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Read this book, or just the Cliff Notes on this wiki link, to see what the OP is claiming about the Norwegian hoax the MSM is feeding us here.
Yes, median income is ~$10,000/yr higher there than the US, but the taxes are ~$10,000/yr higher, so your take home pay is similar than it is here. After you pay your taxes, housing, food, utilities, transportation, there's almost nothing left over as disposable income.
The disposable income in Scandinavia won't go very far either. New cars cost $62,000, and a gallon of gas is $6.95/gallon. Everything there cost quite a bit more than it costs here. Some items like a Big Mac, just 10% more, but books and cheese can cost 50% more. New cars are mostly driven by government aristocrats. Most citizens drive cars that are 5+ yrs old, if they have a car at all. Houses are tiny, and the weather's bad 8 months/yr..
This is why birth rates there have been falling (generally speaking, there are up cycles in some Country's some of the time) since the 1950's.
Most couples wait until their mid to late 30's to have kids. Some governments there are now paying couples to have kids, or importing kids from other Country's...like Russia.
Yes, Scandinavia is better than most other places in the World, but not better than here in the U.S..
After reading the book, I'd guess if your family made $60,000+ in the U.S. and do not live in costly East or West Coast city like San Fran, or NYC, you'd be better off in the USA. If your family income is less than $50,000 here, you'd likely be better off there...if you don't mind the weather. Between $50,000-$60,000 similar.
The first way they lie is by ignoring the obvious differences between small homogeneous countries of 5-10 million people and a large diverse country of 340 million people with all sorts of competing interests. But a more obvious lie is that socialism worked in Scandinavia. At one point during the global rise of collectivism Scandinavia actually was a socialist place. The results: ZERO jobs created and a complete hault of innovation coming from the region between the 1960s and 1990s. It wasn’t until they cut government spending by 40% and privatized large portions of their economies they started growing and innovating again. Another lie is that they have some sort of progressive tax code, they don’t, they have the most regressive taxes on earth. They have LARGE national sales taxes and high minimum taxes on their poor and working class. The US tax code is easily one of the most progressive tax codes on earth. Whereas the Scandinavian taxes are SUPER regressive. If we tried to implement their tax code every politician would be voted out. Don’t fall for the socialism lie people it largely has resulted in poverty, starvation, dictators, and regression worldwide. It is an ideology that is largely discredited.
Does anything matter in your life besides money? Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world. Happiness counts for something to a lot of people. I'll guess they have a lower poverty rate than us, too.
Does anything matter in your life besides money? Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world. Happiness counts for something to a lot of people. I'll guess they have a lower poverty rate than us, too.
I'm rating California the happiest state in the U.S.
This is why birth rates there have been falling (generally speaking, there are up cycles in some Country's some of the time) since the 1950's.
Did you not know that birth rates in the US have been falling since the 50's or 60's as well? In fact it's been happening in the entire developed world since then.
Did you not know that birth rates in the US have been falling since the 50's or 60's as well? In fact it's been happening in the entire developed world since then.
The average European woman has 1.6 kids, US is 1.8, and Europe's is falling faster than the US overall. Switzerland is 1.5. Italy, Spain, Germany, are even lower. Sweden is 1.85, the only County I looked at that was higher than the US currently.
Does anything matter in your life besides money? Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world. Happiness counts for something to a lot of people. I'll guess they have a lower poverty rate than us, too.
How would you go about legislating happiness in the US. Scandinavia has a collectivist culture while the US is very individualistic. Janteloven is where one supports the collective and doesn’t boast about individual accomplishments, meanwhile in the US people can’t stop posting about their extravagant lives on social media. I bet you there would be a lot more happy people if they stopped using social media and stopped comparing themselves to the Jones’. If people started to focus on what they have instead of what they don’t have, they may be more happy. Again, I don’t know how they collect this happiness data and don’t know the details of the survey.
This is an interesting read on suicide rates across the world.
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