Gaze Upon the Danish Dream of Freedom

[marmar]

via truthdig:


Gaze Upon the Danish Dream of Freedom
Posted on May 28, 2013


Unlike the Danes, American society has abstracted freedom from its prerequisite of economic security. Vermonters learned of enviable Danish freedom in a series of town meetings this month with one of their senators, Bernie Sanders, and Peter Taksoe-Jensen, the Danish ambassador to the U.S.

“Large crowds came out to learn about a social system very different from our own which provides extraordinary security and opportunity for the people of Denmark,” Sanders wrote of the meetings in an editorial in The Huffington Post on Sunday.

Most Americans are gripped with “a massive amount of economic anxiety,” Sanders continued. “Unemployment is much too high, wages and income are too low, millions of Americans are struggling to find affordable health care and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. “While young working families search desperately for affordable child care, older Americans worry about how they can retire with dignity. Many of our people are physically exhausted as they work the longest hours of any industrialized country and have far less paid vacation time than other major countries.”

Not so in Denmark. There, “social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a ‘solidarity system’ that makes sure that almost no one falls into economic despair. Danes pay very high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would find hard to believe,” Sanders wrote. Taksoe-Jensen told his American audiences that although Danes have a difficult time becoming obscenely wealthy, no one is allowed to be poor, Sanders noted. Minimum wage is twice what it is in the United States, and people who are unable to find jobs and care for themselves have a basic guaranteed income of $100 per day. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/gaze_upon_the_danish_dream_of_freedom_20130528/

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. I thought that agreed assumption here in the States is that.....

if you gave people $100 a day then no one would work.
It kind of proves them wrong.

[niyad]

2. the "greatest country on earth" has a lot to learn from the rest of the world when it comes to. .

a lot of things. goddess forfend that we should actually be a society that views the social contract as something real and binding.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Denmark, for example, has a top tax rate of more than 60 percent, but that applies ...

Denmark, for example, has a top tax rate of more than 60 percent, but that applies to anyone making more than $54,900.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/a-tax-system-stacked-against-the-99-percent/

Stiglitz has praise for the Danish mortgage system in his books, but I'm having trouble finding anything about it online ...