Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. For example in 2019 by Gini coefficient, the most unequal countries in the world were #1 the Netherlands, #2 Russia, #3 Sweden, and #4 the United States (with Denmark coming in at #8). The data is clearly pretty noisy, but as far as I can see Sweden was again more unequal than the US in 2021:
Meanwhile Southern Europe has reasonably high income inequality, but not much wealth inequality. Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
> many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
A missing piece of the puzzle may be regulatory capture and a strong political/legal structure that resists the worst ambitions of cruel people whether they be wealthy or poor.
You can think of wealth like the potential energy of a spring under tension. If used properly it is capable of powering the most amazing and intricate social mechanisms but if poorly regulated it destroys social fabric and the well being of every day people.
Things like Citizens United and lobbyists representing cruel wealthy interests running unchecked over American democracy are examples of the socially destructive potential energy of wealth.
I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US because they see more opportunity to make money and be cruel in that environment while wealthy people who have some affinity with their nation and the people of it choose to remain and don't or can't lobby for terribly antisocial policies.
> I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US
That's an interesting thought! It would make sense that the people who care less about others and more about themselves would find it easier and more beneficial to leave. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the wealth, personality traits and political views of the people who leave.
If you donât mind me asking, how were you able to immigrate there? I have family that lives in Norway on my fatherâs side and Iâve sometimes fantasized about packing up my life and moving there after I visited them and saw what an amazing place it is. The few times Iâve been manic enough to actually consider its realistic plausibility Iâve always been stopped at the dead end of their immigration policy. Maybe things have changed but when I looked into it, it seemed like a very difficult bar to meet (I wouldâve either tried to find a skilled trade immigration policy, or perhaps used my extended family as a reason, but neither of those routes seemed particularly possible).
I'd like to point out that any country providing universal healthcare is going to be a big improvement in standard of living for many of my friends. The sometimes hellish nature of the USA's for-profit healthcare system is very real.
Then there's crippling student debt following you nearly to the grave, gun violence, etc.
We grew up being told we had more freedom than anybody else, only to learn as adults that not only does freedom carry a heavy price, but so does every flu and broken bone.
Freedom is ridiculous. It's not what Americans have nor want. It's free in a warzone. True freedom is total chaos. Americans do not have nor want real freedom.
Itâs not cope. You can compete for the same âquality of lifeâ resources being in the median vs top 5-percentile. Itâs not possible in the U.S. or UK.
I will generalize but by my experience most Americans I have met just can't fathom to pay (= taxed) for some common good. Why should I pay for someone's healthcare when I live healthy and all I see that others are smoking? Why should I pay for someone's free train ticket when I only travel by car? This I saw across all genders, age groups, and political affiliation. Americans have this hyper individualist mindset that no other country does in the planet. It's good for some things like innovation (see the HN crowd) but not necessarily a benefit for the society.
Americans are literally socially selected for that mindset. Around the world, the vast majority of people donât want to leave their home countries: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652748/desire-migrate-remains-r.... Even in sub-saharan africa, only 37% would emigrate if they had the choice. In asia itâs single digits. So a large share of Americaâs population is literally made up of the most antisocial 10-20% of the population that would leave, along with their descendants.
>Why should I pay for someone's healthcare when I live healthy and all I see that others are smoking?
This is a common bad, not a common good. Fundamentally people follow incentives, and when you financially punish good behaviour and reward bad behaviour (make someone with healthy habits pay for someone else's unhealthy habits), you disincentivise the good behaviour and incentivise the bad behaviour. At a society-wide scale, that leads to more of the bad behaviour.
Trust me, we live this. And it's always someone else's unhealthy habits; I remember a chainsmoking manager expounding at lunch about the awful burden drug users put on the economy.
Seems plausible wrt my experience, though I've only skimmed it. This is gonna be vague but hopefully interesting.
I feel like there's a traditional job market in Denmark, and then a more recent, foreign-influenced market.
Most people work in the traditional market: there's a collective bargaining agreement, and you just get whatever you get. If they really like you, they find some peanuts within the budget that you can have, but you're not going to negotiate a 40% salary bump compared to similar profiles. You're on a fixed ladder that most of the people doing your title are on. Teachers, doctors, a fair few devs who work in traditional firms. Now and again, it hits the news that some union has demanded a bit more money, and there's some back and forth in the media. But nothing changes about the system, if you work one of these jobs, you are stuck with whatever the outcome of the negotiation is.
Now, Denmark is also a modern country with a lot of highly educated, English speaking people who know what people are doing in other countries.
There's a bunch of power traders in Jutland making a ton of money. There's a bunch of startups of the SV type. There's influencers selling toothpaste and makeup. There's guys trying to build nuclear power. There's private equity and consulting. These guys tend have a different ethos when it comes to salary.
> A key finding is that a more equal predistribution of earnings, rather than income redistribution, is the main reason for the lower income inequality in the Nordic countries compared to the U.S. and the U.K. While the direct effects of taxes and transfers contribute to the relatively low income inequality in the Nordic countries, the key factor is that the distribution of pre-tax market income, particularly labor earnings, is much more equal in the Nordics than in the U.S. and the U.K.
Yes and this can be good or bad if you work hard and your colleagues do not. I have worked in Norway since 2017. I like it, but I do think that there are other options. Americans like to complain about everything but, at least as far as it goes on hacker news, they have way more options for high salaries than the same workers in Norway do. Of course there are exceptions but having easier access to salaries that are above 100k USD and can grow substantially from 100k USD really changes things. But on the academic side, American PhD students are treated like shit and make shit, whereas Norwegian PhD students get 50-60k salary (totally liveable in Oslo), pension, free healthcare, and likely no teaching requirements, and a lot of academic freedom.
In Norway there also is a strong emphasis on generational wealth being transferred forward. This has made the housing market in Oslo somewhat impenetrable if you didn't have a parent helping you out on your first flat when you are 20.
I'm not saying Norway is bad, I think it's a great place to live if you can accept the winter and that you will never be Norwegian. Also, you should accept that you live in a different culture and should try to figure out how best you can emulate and integrate. This is true for any immigrant situation in my opinion though. It was your choice to move to this country, why show up and think you know better?
I like having a ski mountain right next to the city and I like the university culture as it is more flat like American-style than hierarchical like European-style (I am a research scientist). That being said I lived the last two years in The Netherlands and I think it is better overall in terms of cultural acceptance of outsiders and I think I feel like I understand and, importantly, agree with the ideas of what makes the Dutch the Dutch. Who knows. I don't have all the answers, just my two cents.
Yes, but that is not what you mean when you say it like this.
If you really stood behind this, then you would believe that the cleaning personnel who wakes up at ungodly hours take make sure areas are clean should be amongst the highest earners.
Academics in particular are not really aligned with what it means to work.
Edit: academic work is high risk, high reward. But procrastinating for weeks upon weeks to write a paper last minute is IMHO not hard work - though it can be valuable work.
It's worth noting that Norway gets nearly a tenth of its GDP from natural resources, like oil and fish, which is far more than any other country with democratically elected leadership, so how Norway's economy works is very different from how other countries ecenomies work.
Having worked at a company with a collective agreement in Sweden, nothing within it restricted my salary or my ability to negotiate as an individual. Upon coming into effect, the agreement simply gave me more vacation days and set a minimum yearly raise to keep up with inflation (one that was always surpassed and enhanced further with individual performance bonuses etc).
That sounds like what the paper is saying. To paraphrase, the equality doesn't come from tax redistribution as much as a flatter wage curve. I don't think they are saying it is good or bad, just explaining how it happens.
Why specifically to Norway, and not let's say to Tanzania?
I worked with bright folks located in Tanzania in ~2017 and developers salaries were like 1/10 of Canadian.
Sure, a general inflexibility. This is in particular present in doing extra when software is failing, staying up to date with one's vocation, and backing/assuming convictions.
It is also not binary, and likely more a selection bias, as the people who are actually driven already left these job markets (... To earn more elsewhere).
One of the things I learned from some Norwegians on a trip to Norway:
In Norway, if a restaurant abuses its staff, it's not just the staff that will strike or sympathetic customers who will organize a boycott. It's the plumbers who won't show up to fix the sink that breaks, the carpenters who won't show up to patch up a dented door jam or install a new shelf, and the shippers who won't drive ingredients out to the restaurant anymore.
In the US, that kind of coordinated cross-discipline striking is explicitly illegal (I'd have to go look up my history to confirm, but I believe that was related to the federal intervention to stop the rail strikes because it disrupted mail delivery).
So freedom but not like that?
I think if more of the world, especially people living in the US, had more of the Norway mentality, "big tech" abuse wouldn't have taken hold in the first place (e.g. the Apples and Googles and Metas of today would never get their sinks installed, let alone 3rd party apps made).
Here's what I've seen first-hand in a "labour-friendly" country. An employee doesn't show up at his workplace a few days a week, for several months, without doctor's notes or any real reason. Employer finally fires them. Employee goes to court and after a year gets a $20k compensation for "unlawful termination", even though his absence on the workplace was documented (but not properly processed, apparently).
Nordic countries are higher-trust than America is, and so sometimes concepts like this do not need to be formally defined: "you know it when you see it" is a valid concept when people have sufficient dignity and respect for self and others as to not claim abuse when it's not actually present.
This breaks down in a system with different game-theoretical Schelling points - different "default strategies". If the default mode of behaviour for a large constituency of participants is to exploit all available weaknesses in the system, then the system has to become more formalized, more defensive, and eventually has to put firewalls around anything that could be exploited.
This is among the reasons why socialized medicine / welfare / etc work better in some countries than others. If it comes coupled with a high sense of dignity that makes one not want to fling oneself upon the commons unless it's strictly necessary, then it can do well; but if everyone wants to take everything that isn't nailed down, you simply cannot afford to offer as much, ever.
Probably best not to shoehorn in your specific experience into this comment this way, itâs not really applicable outside of your desire to start yourself off on a rant
Abuse is typically things like not paying their salary, withholding holiday contributions, breaking contractual scheduling obligations, threatening the staff with termination or reduced pay, and a host of other apparently normal behavior for certain kinds of employers.
âUnlawful terminationâ is only a thing when it is either in breach of contract, or discrimination. Typical contracts in Scandinavia mandate a 1 month notice in advance of termination. I donât know why you would think thatâs unreasonably long. (And yes, the social security net is the reason it can be so short.)
I'm not saying that stuff like that doesn't happen, but what do you think is the ratio between employers abusing their employees compared to employees abusing their employers?
And with the different kinds of abuse, which "side" do you think causes the most genuine harm to the other though their actions?
> In the US, that kind of coordinated cross-discipline striking is explicitly illegal (I'd have to go look up my history to confirm, but I believe that was related to the federal intervention to stop the rail strikes because it disrupted mail delivery).
No, itâs just a straight up federal law that bans striking in the railroad and airline industries:
The USâs people (by proxy of its democratically elected leaders) believe some workers deserve fewer rights than others.
It isnât so different than an informal caste system, except it is far more flexible and allows a few to break through, especially if they can prove their economic mettle. The US makes a lot more sense once you realize much (the majority, I would say) accept that some people deserve more than others.
What is most important is trying to not be at the bottom, and staying ahead of those below you. Another easy example is the superior unions for cops and firefighters, who are typically used to maintain the status quo (similar to a kingâs guards). These union members will readily support leaders who want to weaken other unions.
1) It makes me wonder where the surplus goes. Invested back into the corporations, so that the people who run them have a large amount of power? That would be dystopian. Unless I'm making an incorrect assumption, like...
2) Is it only downward compression, or does it perhaps act both upwardly AND downward? So there's little profit unspoken for, and anyone participating in the labor market is receiving a roughly equal piece of the economic output (or, at least, within a relatively narrow band).
3) That would suggest something rather radical to the (neo)liberal mindset of there being no ceiling on what spoils of productivity one can claw to oneself: instead, an acknowledgment that we're all roughly equal humans giving up a roughly equal portion of life, time, energy, and freedom to labor, regardless of the prerequisites to be competent at that labor (or of the opportunities to exploit one's position).
4) As for implications for other countries, I wonder if there are any for those in which social, racial, and class hierarchies are deeply embedded. Can the kind of robust wage bargaining described emerge even without all of that rectified? Maybe it's what catalyzes that rectification?
I did a couple of quick searchers with help of ChatGPT, and it seems like in Norway, at least, a tenured professor would get ~$50k post-tax, a primary school teacher ~$35k, and a cleaner ~$20k. If anything, such low income inequality seems dystopian. I would expect talented and ambitious people rather move elsewhere.
This approach has its benefits: excellent infrastructure, clean cities, well maintained countryside, low crime rate and less pressure to "do, do, do it now!" Not everything is about money.
That said, the global economy is about the money, so I have a strong suspicion that this fact will hit Europe hard in the next few decades.
The average Norwegian monthly salary across every working person is USD 5902 per month - before tax. That works out to USD 70824 per year including 4-5 weeks paid holiday. These are public numbers https://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/lonn-og-arbeidskraftkos...
Taxes are progressive which means if you earn below average youâre taxed a lot less than if youâre over average. If you have an average salary youâll get taxed around 25%. If you have a salary twice the average youâll close in on twice the tax, before any deductions.
Paid holiday, free kindergarten, free medical support and pensions savings are included in the tax you and your employers pay. The employer pays 14% tax on your salary.
If you see life as some game to optimize only for yourself not the people around you then for sure as very high earners, easy to move somewhere else, and some do. But from my point of view thatâs a sad outlook on life and itâs not all one sided, that professor payed nothing for top of the line education, or child care, or 9 months parental leave, or medical etc etc. The high earners put away some money instead and enjoy lower taxes than us on that part.
But mostly itâs the idea of people deserving a decent life and high base life quality anyway. Most of my colleagues instead come here from other countries.
Remember, the deal includes universal health care, tuition-free university, government-backed sick pay, five or six weeks of paid vacation, and more.
I'm from Sweden, which has a similar system. I could not have afforded to attend university in the US system. Here, I could -- with my (government low-interest) student loans being spent only on my living expenses, not tuition. As a result, Sweden has an extra engineer we otherwise wouldn't have, with a good salary contributing to the tax base.
As a Nordic person, that kind of income difference looks realistic (without having checked). But I could never had imagined the difference to be considered as dystopian. If we would dig deeper into this, I would expect our different views to have something to do with differences on what expectations we have, values in life and how we relate to inter-personal statuses.
Isn't it more dystopian that people doing jobs as essential as cleaning have to live in poverty? Just because everyone can clean doesn't mean the people doing it don't deserve a good life. Without people doing those "easy" jobs those talented people wouldn't have time to build and use their talents. The cleaners enable the talented people and so deserve a fair share of what they produce.
Income inequality is a red herring, and too often it is chanted without any thought given to what support for equality means or why inequality is ostensibly opposed. There are, of course, two classes of reasons that people have for supporting income equality.
1. opposition to income inequality per se
2. opposition to something other than income inequality, with inequality as a proxy for that thing
For (2), the person may either believe that income inequality necessarily results in the problem they're concerned about, or they may be confusing it with inequality per se.
For (1), one motivation is the classic envy of the have-nots for the haves, or a basic confusion about justice where it is misunderstood as entailing equality.
The first real problem is poverty. A double income upper middle class family with a $600k home is not equal to the millionaire or billionaire down the road in terms of income, but they are not suffering because of that inequality. Furthermore, the easiest form of equality is universal poverty, something socialist/communist regimes were quite good at arranging. Obviously, this kind of equality is undesirable.
A second problem is the influence money has in politics. This isn't the result of inequality per se, only the deranged relationship to money that people, including those in politics, have. The lust for money is the real culprit here, not money per se.
A third problem, related to the first, is one arising from ineffective markets. On the one hand, this might be the result of central planning or onerous regulation and other features of economies in collectivist societies. These can crush personal initiative and responsibility, and reduce the individual to an element of the collective, thus diminishing the dignity of the person. On the other hand, while free markets are quite good at allocating goods, they aren't infallible, and an idolatry of the market can encourage a participation in the market that flouts morality and regard for human dignity, resulting in a market that instead of contributing to the freedom and good of its participants, becomes a force for exploitation in which some enrich themselves through unjust practices. (I would also add a radical, totalizing libertarianism ideology that reduces the human person to an economic actor - full stop - and construes all human activity as economic, thus dehumanizing market participants.)
I would encourage people to read JPII's 1991 encyclical "Centesimus Annus" for a balanced summary critique of the dominant economic orders of the last century or so as a corrective for their errors.
Right, the real crisis is all those Nordics sneaking into the U.S....
Itâs the hottest destination. Who would not swap six weeks paid vacation and universal healthcare for a $100,000 out-of-network ER bill and five days off a year?
Fun fact, but there's essentially zero correlation between income inequality & wealth inequality- and the Nordics have some of the highest wealth inequality in the world. For example in 2019 by Gini coefficient, the most unequal countries in the world were #1 the Netherlands, #2 Russia, #3 Sweden, and #4 the United States (with Denmark coming in at #8). The data is clearly pretty noisy, but as far as I can see Sweden was again more unequal than the US in 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
Meanwhile Southern Europe has reasonably high income inequality, but not much wealth inequality. Just kind of an underdiscussed piece, especially as many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
The thing about the Nordics is that you can not consume that wealth personally without being heavily taxed - when it is tied up in company assets.
> many people like to issue catastrophic warnings about how wealth inequality destroys a society- then quickly change the subject when you note that the Nordics are more unequal than America
A missing piece of the puzzle may be regulatory capture and a strong political/legal structure that resists the worst ambitions of cruel people whether they be wealthy or poor.
You can think of wealth like the potential energy of a spring under tension. If used properly it is capable of powering the most amazing and intricate social mechanisms but if poorly regulated it destroys social fabric and the well being of every day people.
Things like Citizens United and lobbyists representing cruel wealthy interests running unchecked over American democracy are examples of the socially destructive potential energy of wealth.
I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US because they see more opportunity to make money and be cruel in that environment while wealthy people who have some affinity with their nation and the people of it choose to remain and don't or can't lobby for terribly antisocial policies.
> I'm also curious if there's a selection pressure in play where the more cruel wealthy people in the Nordic countries move to the US
That's an interesting thought! It would make sense that the people who care less about others and more about themselves would find it easier and more beneficial to leave. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the wealth, personality traits and political views of the people who leave.
I immigrated from the US to Norway.
You canât really compare dollar to krone the difference of a US salary to a Norwegian salary.
Iâm not sure how to explain it for those who havenât lived in the nordics, but you don't need a high paying income to live a good life.
If you donât mind me asking, how were you able to immigrate there? I have family that lives in Norway on my fatherâs side and Iâve sometimes fantasized about packing up my life and moving there after I visited them and saw what an amazing place it is. The few times Iâve been manic enough to actually consider its realistic plausibility Iâve always been stopped at the dead end of their immigration policy. Maybe things have changed but when I looked into it, it seemed like a very difficult bar to meet (I wouldâve either tried to find a skilled trade immigration policy, or perhaps used my extended family as a reason, but neither of those routes seemed particularly possible).
Can you elaborate? The sibling comment called this situation dystopian, wondering how you cope.
What sibling comment? I couldn't find any such.
I'd like to point out that any country providing universal healthcare is going to be a big improvement in standard of living for many of my friends. The sometimes hellish nature of the USA's for-profit healthcare system is very real.
Then there's crippling student debt following you nearly to the grave, gun violence, etc.
We grew up being told we had more freedom than anybody else, only to learn as adults that not only does freedom carry a heavy price, but so does every flu and broken bone.
Freedom is ridiculous. It's not what Americans have nor want. It's free in a warzone. True freedom is total chaos. Americans do not have nor want real freedom.
Itâs not cope. You can compete for the same âquality of lifeâ resources being in the median vs top 5-percentile. Itâs not possible in the U.S. or UK.
I will generalize but by my experience most Americans I have met just can't fathom to pay (= taxed) for some common good. Why should I pay for someone's healthcare when I live healthy and all I see that others are smoking? Why should I pay for someone's free train ticket when I only travel by car? This I saw across all genders, age groups, and political affiliation. Americans have this hyper individualist mindset that no other country does in the planet. It's good for some things like innovation (see the HN crowd) but not necessarily a benefit for the society.
Americans are literally socially selected for that mindset. Around the world, the vast majority of people donât want to leave their home countries: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652748/desire-migrate-remains-r.... Even in sub-saharan africa, only 37% would emigrate if they had the choice. In asia itâs single digits. So a large share of Americaâs population is literally made up of the most antisocial 10-20% of the population that would leave, along with their descendants.
>Why should I pay for someone's healthcare when I live healthy and all I see that others are smoking?
In the EU (I have no idea about America) tobacco is heavily (and I mean heavily in some countries) taxed because of this.
>Why should I pay for someone's healthcare when I live healthy and all I see that others are smoking?
This is a common bad, not a common good. Fundamentally people follow incentives, and when you financially punish good behaviour and reward bad behaviour (make someone with healthy habits pay for someone else's unhealthy habits), you disincentivise the good behaviour and incentivise the bad behaviour. At a society-wide scale, that leads to more of the bad behaviour.
Trust me, we live this. And it's always someone else's unhealthy habits; I remember a chainsmoking manager expounding at lunch about the awful burden drug users put on the economy.
Seems plausible wrt my experience, though I've only skimmed it. This is gonna be vague but hopefully interesting.
I feel like there's a traditional job market in Denmark, and then a more recent, foreign-influenced market.
Most people work in the traditional market: there's a collective bargaining agreement, and you just get whatever you get. If they really like you, they find some peanuts within the budget that you can have, but you're not going to negotiate a 40% salary bump compared to similar profiles. You're on a fixed ladder that most of the people doing your title are on. Teachers, doctors, a fair few devs who work in traditional firms. Now and again, it hits the news that some union has demanded a bit more money, and there's some back and forth in the media. But nothing changes about the system, if you work one of these jobs, you are stuck with whatever the outcome of the negotiation is.
Now, Denmark is also a modern country with a lot of highly educated, English speaking people who know what people are doing in other countries.
There's a bunch of power traders in Jutland making a ton of money. There's a bunch of startups of the SV type. There's influencers selling toothpaste and makeup. There's guys trying to build nuclear power. There's private equity and consulting. These guys tend have a different ethos when it comes to salary.
From the paper:
> A key finding is that a more equal predistribution of earnings, rather than income redistribution, is the main reason for the lower income inequality in the Nordic countries compared to the U.S. and the U.K. While the direct effects of taxes and transfers contribute to the relatively low income inequality in the Nordic countries, the key factor is that the distribution of pre-tax market income, particularly labor earnings, is much more equal in the Nordics than in the U.S. and the U.K.
Yes and this can be good or bad if you work hard and your colleagues do not. I have worked in Norway since 2017. I like it, but I do think that there are other options. Americans like to complain about everything but, at least as far as it goes on hacker news, they have way more options for high salaries than the same workers in Norway do. Of course there are exceptions but having easier access to salaries that are above 100k USD and can grow substantially from 100k USD really changes things. But on the academic side, American PhD students are treated like shit and make shit, whereas Norwegian PhD students get 50-60k salary (totally liveable in Oslo), pension, free healthcare, and likely no teaching requirements, and a lot of academic freedom.
In Norway there also is a strong emphasis on generational wealth being transferred forward. This has made the housing market in Oslo somewhat impenetrable if you didn't have a parent helping you out on your first flat when you are 20.
I'm not saying Norway is bad, I think it's a great place to live if you can accept the winter and that you will never be Norwegian. Also, you should accept that you live in a different culture and should try to figure out how best you can emulate and integrate. This is true for any immigrant situation in my opinion though. It was your choice to move to this country, why show up and think you know better?
I like having a ski mountain right next to the city and I like the university culture as it is more flat like American-style than hierarchical like European-style (I am a research scientist). That being said I lived the last two years in The Netherlands and I think it is better overall in terms of cultural acceptance of outsiders and I think I feel like I understand and, importantly, agree with the ideas of what makes the Dutch the Dutch. Who knows. I don't have all the answers, just my two cents.
Inequality is never fun for those who believe that they are entitled to more than others.
Regardless - impenetrable housing markets are not a consequence of equality, so you are kind of self contradicting.
>Inequality is never fun for those who believe that they are entitled to more than others.
Do you believe people who work harder or do things that others are unwilling/unable to do are not entitled to more than others?
Yes, but that is not what you mean when you say it like this.
If you really stood behind this, then you would believe that the cleaning personnel who wakes up at ungodly hours take make sure areas are clean should be amongst the highest earners.
Academics in particular are not really aligned with what it means to work.
Edit: academic work is high risk, high reward. But procrastinating for weeks upon weeks to write a paper last minute is IMHO not hard work - though it can be valuable work.
"Entitled" is not the same as "earned".
It's worth noting that Norway gets nearly a tenth of its GDP from natural resources, like oil and fish, which is far more than any other country with democratically elected leadership, so how Norway's economy works is very different from how other countries ecenomies work.
Looks like the paper free to download from here:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w33444
so in summary it's the unions?
In Sweden: Yes, they are in charge of keeping the salaries of the educated "elite" working at Ericsson etc low. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltsj%C3%B6baden_Agreement
Having worked at a company with a collective agreement in Sweden, nothing within it restricted my salary or my ability to negotiate as an individual. Upon coming into effect, the agreement simply gave me more vacation days and set a minimum yearly raise to keep up with inflation (one that was always surpassed and enhanced further with individual performance bonuses etc).
I "saw" that link. It says nothing about your claims at all. Here's my counterpoint: https://www.disney.com
Debatable. Look at companies like Klarna. Pays their employees European wages, then goes public in the US.
That sounds like what the paper is saying. To paraphrase, the equality doesn't come from tax redistribution as much as a flatter wage curve. I don't think they are saying it is good or bad, just explaining how it happens.
If you want cheap developers, come to Norway.
Why specifically to Norway, and not let's say to Tanzania? I worked with bright folks located in Tanzania in ~2017 and developers salaries were like 1/10 of Canadian.
Did not know Tanzania was in the Nordics and thus relevant to the topic, but hey, you learn something new everyday.
Cheap, but at least they are lazy (at least that is how it is most the other Nordic countries).
Can you please elaborate on this?
Sure, a general inflexibility. This is in particular present in doing extra when software is failing, staying up to date with one's vocation, and backing/assuming convictions.
It is also not binary, and likely more a selection bias, as the people who are actually driven already left these job markets (... To earn more elsewhere).
One of the things I learned from some Norwegians on a trip to Norway:
In Norway, if a restaurant abuses its staff, it's not just the staff that will strike or sympathetic customers who will organize a boycott. It's the plumbers who won't show up to fix the sink that breaks, the carpenters who won't show up to patch up a dented door jam or install a new shelf, and the shippers who won't drive ingredients out to the restaurant anymore.
In the US, that kind of coordinated cross-discipline striking is explicitly illegal (I'd have to go look up my history to confirm, but I believe that was related to the federal intervention to stop the rail strikes because it disrupted mail delivery).
So freedom but not like that? I think if more of the world, especially people living in the US, had more of the Norway mentality, "big tech" abuse wouldn't have taken hold in the first place (e.g. the Apples and Googles and Metas of today would never get their sinks installed, let alone 3rd party apps made).
> if a restaurant abuses its staff
What exactly counts as "abuse"?
Here's what I've seen first-hand in a "labour-friendly" country. An employee doesn't show up at his workplace a few days a week, for several months, without doctor's notes or any real reason. Employer finally fires them. Employee goes to court and after a year gets a $20k compensation for "unlawful termination", even though his absence on the workplace was documented (but not properly processed, apparently).
> What exactly counts as "abuse"?
Nordic countries are higher-trust than America is, and so sometimes concepts like this do not need to be formally defined: "you know it when you see it" is a valid concept when people have sufficient dignity and respect for self and others as to not claim abuse when it's not actually present.
This breaks down in a system with different game-theoretical Schelling points - different "default strategies". If the default mode of behaviour for a large constituency of participants is to exploit all available weaknesses in the system, then the system has to become more formalized, more defensive, and eventually has to put firewalls around anything that could be exploited.
This is among the reasons why socialized medicine / welfare / etc work better in some countries than others. If it comes coupled with a high sense of dignity that makes one not want to fling oneself upon the commons unless it's strictly necessary, then it can do well; but if everyone wants to take everything that isn't nailed down, you simply cannot afford to offer as much, ever.
Probably best not to shoehorn in your specific experience into this comment this way, itâs not really applicable outside of your desire to start yourself off on a rant
Abuse is typically things like not paying their salary, withholding holiday contributions, breaking contractual scheduling obligations, threatening the staff with termination or reduced pay, and a host of other apparently normal behavior for certain kinds of employers.
âUnlawful terminationâ is only a thing when it is either in breach of contract, or discrimination. Typical contracts in Scandinavia mandate a 1 month notice in advance of termination. I donât know why you would think thatâs unreasonably long. (And yes, the social security net is the reason it can be so short.)
I'm not saying that stuff like that doesn't happen, but what do you think is the ratio between employers abusing their employees compared to employees abusing their employers?
And with the different kinds of abuse, which "side" do you think causes the most genuine harm to the other though their actions?
> In the US, that kind of coordinated cross-discipline striking is explicitly illegal (I'd have to go look up my history to confirm, but I believe that was related to the federal intervention to stop the rail strikes because it disrupted mail delivery).
No, itâs just a straight up federal law that bans striking in the railroad and airline industries:
https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act
The USâs people (by proxy of its democratically elected leaders) believe some workers deserve fewer rights than others.
It isnât so different than an informal caste system, except it is far more flexible and allows a few to break through, especially if they can prove their economic mettle. The US makes a lot more sense once you realize much (the majority, I would say) accept that some people deserve more than others.
What is most important is trying to not be at the bottom, and staying ahead of those below you. Another easy example is the superior unions for cops and firefighters, who are typically used to maintain the status quo (similar to a kingâs guards). These union members will readily support leaders who want to weaken other unions.
So you're saying you heard about the Norwegian shadow government?
edit: for the people who missed it, I was making a joke about the username of the person I was replying to. Not actually a conspiracy theorist
Thoughts:
1) It makes me wonder where the surplus goes. Invested back into the corporations, so that the people who run them have a large amount of power? That would be dystopian. Unless I'm making an incorrect assumption, like...
2) Is it only downward compression, or does it perhaps act both upwardly AND downward? So there's little profit unspoken for, and anyone participating in the labor market is receiving a roughly equal piece of the economic output (or, at least, within a relatively narrow band).
3) That would suggest something rather radical to the (neo)liberal mindset of there being no ceiling on what spoils of productivity one can claw to oneself: instead, an acknowledgment that we're all roughly equal humans giving up a roughly equal portion of life, time, energy, and freedom to labor, regardless of the prerequisites to be competent at that labor (or of the opportunities to exploit one's position).
4) As for implications for other countries, I wonder if there are any for those in which social, racial, and class hierarchies are deeply embedded. Can the kind of robust wage bargaining described emerge even without all of that rectified? Maybe it's what catalyzes that rectification?
I did a couple of quick searchers with help of ChatGPT, and it seems like in Norway, at least, a tenured professor would get ~$50k post-tax, a primary school teacher ~$35k, and a cleaner ~$20k. If anything, such low income inequality seems dystopian. I would expect talented and ambitious people rather move elsewhere.
This approach has its benefits: excellent infrastructure, clean cities, well maintained countryside, low crime rate and less pressure to "do, do, do it now!" Not everything is about money.
That said, the global economy is about the money, so I have a strong suspicion that this fact will hit Europe hard in the next few decades.
The average Norwegian monthly salary across every working person is USD 5902 per month - before tax. That works out to USD 70824 per year including 4-5 weeks paid holiday. These are public numbers https://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/lonn-og-arbeidskraftkos...
Taxes are progressive which means if you earn below average youâre taxed a lot less than if youâre over average. If you have an average salary youâll get taxed around 25%. If you have a salary twice the average youâll close in on twice the tax, before any deductions.
Paid holiday, free kindergarten, free medical support and pensions savings are included in the tax you and your employers pay. The employer pays 14% tax on your salary.
If you see life as some game to optimize only for yourself not the people around you then for sure as very high earners, easy to move somewhere else, and some do. But from my point of view thatâs a sad outlook on life and itâs not all one sided, that professor payed nothing for top of the line education, or child care, or 9 months parental leave, or medical etc etc. The high earners put away some money instead and enjoy lower taxes than us on that part.
But mostly itâs the idea of people deserving a decent life and high base life quality anyway. Most of my colleagues instead come here from other countries.
Keep in mind Norway has a population of ~5 million with ~$350k savings per person. The country is in a way a giant trust fund commune.
There is more to life than money, and even when speaking of money a lot of things are already paid this way.
Some do. Most don't.
Remember, the deal includes universal health care, tuition-free university, government-backed sick pay, five or six weeks of paid vacation, and more.
I'm from Sweden, which has a similar system. I could not have afforded to attend university in the US system. Here, I could -- with my (government low-interest) student loans being spent only on my living expenses, not tuition. As a result, Sweden has an extra engineer we otherwise wouldn't have, with a good salary contributing to the tax base.
That seems like the opposite of dystopian to me.
As a Nordic person, that kind of income difference looks realistic (without having checked). But I could never had imagined the difference to be considered as dystopian. If we would dig deeper into this, I would expect our different views to have something to do with differences on what expectations we have, values in life and how we relate to inter-personal statuses.
Isn't it more dystopian that people doing jobs as essential as cleaning have to live in poverty? Just because everyone can clean doesn't mean the people doing it don't deserve a good life. Without people doing those "easy" jobs those talented people wouldn't have time to build and use their talents. The cleaners enable the talented people and so deserve a fair share of what they produce.
Can't afford it.
Yep - for people who believe they are better than other and entitled to more, it is dystopian.
But then again, it also ensures that pricing and governance in the broader system is in check.
So it is either this or an oligarchy where people feed their egos
Income inequality is a red herring, and too often it is chanted without any thought given to what support for equality means or why inequality is ostensibly opposed. There are, of course, two classes of reasons that people have for supporting income equality.
1. opposition to income inequality per se
2. opposition to something other than income inequality, with inequality as a proxy for that thing
For (2), the person may either believe that income inequality necessarily results in the problem they're concerned about, or they may be confusing it with inequality per se.
For (1), one motivation is the classic envy of the have-nots for the haves, or a basic confusion about justice where it is misunderstood as entailing equality.
The first real problem is poverty. A double income upper middle class family with a $600k home is not equal to the millionaire or billionaire down the road in terms of income, but they are not suffering because of that inequality. Furthermore, the easiest form of equality is universal poverty, something socialist/communist regimes were quite good at arranging. Obviously, this kind of equality is undesirable.
A second problem is the influence money has in politics. This isn't the result of inequality per se, only the deranged relationship to money that people, including those in politics, have. The lust for money is the real culprit here, not money per se.
A third problem, related to the first, is one arising from ineffective markets. On the one hand, this might be the result of central planning or onerous regulation and other features of economies in collectivist societies. These can crush personal initiative and responsibility, and reduce the individual to an element of the collective, thus diminishing the dignity of the person. On the other hand, while free markets are quite good at allocating goods, they aren't infallible, and an idolatry of the market can encourage a participation in the market that flouts morality and regard for human dignity, resulting in a market that instead of contributing to the freedom and good of its participants, becomes a force for exploitation in which some enrich themselves through unjust practices. (I would also add a radical, totalizing libertarianism ideology that reduces the human person to an economic actor - full stop - and construes all human activity as economic, thus dehumanizing market participants.)
I would encourage people to read JPII's 1991 encyclical "Centesimus Annus" for a balanced summary critique of the dominant economic orders of the last century or so as a corrective for their errors.
[0] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
Right, the real crisis is all those Nordics sneaking into the U.S....
Itâs the hottest destination. Who would not swap six weeks paid vacation and universal healthcare for a $100,000 out-of-network ER bill and five days off a year?
We'll take them up here in Canada instead, thanks. You're welcome too!