
Pace of modern life: UK v Denmark - AndrewDucker
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23494970
======
ThomPete
If there ever was an article written and filled with mis-information and a
completely superficial look at the pros and cons of the Danish society and
it's merits, it is this article.

The claim that Danes are ambitious is flat out wrong. The younger generation
more so, but there is a reason why danes are the "happiest people" in the
world and it's not because of their ambitions.

The Danish model is under huge pressure and haven't escaped the reality of
globalisation and automatisation.

But because wealth gets distributed the way it does, it doesn't feel the heat
too much just yet.

In other words the Danish system is a thing of beauty as long as it works.
Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore and somethings gotta give.

Edit: Was asked to be more specific.

Out of 6m people:

Almost 0.8m people on some sort of social welfare

Almost 0.8m people are working in full time positions for the public sector.

In comparison 1,9 in the private sector and it is shrinking rapidly.

It is notoriously easy to start a company in Denmark but notoriously hard to
grow it among other things because most Danes don't have those ambitions and
are very very risk-averse.

We are long past the point where more people are depending on the state than
on the private job market and as those jobs disappear because of the named
automation and globalisation and because Denmark is just too expensive, it
will be hard for any government to promise the elaborate system we have now.

This is already starting to show as the latest government scramble to lower
taxes for corporations and reduce the number of entitled benefits Danes can
expect.

Furthermore Denmark took the wrong educational strategy and unfortunately like
most of the european countries believed that knowledge worker meant book
reader.

The result of this is that we have a large over educated part of the
population who will have a very hard time finding a job.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Every time there is a US/UK article about how much better things are in
Scandinavia/Netherlands/Germany, someone from the latter pops up and starts
listing a number of negatives, usually with a strong right-wing/libertarian
bias.

None of these are false in themselves, but these same issues are largely
common to all Western societies (the US being a bit of an outlier in some
aspects), and not a sign of total failure of a specific model.

Name one Western country that isn't struggling with public spending,
globalisation, automation and education issues.

~~~
mseebach
Whenever one of these US/UK articles pops up, it's usually from a left-leaning
angle, emphasising the left policies of these countries as the cause of all
the goodness there - so it's only natural that the counterpoint would be
right-leaning.

> not a sign of total failure of a specific model.

It's not that it's a total failure, it's more that the scandinavian model
isn't the utopia it's made out to be by its (mostly left leaning) proponents.

~~~
subsystem
The problem is that the counterpoint doesn't have very much to do with issue
at hand. It's like a number of people read "Denmark" and thought "Let me tell
you what is wrong with Denmark!". This is exactly the type of political
discussions that should be avoided on HN, because when arguments are vague and
with little relation to the article the quality of the discussion will suffer.

~~~
mseebach
Bringing Denmark up as a model country (as the OP does) is an inherently
political statement. There is nothing "hack" about the BBC article. I agree
this doesn't belong on HN, but one of the reasons politics on HN is so
dangerous is that it's so easy to get dragged in - which I am clearly guilty
of here.

------
Zigurd
It's always interesting to see the reactions to articles like this here: "They
may be happy now, but it can't last!"

But, as Keynes said, "In the long run, we're all dead." Do you plan on listing
your git check-ins on your tombstone? Will your epitaph be "He was ambitious?"

Most of us on this forum are fortunate enough to enjoy most of our work and
are well-paid to do it. Much of our work has novel interesting and innovative
results. Many of us are happy to keep working as long as we can. All the
greater shame on us for not having the imagination to visualize what life is
like outside our fortunate circle.

~~~
ThomPete
I fail to see how you reconcile those two claims.

I grew up from fairly humble means and have seen my father being fired, our
house go on foreclosure, him struggle with 3 jobs to make enough of a living
and my mom being stuck as a cleaning lady.

Perhaps you never experienced life outside the fortunate circle, but I
certainly did and I have no ambitions of ending there again.

------
cmdkeen
I'd be intrigued to see a breakdown between London and the rest of the UK in
the "working very long hours" stakes, especially when you add in commuting.

It's entirely possible to have a successful career working 9 to 5, with a
sensible commute, in vast swathes of the UK. I've spent 4 years in Edinburgh
and have always lived within a 10 minute walk to work, often within a World
Heritage Site.

The childcare costs are however a good point of something that other Northern
European countries tend to do better at. Though our recent government spat
over the ratio of staff to children shows that the public just aren't rational
on the issue so changing it would be hard.

~~~
Spearchucker
Childcare is insane in London. I do, however, take some comfort from knowing
that (in my case at least) it's the most expensive part of my 18-month-old
son's education. At £15,000 a year his nursery school costs £5,000 more a year
than a university degree from Cambridge.

~~~
vidarh
It's one of the thing that is ludicrously depressing about living in London.
I'm Norwegian, and my brother has two children in Norwegian nurseries. Even
with the current atrocious exchange rate, he pays about GBP 6k/year combined
for the two of them...

If it hadn't been for work situation (especially that his mom is a UK
solicitor with a big firm and wouldn't stand much chance of getting a decent
job in Norway), it'd have paid off massively to move "back home" for a few
years.

------
ForrestN
"Ambition" is probably a less useful frame, in the article and in the
comments, than "expectations."

I've only been to Denmark a few times but I think the feeling I got is that
they are happier because they have managed to largely sidestep the otherwise
ubiquitous trap of perpetually escalating expectations.

The American/capitalist model is that each achieved goal is a platform for the
next goal. Growth is what matters. Being satisfied with a decent job and a
peaceful context in which to love your family is not any less ambitious than
desiring to get rich or "change the world." It's just ambitious in a different
direction.

Americans, for example, optimize for economic performance. Danes, I think,
optimize for happiness. The tantalizing, troublesome idea that captivates me
as an American is that money as an abstraction of 'value,' when survival is
assumed, might only be desirable as a tool for being happier.

And if the pursuit of money, on a societal level, interrupts the pursuit of
happiness, that implies that we capitalists are doing it wrong.

------
kfk
I lived in Denmark 1.5 years. I do not know how the country is managing things
so well given that:

1\. Taxes are ridiculous (my friend is in the 65% bucket, sixty five, after 2
years of work experience).

2\. There is a huge amount of people living on welfare State.

3\. The University system is far from ideal. Not much competition, grades are
given almost randomly and tend towards a political 7 (average)

4\. You pay 180% (one hundred and eighty) of taxes on top of the value of a
new car (180%...) when you buy it

5\. The cost of living is high, very high

6\. Foreigners, if they are not from US, are not very welcomed (say what you
want on this, it's been my and others impression). Compare this with, say,
Germany, and you see a big problem right there

7\. There is not really much good work. I get it, 5-6 mln people, but finding
a work in Denmark without Danish is like finding the eldorado

Overall, I would not take this country as a "model". If you want a model, take
Germany. Germany managed to get out total destruction (world war II) and the
whole West/East mess without asking help to anybody. Germany today is probably
one of the most open countries to foreigners. The Police in Germany is great
with everybody (I had my bad experiences with the Danish one doing absolutely
nothing wrong...).

Sometimes you need to look deeper to see what's really going on in a country.
"Working hours" should not be the only way we measure things.

~~~
joakleaf
Germany got significant help from the US;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan)

Taxes are maxed at 57% for income above $70000/year. It is around 40% for
income less than $70000. The initial around $10000 are not taxed. You'll never
get to 65%.

A huge amount of people living on welfare is not by itself a bad thing. It is
better than having the running around in the streets looting to survive.

Both the University of Copenhagen and of Århus are on the world top 100 list.
[http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-
uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-
rankings/2012) . I don't know why you think grades are given randomly or
politically, or why you are missing competition.

Cost of living in Denmark is lower than e.g. Norway... It is also not
necessarily a bad thing. Salaries are also higher.

Danish is the official language. I suspect you'll have as much difficulty
finding a job in Germany where you don't have to speak German, or in France
w/o French.

With that said, it does sound like you had some bad experiences in Denmark.

~~~
kfk
I am not looking at the overall tax burden, I am looking at the margin. If
1000 of salary increase brings you 350, the incentive of being "ambitious" is
drastically reduced.

I agree with you on universities, but they do not foster, in my opinion,
healthy ambition and innovation. Danish students know they will have a job and
a good income _no matter what_ and that's not helping growth. On top of that,
you also have fake ones like Via which I still wonder what they are doing
exactly.

Local language requirements are a fast way to see how a country/region is open
to foreigners. Denmark is not. Will it be? I do not know. Of course, you get
asked German in Germany too, but here they do not have 94% of the population
speaking very good English.

With that said, my experience in Denmark was great! I am just tired of this
glorification of Nordic countries just to justify broken spending oriented
public policies (look where did they bring us...).

~~~
joakleaf
> I am not looking at the overall tax burden, I am looking at the margin.

It is still 57% not 65%. But also still too high in my opinion.

> If 1000 of salary increase brings you 350, the incentive of being
> "ambitious" is drastically reduced.

Likely true and the topic of an ongoing discussion in Danish politics.

> Local language requirements are a fast way to see how a country/region is
> open to foreigners. Denmark is not. Will it be? I do not know. Of course,
> you get asked German in Germany too, but here they do not have 94% of the
> population speaking very good English.

I am not sure I understand you. Should Denmark have more English speaking jobs
than Germany, because Danes are better at English than Germans (or is it the
other way around?)? That aside, I know many bilingual workplaces in Denmark,
and I think the number is growing.

> I am just tired of this glorification of Nordic countries

Nordic countries are expensive to run and are glorified for their welfare
system. Other countries are glorified in the media for low taxes, growth,
culture, food, environmental friendliness, etc.

Something is always better somewhere else...

------
adaml_623
Ignoring most of the specifics in the article I found the word:
"janteloven"[0] interesting. Australians would call it tall poppy syndrome and
the Brits....

Well the Brits have an institutionalised system of honouring people who
achieve.[1] Everyone from sports people to business people. Obviously it's
incredibly political but it is taken very seriously.

[0] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante)
[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_honours_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_honours_system)

~~~
vidarh
It's worth pointing out that Scandinavian culture values achievements. There's
just a general suspicion of those who openly seek recognition for it. We tend
to expect people to be hard working, but self-deprecating about any
achievements to the extent of almost appearing embarrassed about it. Someone
who is sufficiently self-deprecating might even be celebrated for that, but
someone who is perceived as boasting will very often be viciously cut down to
size.

A good illustration of the extreme importance of being self deprecating is how
a big part of Norwegian mythos around the Norwegian royal family is how the
then king took a tram when wanting to go skiing in '73 during the fuel crisis,
and "even" took out his wallet to pay (During a period, using private cars
during the weekends was illegal, and while the royal family almost certainly
would've gotten dispensation, they judged it to send a bad signal). Google
even autocompletes "kong olav trikken" (king Olav tram) for me if I type in
"kong olav", and you'll find pictures of it in most Norwegian history books...

(The hilarious part is that this was partially staged: the press heard he'd
taken the tram, and nicely asked if they might be allowed to come along _next
time_ and were given the ok by the palace; had people in general been more
media savvy at the time, it'd likely have had the opposite effect)

~~~
arethuza
I was rather surprised to find out that the current Norwegian royals were
actually _elected_ in 1905 :-)

~~~
Dewie
The democratic vote was over whether Norway should become a republic or a
monarchy. Prince Carl (to be King Haakon) was already chosen as a candidate at
that time, and had agreed to the seat as long as the the Norwegian people
would accept him.

------
auctiontheory
Although the author with the Indian name doesn't mention it, Denmark, among
Western European countries, is known for its racism toward non-white
immigrants.

So if Denmark is in some way "better," it's only better for those who are
allowed to join the club. Of course, that doesn't mean others can't adapt
Danish ideas about education and redistribution to our country.

