
McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/us-denmark-economy.html
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peter_d_sherman
>"Starting pay for the humblest burger-flipper at McDonald’s in Denmark is
about $22 an hour once various pay supplements are included. The McDonald’s
workers in Denmark get six weeks of paid vacation a year, life insurance, a
year’s paid maternity leave and a pension plan. And like all Danes, they enjoy
universal medical insurance and paid sick leave."

~~~
beenBoutIT
It seems a clever Dane could get pregnant and take a year off, then get
pregnant again during that paid year off, in such a way as to avoid returning
to work in-between.

~~~
FullyFunctional
It sounds like you have personal experience with pregnancy. Given that, I'm
surprised that you'd say this as pregnancy is no picnic, From observing how it
was for my wife and how it _permanently_ changed her body and health, I would
take a years of regular work any day over pregnancy.

But speaking anecdotally as an ex-pat dane, the people I know would look at it
the opposite way: it might stop them from _NOT_ having children, but it would
never make them have children they wouldn't have considered already. I'm sure
there are exceptions but are they statistically significant?

The benefit to the society should be obvious.

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downvoteme1
Honestly this is just a baseless article with a catchy title to grab
attention. You could write a similar article saying - tech workers in Bay Area
pity Denmark tech workers for their low salaries but that would not garner as
much eyeballs.

~~~
rbanffy
> tech workers in Bay Area pity Denmark

If there is an apples to oranges comparison, the only one closer would be to
the Netherlands.

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mikelothar
It's always interesting to read when foreign news papers glorify my country.
It's usually around election time.

Denmark, like any other country, has its good sides and its not so good sides.
You've now heard the good sides, I guess because it supports the view the news
paper would like to make.

There are some factual errors in this article, like the fact that we don't
have minimum wages (we do, but it's negotiated by the unions, not the
government), also the base salary (no overtime and weekend benefits included)
for a McDonald's worker above 18 is closer to $17 than $22. McDonald's hire
people as low as 13 though, whom of course have much lesser salaries. There
are many 15-17 year olds in Denmark who works in this sector, where the
minimum salary (for a 15 year old) is around $7 an hour. Add to that the fact
that Denmark has one of the highest tax rates in the world, and the 15 year
old hourly salary is reduced to $4.50 an hour after tax. The VAT in Denmark is
25%, so that's something you'd have to pay extra on more or less everything
you buy.

Many things in the article are true. But also, many things have been left out
in order to paint such a glorious portrait of the Happy Little Kingdom in the
north, who fought Nazi's so intently (.. well, a few rebel Danes did,
including my grandfather, but certainly not the government). Also, interesting
to hear of a McDonald's worker who wanted to buy an apartment for her salary.
I think she must live in a more rural area of Denmark, as we often hear
stories of how police men and nurses cannot buy an apartment in the bigger
cities, due to low salaries.

Education is free. True. Does that mean the education is good? Is it getting
better or worse each year? Same should be asked about the other social
benefits, daycare, hospitals, retirement homes etc. In general, Danes complain
quite a bit about the yearly cuts being made to all of these areas.

I think there's a main point missing in the article: What is the price for all
this? Ever since Denmark closed down we've heard the government putting into
law ways to allocate more and more money to more and more areas of society.
One of the more extravagant new rules I've heard of must be that of the
artist, song writer, or similar, who, for example, have made a painting or a
song that they couldn't sell, they would get compensated up to 100% of the
artists estimated evaluation, had it not been sold before July. After July,
the artist was free to sell it, without having to pay anything back to the
government. (I haven't been able to find the article on this to verify it, so
I do hope it was maybe just fake). In any case, we hear some numbers in the
news here, for the Corona bill, and it certainly is scary. I suspect, in time,
articles about Denmark will begin to appear in non-liberal news papers, about
all the flaws of Denmark's society and its social-democrat run government.

We do love America though, it's one of the favorite travel destinations for
Danes traveling outside Europe. Yet the accepted norm here is to blame America
for most that is evil. Pollution. Greed. Even multinational corporations, like
McDonald's, are seen as evil by many people around here. For that reason,
danish news papers often carry stories like the one where McDonald's attracted
quite some unwanted publicity, for having payed $0 in taxes in Denmark since
1981. Which incidentally could be one more of the reasons why the price of
burgers are relatively low here.

Sources:

[https://www.information.dk/2002/09/store-firmaer-betaler-
ing...](https://www.information.dk/2002/09/store-firmaer-betaler-ingen-skat-
danmark)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/5pbjtc/jeg_arbejde...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/5pbjtc/jeg_arbejder_p%C3%A5_mcdonalds_ama/)

[https://www.legaldesk.dk/artikler/mindsteloen](https://www.legaldesk.dk/artikler/mindsteloen)

[https://dk.neuvoo.com/skatteregner/?iam=&uet_calculate=calcu...](https://dk.neuvoo.com/skatteregner/?iam=&uet_calculate=calculate&salary=49.-+kr&from=hour&region=Copenhagen)

~~~
emptysongglass
We get paid to go to school and the education in any STEM field is good,
especially if you're getting into programming (see KU and their Ponies for
example). I'm a half-Dane and I've known enough of the American Life to know
that yes life is much, much better here in Denmark to the point that most
Danes around me appear completely oblivious to how good they have it.

Please, just find ways of being grateful. It's the good life and you were
lucky enough to be born into it.

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burgerzzz
Rattling off the talking points, Check. Barely scratching the surface and
avoiding any critical analysis that could potentially derail the talking
points. Check. "Rough guesses" and straw mans abound. Check.

And I'm supposed to take articles like these seriously?

~~~
crsv
No, it’s not designed for you to think critically. It’s designed to elicit an
emotional reaction. Emotions sell. Working as intended.

