There's a lot of support for this formula, if you model it on northern Europe. Here is just one analysis from a pundit in the USA:
| Quote: |
Finland! Land of the world's no.-1 education and health care systems. You get what you pay for and Finland's 60-percent tax levy gets a lot. Almost no crime. Or the expensive prisons that are necessary for failing to fund excellent education and health care for the poor. Because properly educated and nurtured, the poor become middle class and middle class people generally don't commit crime.
Gallup just put out a study showing that citizens of countries with the highest tax rates are also the world's happiest people. Honest truth. Folks in the Netherlands, Finland and Norway pay the world's highest tax tabs, but also rank as the least stressed, happiest, most contented humans. The Land of Liberty pays much less tax, but only lands at the No. 11 spot on the happiness scale. We are happier than Somalia, however.
Two factors figure. First, the tax rates are deceiving. Adding what Americans pay through the nose for health care and college tuition our tax bills gets us to a "true tax" more or less more than what Nordic-types spend. When we're done with the great American health care shakedown, we have no more disposable dough than they.
But Americans are stuck with all the fret and worry while our happier Nordic brothers sing-song their days away knowing they'll not go unattended in a waiting room or abandoned to eat cat food as aging seniors. And they jiggle their kronors in their pockets without as much as a care for Johan's college bill.
Bliss, it turns out, is bliss. And here, bliss is missed. They play, and we fret over medical and college and what the heck happens to us when we're Grandpa Simpson. |
On edit, forgot link: www.the-signal.com/news/article/13959/ Profile of the people is completely different from North America. They can do with less luxuries, less people have cars, the culture is completely different. Not all of them are happy either. Depends where and who you are.
^Agreed. It's like communist Russia. It was working fairly well till it all came crashing down. I don't think you can force a new system on a country that's been using capitalism for a long time. It's just too different, and too radical. We're different from them.
| SpellcasterDX wrote: |
| ^Agreed. It's like communist Russia. It was working fairly well till it all came crashing down. I don't think you can force a new system on a country that's been using capitalism for a long time. It's just too different, and too radical. We're different from them. |
Well Finland has very little in common with the Russia of the former Soviet Union in that way, it's not a forced, rigid Stalinist system that is ready to come crashing down, as you say. To the contrary, it is a stable member of Europe and the West; it is a mixed economy (capitalist also) like Sweden or the rest of Europe, it's just has a bit more components of socialism than the rest. So I have to disagree with this point. Finland's, and for that matter most of continental Europe's example gives a lot to think about in terms of economic systems and general well-being and happiness of the people.Their education system would be the most essential part to look at. The Germans also have an excellent education system. To have a culture that can provide that kind of "happiness" you need to educate your children in a different way. It is not something that can be imposed from the outside in, it comes from within. Their attitudes are also completely different, less aggressive.
man if it is like that then that is really good. they are using it really good. I hope it's same in other countries too.
| deanhills wrote: |
| Profile of the people is completely different from North America. They can do with less luxuries, less people have cars, the culture is completely different. Not all of them are happy either. Depends where and who you are. |
I also agree. American culture tends to produce people who strive for more and therefore have high expectations due to the central idea that if you work hard you'll get ahead. The people of Finland, however, are stuck in an economic system that doesn't reward individual effort all that much. Therefore they have less opportunities and thereby much lower expectations in life. And when you have low expectations, it's hard to not to meet them. | jmi256 wrote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | Profile of the people is completely different from North America. They can do with less luxuries, less people have cars, the culture is completely different. Not all of them are happy either. Depends where and who you are. |
I also agree. American culture tends to produce people who strive for more and therefore have high expectations due to the central idea that if you work hard you'll get ahead. The people of Finland, however, are stuck in an economic system that doesn't reward individual effort all that much. Therefore they have less opportunities and thereby much lower expectations in life. And when you have low expectations, it's hard to not to meet them. |
Agreed. And those in Sweden, Norway or Finland who have higher expectations and seek greater opportunities, most likely move to other countries like the United States or Canada to realize them. | deanhills wrote: |
| Agreed. And those in Sweden, Norway or Finland who have higher expectations and seek greater opportunities, most likely move to other countries like the United States or Canada to realize them. |
Doesn't that basically jeopardize their growth? Natural selection of the lazy >_> | Hogwarts wrote: |
| deanhills wrote: | | Agreed. And those in Sweden, Norway or Finland who have higher expectations and seek greater opportunities, most likely move to other countries like the United States or Canada to realize them. |
Doesn't that basically jeopardize their growth? Natural selection of the lazy >_> |
Exactly. But I think it's even worse. Not only does it incentivize the best and brightest to seek better opportunities elsewhere, it also causes those who remain to work toward a lower standard. It's basic human nature. If there is no reward for working harder, why would they bother? There will be a certain percentage who are hardwired to strive to succeed, but they would most likely leave. | jmi256 wrote: |
| Hogwarts wrote: | | deanhills wrote: | | Agreed. And those in Sweden, Norway or Finland who have higher expectations and seek greater opportunities, most likely move to other countries like the United States or Canada to realize them. |
Doesn't that basically jeopardize their growth? Natural selection of the lazy >_> |
Exactly. But I think it's even worse. Not only does it incentivize the best and brightest to seek better opportunities elsewhere, it also causes those who remain to work toward a lower standard. It's basic human nature. If there is no reward for working harder, why would they bother? There will be a certain percentage who are hardwired to strive to succeed, but they would most likely leave. |
That's some really funny logic. Why do you all think they need to "seek better opportunities elsewhere" when they are the most satisfied people in the world already? What evidence do you have that the best and brightest are fleeing Norway, and that those remaining are working "toward a lower standard"?
