Dane here.

I think this article gets something right, pointing out trust. Another word would be "solidarity" - believing you 'owe' your fellow countryman and that you are on the same team. What's good for you is good for me.

In Denmark, we pay something like 50% tax but we also get a lot of things covered by our state which other countries let the individuals get through expensive insurance.

This means that if my neighbour get rich, I'm happy since that means a better school for my (and his) children, help for my (and his) old parents, roads that gets fixed etc. (Edit: some of the money goes to the state and EU, while a healthy chunk stays in the municipality - this keeps the money close)

My point: it only works if people are indeed on the same team.

That is why big nations are a detriment to this model. If the taxes disappear into black holes, negligent waste and corruption the system crumbles quickly. And as we all know, it takes much longer time to build trust that to kill it. It is a constant battle (which right now, it feels like we're losing, but that doesn't matter for this post).

Can big nations like the U.S. copy this? Well, Denmark is about the size of your average state. So yeah, if each state made an effort to make the public sector make sense internally on state level, it could.

I don't think it will, though. The cultural gap is too wide and expecting people to always be looking out for number one isn't seen as a bad thing.

Just remember that Danes/Scandinavians aren't better people than others (except Swedes; we're ALL better than Swedes!). It is a matter of choice and goals.

> Just remember that Danes/Scandinavians aren't better people than others

I'm not sure I buy that. Say you're tasked with planning and building a whole new city in an isolated place. Do you want to bring along 10,000 randomly-selected Bangladeshis, or 10,000 randomly-selected Danes? As a Bangladeshi myself, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat. I think you can fairly blame circumstance for it, but at the end of the day, Bangladeshi culture has a higher tolerance for corruption, theocracy, opportunism, etc., than European cultures I have experienced. (But I'm biased--2/3 of Bangladeshis think I should be executed for apostasy. The odds are not in my favor!)

Also, in Denmark, the standard sentence for murder is like 12 years, while in America you can get 12 years for far less. We voted for that. Doesn't that make Danes better than Americans?

> Doesn't that make Danes better than Americans?

In my opinion, yes. That is my culture and I stand by it.

But my point is that Danes aren't inherently better. It isn't like Scandinavians are some kind of master race with genes of goodness and kind hearts.

It is about growing and maintaining a culture and system of warranted trust, and that isn't easy. But having said that, it is just work. Every nation can do it if they set their mind to it.

It doesn't even require taxes to vanish into black holes, waste and corruption for this to fall apart; all it requires is that those taxes are being spent on people who aren't like us in some sense, who are too far away or too culturally different. You can see this with, for example, the griping from Californians about how unfair it is that they're forced to subsidise other states which aren't the economic success story that California is. (Where economic success is measured by something like GDP, and much of California is so expensive that only the best-paid people and industries can afford to set up shop there.)

"You can see this with, for example, the griping from Californians about how unfair it is that they're forced to subsidise other states which aren't the economic success story that California is."

While it is indeed true that California is a net-tax-contributor to the United States, it's fairly new that this is a point of contention or a "gripe" from Californians.

A much more prevalent complaint, in my experience, is that Californians pay the same ~50% in taxes that Danish people do, but have much, much worse public policy and infrastructure outcomes.

They also have the highest poverty rate in the US.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-californi...

The griping isn’t about subsidizing those less well off. The griping is about a warped Federal system which systematically allows states with representation disproportionate to their populations or wealth to siphon excessive resources.

What arguments are those, exactly? What's the significance of a smaller population or homogeneity? Has any such relation been rigorously studied, or is it just speculation?

Culture drives attitude and perception.

People who look, worship (or not), work and have other things alike then to cluster together and have a sort of herd mentality.

In a place like the US, we have dramatically different groups of people all over the place. In Norway or Denmark, the differences are nonexistent to an American eye.

>In Norway or Denmark, the differences are nonexistent to an American eye.

In Oslo, capital of Norway, 32% of the population are immigrants.

And half of those are Europeans (often other Scandinavians). In contrast, in D.C., the capital of the United States, 52% of the population is of a racial minority that (overwhelmingly) is in the U.S. only because white Americans brought their ancestors over from Africa in slavery.

Sure: here's a recent longitudinal study[0] that covers some of the previous work on correlation between diversity and social cohesion.

[0]: https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv081

Americans always tend to use homogeneity as an argument when they compare themselves with other countries, like it’s somehow a good argument not to be as good as other countries in some aspects. Like you, I doubt that this is actually relevant. Canada is nothing but diverse, in a very similar way to the US and somehow it’s never used an excuse.

Canada is much less (racially) diverse than the U.S.: 89% white and the largest minority group as asian with 6.7% versus the U.S. 66% white and 14.7% hispanic as the largest minority group. source: data compiled from census reports https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.mx/2011/03/us-vs-cana...

> Canada is nothing but diverse, in a very similar way to the US and somehow it’s never used an excuse.

Less than 20% of Canada is a "visible minority." In the U.S., it's almost 40%. Toronto recently became a majority minority city. Washington, D.C. became a majority minority city sometime in the 1950s. In Chicago, it was sometime in the 1980s. Canada has no majority-minority provinces. Ontario is still 67% European (roughly on par with Connecticut). Our two largest states, California and Texas, are both majority-minority states.

Recency matters too. Much of Canada's diversity is very recent. American politics has in contrast been shaped by these conflicts for decades (really, from inception--we fought a whole civil war over race!).

Where immigrants come from matters too - family-based system vs points-based system.

Are you suggesting that it's not mostly accepted, sociologically, that ethnic diversity is correlated negatively with social cohesion? That was not my understanding. Do you have a citation that suggests otherwise?

[0]: https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/32/1/54/2404332

Intuitively do you believe it's easier to govern a group of people with very different opinions and very different backgrounds and socioeconomic status, or easier?

For example, LA county alone has approximately twice as many people as the entire country of Norway.

Norway also has two giant sovereign funds, which they use to fund pensions. The oil fund alone is worth almost 200k per Norwegian. That's not an argument you can make for Denmark, but yes: Norway is doing great. All you need is a small homogeneous population and a trillion dollars.

Norway's "Government Pension Fund" is NOT used to actually fund pensions. It is actually not funding anything right now, but absorbs the government's budget surplus resulting from the oil sector. As such, it's a net negative for most economic indicators currently, since Norway has chosen to defer the use of their wealth in fossil fuels.

Are you suggesting it's unusual or undesirable for a pension fund to not be paying out currently? If a country creates a sovereign wealth fund for when the proverbial and in this case literal well eventually dries up and it doesn't need to tap into that currently, and there's $200k for every citizen in that piggy bank, that seems like a pretty good thing for preventing social unrest and perhaps even promoting social cohesion. A 25 year old in Belgium or Greece or Spain has a lot more reason to worry there won't be anything left by the time it's their turn than someone in a country that _doesn't even have to use their largest fund yet_.

Also, when you say "chosen to defer the use of their wealth", you mean "invest at a rate of about 6% annually"? As long as they're otherwise meeting all of their commitments, I'm not seeing the problem.

Maybe read the comment I was replying to? They made the argument that Norway's economic success is caused by the fund. Which it is not. Because the fund is, to repeat myself, "a net negative currently, used to defer the use of the fossil fuel windfall for future times".

To more directly answer your question: the fund is the sort of level-headed strategic genius that only a sane country like Norway could pull off. Compare Alaska.

I am the author of the comment you were replying to, so I assume I'm reasonably familiar with what it says and does not say. I did not say that Norway's _economic_ success is caused by the fund, that's silly. I was replying to a comment suggesting that comparing a country to Norway in the context of increased social cohesion and we could just cargo-cult whatever they're doing is simplistic, because their situation is different, among which a trillion dollar sovereign piggy bank.

You are making the opposite point of the one you think you are making: Norway has those trillion dollars set aside because they nationalized a lot of oil profit. The US could have done that to, and so could for that matter Venezuela.

I think you're attributing a point to me I'm not actually making? I am not saying "the US could not have done so", I am saying the US did not and Norway did.

Social democratic policies tend to become more efficient with increased scale, so why would it be negative that the US is larger than Norway?

A smaller country with low diversity results in more uniform opinions, I suppose?

But, comparing Norway to the U.S.A. would be odd. From over here, the U.S.A. can be compared to the E.U., in which case the comparison should be between American states and European countries.

Specifically for Norway, it would be like a state in the middle of the U.S.A. that never actually became part of the union, but with really good ties with everyone regardless.

You mean Norway is the Canada of the EU?

Sort of, yes. Just smaller, and in a local unions with the closest states of the U.S.A.

What is the largest contemporary social democratic government? Sweden is about twice the size of Norway. Is there evidence that it's getting scale benefits out of that?

One of the downsides is that a larger system collects more money and becomes a much more ripe target for individuals looking to corrupt it.

And it works incredibly well for them.

It's almost as if trying to centrally plan for dozens of drastically different types of societies and regions isn't efficient, or as effective as a smaller, actually representative government or something. Just ask the USSR.

Maybe we could break up the US into some sort of territories, so like-minded people could gather, and govern themselves based on local needs...

The problem with this is that there are clearly certain groups who are far more economically productive than other groups. It would only be a matter of time before conflict broke out.

Counterpoint: the EU.

It's not true that Scandinavian countries are homogeneous. 30% in Sweden are either born abroad or have at least 1 parent born abroad. Even more obviously have some non-Swedish cultural background or influence.

Foreign born includes Danes and Norwegians so trying to disprove the claim that Sweden is socially homogenous by pointing out that there are Finns and Danes, doesn’t make your argument convincing.

I think what makes a comparison difficult with the US is the difference race and ethnicity make between countries (eg, Sweden and US). In the US there are many negative correlations with race and ethnicity that make diversity comparisons simple to make (although not necessarily accurate). So people can easily look for diversity by just checking race demographics. It’s also difficult because some people talking about race are racists who have incorrect beliefs, but it’s hard to tell who’s who at first.

When looking at Sweden it’s not straightforward to look at race and I couldn’t even find solid numbers that describe Sweden by race, although only spent a few minutes googling. But in the US, racial demographics are immediately available.

If you compare nation of birth != Sweden that’s not necessarily useful comparing to the US as it includes other culturally similar peoples (eg, Norwegians). It would be like saying New York is diverse because it includes lots of people born in Connecticut while not breaking out those born in Somalia.

The comparison that is relevant is what are the diverse cultures, specifically those from lower socioeconomic status. Unless you can check that mix, then it’s not very useful to compare and make claims.

Of course, the purpose of comparison isn’t to achieve some sort of purity goal, that’s insane. But to identify what interventions are most effective based on cultural composition. While theoretically a country would higher social cohesion by getting rid of all the different peoples (Denmark pretty much did this is WW2 with the help of the Nazis). This is short sighted (hurts World to help country) and immoral (genocide is bad).

I see this point raised a lot but the stat is fueled by Western immigrigants—not non-Western immigrants.

You can’t count a bunch of blonde German & French doctors and engineers as disrupting the fabric of society.

Denmark has less than 4% non-Western immigrants while the US has nearly 25%.

This is a pretty recent phenomena. The first large immigration wave came in the end of the 60s [0]. Before that, the few foreign born citizens where mostly from the neighboring Scandinavian countries. Until 2017, the largest group among foreign born Swedish citizens where.. Finnish.

Now, that although that has changed, the article mentions the large immigrant population isn't well integrated in society in Denmark, well they aren't in Sweden either. It would be fair to say that there are multiple parallel societies. Political and business life is to a large extent dominated by ethnic Swedes.

[0] http://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subjec...

What do you mean by "let's face it, racially"? Are people incapable of trusting others of a different skin colour?

It is objectively true that Norway, compared to the US, is a racial monoculture. Sociological evidence suggests ethnic diversity correlates negatively with social cohesion, though recent studies also suggests that while causal, the effect depends significantly on their prior preferences.

That's not saying "people can not trust others of a different skin color", but it is saying that generally speaking, people in more ethnically diverse communities are less trusting of each other. Call that what you will :)

It isn't just about skin color, it is about in-group favoritism. Most people tend to seek out similarities to others in groups depending on the context. Could be sex, race, profession, hobbies, interests, etc. There definitely is a scale of how people treat those they have categorized as out-group as well.

I think the argument is that those countries prove the policies work and are affordable and cost-effective. Whether or not Americans can support those policies in light of their skepticism towards government, individualism, and a particular political strategy used historically to court southern voters is a good question - but one that doesnt necessarily disprove the benefits of greater spending on social programs in the United States per se.

The Scandinavian model is much more than just "greater spending on social programs." Sweden and Denmark outrank the U.S. in the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking. Their tax system is very flat, with the top marginal rates kicking in at just 1.2-1.6x the average income: https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the.... The top 10% in Sweden make 25% of the total income and pay 25% of the total taxes, while in the U.S. they make 33% of the total income and pay 45% of total taxes. Their corporate tax rates are around what the U.S.'s will be under the Trump tax plan.

They're also highly deregulatory. Denmark just got rid of its version of the FCC: http://reason.com/archives/2017/04/04/deregulate-the-fcc. Sweden's approach to building fiber in rural areas is a simple tax rebate of up to $600 for rural folks who choose to have a fiber line built. There's serious discussion in Sweden of things like water privatization.

So the challenge to implementing the "Scandinavian model" isn't just our "southern voters," who oppose more social spending, but also our "San Francisco voters," who insist on a narrow tax base bankrolling that broad social spending, more government intervention, etc.

And ultimately, it comes down to lack of trust. Americans don't trust each other, probably with good reason. Take abortion, for example. In Denmark, like most western European countries, abortion is only permitted up to 12 weeks absent special circumstances. And parental consent is required for minors. In Sweden it's 22 weeks, which is an outlier for Europe. In the U.S., 12 weeks with parental consent would probably be unconstitutional. Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, etc., match Sweden at 22 weeks, and most blue states are at 24-26 weeks.

But in Scandinavia, there is some level of consensus, and abortions are readily available to women under 12 weeks. Even in "blue states," while one side has managed to wrangle 51% of the votes and get a 24-week deadline, the other side has managed to erect roadblocks like restrictions on abortion clinics, which make it very difficult for women to actually get an abortion when they're legally permitted to do so. We're a fragmented and distrustful society that doesn't trust each other, and our stalemates often leave us with the "worst of both worlds."

Regarding taxes: In Sweden this is a rather recent change pushed through by right-wing parties. This wasn't the case when the foundations of social-democracy was set.

What do you mean? As far as I know the major tax reform by the right-wing parties was the "work tax deduction" which makes taxes less flat. (The deduction is capped at roughly median income). Top marginal rates have been largely the same since the mid '90s.

Since mid '90s is "rather recent" for me in this domain. I'm talking about the significantly reduced tax burden for the wealthy and corporations due to various tax cuts and abolishments.