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Comment by laut | Hacker News Reader

The nordic countries have been capitalist for a long time. In 1960 the taxes in Denmark were lower than in the US. In the 1960s and 1970s the welfare state really started expanding.

The system as it is now in Denmark is unsustainable. Most people don't work. The government is running a deficit. And the outlook is very low growth and Denmark is going to be the poorest northern European country.

It used to be in the top 5 of the richest countries in the world.

Besides the government deficit and debt, the population also has high private debt. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230444460457733...

One of the good things in Denmark that you don't have in most southern European countries is that you can fire people easily.

BTW Denmark has had the school voucher system for decades.

edit: According to this site Denmark is more economically free than the US: http://www.heritage.org/index/

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> Most people don't work.

Now that's just absurdly wrong. Come on, you can do better than that.

Denmark have an unemployment rate of 6% which is not good, but certainly better than many European countries - and better than the US, as far as I can tell. Furthermore, Denmark have a comparatively large workforce because it has relatively few stay at home parents (which doesn't count in employment numbers).

The "most people don't work" statement may be true if you count every living person, including newborn babies, kids, students, retired people, disabled and so on.

Click 2013. In the red municipalities less than 50% are employed. http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2013/01/26/103754.htm

Technically correct, but also very misleading in a discussion concerning sustainability of the welfare system. Obviously a working couple with three kids is not a problem in the same way that e.g. three unemployed people per two working.

Are they seriously counting children as unemployed? It would make sense to count students, since studying is often an alternative when young people find themselves out of work.

Well, the link in the parent is to a TV-channel new item, so it is not intended as serious statistics. It is probably intended to highlight a legitimate problem ("baby boom"-generation getting retired and life expectancy increasing, leading to a smaller part of the population working), but lumping kids together with unemployed and retired is just uninformative.

> One of the good things in Denmark that you don't have in most southern European countries is that you can fire people easily.

I feel this requires a very particular definition of “good.“

It's good because it's less risky to hire people. In Spain it's hard to fire people and the youth unemployment rate there was more than 50% last time I checked.

edit: And the ethical answer is because employers and employees should have the freedom to voluntarily agree on the terms of employment.

I have a different view of ethics. To me it seems more ethical to give people the freedom to voluntarily agree on the terms of employment within certain limits.

The reason for this is two fold: first, some people need protecting and second, the employment contract is frequently an unequal power relationship.

Also, I'm not sure it's good to pick an economy in poor shape and presume it can be reduced to a single reason. Germany has laws to protect workers, for example, but no one says they're in trouble.

I guess what I'm saying is that making it too hard to fire workers is one thing that can drive unemployment up, but only one of many, and it should be balanced by the need to care for others. Some middle position seems best.

The flip part is that it doesn't mean people end up on the street because there are insurance against being unemployed.

It's always a bit amusing hearing outsiders refer to Scandinavia as 'socialist'. This is very far from the truth.

In Norway, the Labour party has been in power for much of the last hundred years, seems reasonable that it would be quite the socialist haven. In reality, in the last fifty years, anyone rising to power in the Labour party has had to be pre-approved by the CIA (well documented in e.g. self biographies of the people involved).

As it turns out, unsurprisingly, this has not been very conducive to any form of socialism.

> In reality, in the last fifty years, anyone rising to power in the Labour party has had to be pre-approved by the CIA (well documented in e.g. self biographies of the people involved

Do you have any URL to document this?

> hearing outsiders refer to Scandinavia as 'socialist'

I think this is mostly from the perspective of the US. To them, we are extremely socialist with our free healthcare and free education.

You know, just a few years ago, anyone could come to sweden and have a free university education.

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