USD per month to help pay for food, rent and books), to go to college... or become a well paid carpenter.
The "Teach First" scheme in the UK, similar to Teach for America, is powerful because it is potentially the first time school students in many poorer areas will come across someone who has been to a top flight university. Someone who can tell them "you can successfully apply, you will fit in and you will enjoy it". Education results in the UK aren't correlated with the amount spent on education, they're correlated with parental wealth.
I see your point, but remember that Denmark is an extremely small country. There are literally no high schools that don't have a history of sending people to college. Of cause there are relatively poor part of town in at least some cities, but mostly those cities aren't big enough that only student from one particular neighbourhood is present in a high school. The high schools will always have a mix rich and poor, highly educated parents and parents with little to no education. Areas of Copenhagen might be the only exception, but I don't honestly know.
The schools can of cause advise a student not to apply to college, but in the end they can't stop the student from applying for college.
Wages are, traditionally, negotiated by the employers and the labour unions, with the government as a third party that could resolve disputes. It's a system that served Denmark extremely well for almost 100 years or so, and we're in the process of destroying it. First by removing the laws that bound specific trades to specific unions and now by workers leaving the unions in droves, just to save the union fees (which are rather high).
Never the less, the union ensured that no jobs in Denmark where so badly paid that you couldn't afford a decent meal.
Reminds me of the time I lived in a "gentifying" neighborhood in Chicago. Half the block was young professionals and the other half unemployed/unemployable people who seemed to have an endless party lifestyle of little to no responsibility. I'd be pulling up from work stressed and beaten up and they'd be partying in their yards everyday. Their properties not too different from mine, but rentals as opposed to condos. They had decent enough cars and lifestyles (always had nice shoes and phones) and from the few I befriended were almost 100% on welfare or had jobs that were adult daycare jobs programs and closer to 75% welfare. Hell, we had a bunch in public housing where city workers came by and mowed their lawns and shoveled their snow for them. It was bizarre. Society treated them like children and, of course, they welcomed it and refused to grow up.
Welfare makes for perverse incentives. This is something liberals have trouble admitting because they don't have a moral position out of it. Cut welfare and going against the welfare state is not something liberals want to do, regardless of real world outcomes. Meanwhile Chicago is seeing real population losses as businesses and those with options move away from the crime (leisure party/drug/gang lifestles leads to serious crime) and high taxes. For the record, my property taxes went up 30% this year and this is just one of the promised tax hikes on the way.
When social safety nets become too cushy, people just opt out of work and causes a great deal of social harm. I wouldn't dismiss it as nothing as it has real consequences. Not the least of it being a more competitive society produces more innovations and raises the quality of life of everyone. All the nordic people I know buy US products and learn English and consume US media and US innovations, including medical, almost constantly.
Nordic "law of Jante"[1] is great from the artist-bohemian "fuck you" lifestyle, but when it comes to economies and innovations its so anti-achievement and anti-exceptional that its closer to something like a Harrison Bergeron-esque dystopia. These are nations with unusually high rates of depression, anti-depressant use, and suicides. Obviously, self-reporting "happiness" is meaningless if everyone is offing themselves or eating four prozacs a day to make it through the work day. Seems to me, that forced equality doesn't really work and will introduce novel problems of its own, often worse than the problems its trying to fix.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
The ten rules state:
You're not to think you are anything special.
You're not to think you are as good as we are.
You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
You're not to think you know more than we do.
You're not to think you are more important than we are.
You're not to think you are good at anything.
You're not to laugh at us.
You're not to think anyone cares about you.
You're not to think you can teach us anything.Lets compare to USA: Sweden has less suicide and less depression. Norway and Denmark rank higher in HDI. Pretty much all nordics rank better in Gini ratios. Norway has higher GDP and rest of the nordics are not far off. All nordics rank higher in innovation index.
The safety nets aren't doing so bad in my mind.
For instance:
> But despite this far greater investment in young children and public colleges, Danish children of high-school graduates are still extremely unlikely to go onto college.
While that may be true, it's not the point. The point is you should have the option to go to college, regardless of parents background or financial status.
This bit is also a little over the top:
>Based on this finding, the researchers conclude that welfare policies may reduce college enrollment. Denmark makes it more comfortable to be poor and less lucrative to be rich, so many young people decide to end their education after high school.
The wording make it sound worse than it is. There's an extremely limited set of job you can hold in Denmark, with just a high school education. While there are certainly more "uneducated" young people in Denmark, than most of us believe, it not really a career path. It will almost certainly put you on unemployment benefits, which makes you poorer than most people care for.
It should be noted that there are also other option after high school than just college.