My effective income tax rate is 50%, and then there is an additional 25% VAT on everything I buy. How much more of my income does the all-knowing Eli Gottlieb suggest I "contribute"? Perhaps I should give away the remaining 25% and go live on the streets as a declaration of solidarity?
Aside from the general tone of this, that's not how taxes work.
You can only pay VAT on the 50% of your income that you keep (and that is presuming you spend all of it). So you have 50% * 75% = 37.5% of your income left to give to charity.
I also find it a bit interesting that you are OK (presumably) with giving away 63% of your income to the government, where you have hardly any say in how it is spent, but offended at the idea that you should give anything else away when you can choose where it goes.
I don't think he was OK with giving 63% of his income to the government. In addition, some part of that 63% is going to another form of charity: welfare. I can understand how someone, after seeing how a non-trivial part of their income is given away to local poor people, might not want to also give money to foreign poor people.
> "Here's a thing," young white dude founder blogs...
If he would've said black instead of white or dudette instead of dude, Hacker News would have had this guy's header on a platter. Racists, the lot of you.
What about the young white dudes who are unemployed, or work in menial jobs, or dropped out of school and joined the army because they suddenly had to support a child, etc.? Do they deserve to be vilified because there is someone else who is successful and happens to be the same color and sex?
This is not the answer HN is looking for, but Iceland is safe because it's full of Icelanders. England was safe when it was full of Englishmen. Not anymore. Sweden was safe when it was full of Swedes. Not anymore. Etc.
This is actually my intuition, too: most of the Scandinavian countries' successes are better attributed to racial homogeneity than to actually being institutionally sounder.
I can't prove that, though; there have been discussions before about immigration similarities, but nothing that I found convincing enough to remember.
You have an irrationally racist intuition, peoples hostility to racism should be your first clue to criticising your own opinion before voicing it.
Criminality has always been strongly linked to economic class differences. If you look at how immigration injects low economic class workers into medium/high class environments, it is only logical that crime numbers rise.
Racial arguments stem from self-preservationary superiority feelings, and have in the past also been used against Irish and Italian immigrants.
Yeah, I didn't fully spell out my intuition, which was based on the fact that Scandinavian countries are more democratic. This allows for a stronger welfare state, which reduces economic inequalities, thus resulting in a lower crime rate.
My intuition is that the stronger democratic nature of these cultures is due to racial homogeneity, rather than magical Scandinavian white sauce. There are cases in Africa where this can be seen (notion of "it takes a village" have generally come from African communities), but I honestly don't know enough about them to verify: have they scaled to an extent where they're comparable to the ultra-democratic bloc? Have they sufficiently negated the influences of Euro-American imperialism such that we can claim their democratic impulses are original rather than imposed?
The corollary to this is that most of the failures of American democracy can be traced back to the slave trade, from the Three-Fifths Compromise to the present day litany of anti-black sentiment. Irish and Italian immigrants did have problems, but they've been largely integrated into the American melting pot in the present day. Chinese people, such as myself, have had more trouble but have nonetheless integrated better than blacks did, possibly because our enslavement didn't have the same level of cultural momentum, possibly because of an imperialistic cultural history of our own; it's unclear to me.
The failures, thus, come from these struggles. These are struggles that, as far as I am aware, did not happen in Scandinavian history. They have humorous nationalistic jibes between each other, but they did not have the kind of wildly divisive events that led up to the Mason-Dixon line and the Reconstruction, which reinforced these divisions to the detriment of democratic institutions.
In other words, it's not actually that Scandinavians are better people. They're not more democratic because they're less racist. They're more democratic because there were no significant populations of brown people to oppress during their formative periods. Denmark is an interesting edge case, in that they participated in the Colonial Age, but nevertheless built strong democratic structures and were then enveloped in the firestorm over depictions of Mohammed. Or maybe that supports my intuition. Who can tell.
But that's how it is in political science; half of them seem ready to watch democracy deflate like a rubber ducky in the Hong Kong harbor.
Anyways, this was all off-topic, but I thought it was unfair to let an ad hominem stand.
My apologies for the ad hominem. I have a bit of a strong reaction whenever societal problems are linked to racial differences.
The biggest issue with it is that it's always better to look for a different cause, because any solution to a problem that has racial inhomogenity as a cause can only be solved by racial seggregation of one form of another.
If instead solutions are sought in equalizing social economic status and other external factors then the results can only be positive (as I believe social economic factors are dominant anyway).
I don't follow your arguments about the relation between democracy and populations of ethnical minorities at all. All countries that participated in the Colonial Age built strong democratic structures.
Many european countries welcomed a lot of north-african/arabian immigrant workers after the war, Denmark was not one of those. These workers are for a large share muslim. Because Denmark lacks this large muslim population a national paper actually dared show the images, with backlash from the islamic world as a result.
All other European countries had similar issues with mohammed depictions, but none of those made major news outlets (because of fear).
> I have a bit of a strong reaction whenever societal problems are linked to racial differences.
Except that I'm not talking about problems at all. I'm talking about the original question, which was "Why are Scandinavian countries doing so well?" Or put differently, "Why the hell aren't they having our problems?"
Or, the most actionable, "Should we copy their policies? Will those policies work for us?" And as Obamacare has helpfully demonstrated, the attempt to do so provides fuel for the fires of divisiveness. "Sweden did it" isn't a sufficient argument; we need to know why Sweden did it successfully. (For healthcare in particular, it's probably more helpful to look at the UK, since there are fewer differences.)
> I don't follow your arguments about the relation between democracy and populations of ethnical minorities at all. All countries that participated in the Colonial Age built strong democratic structures.
Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are generally accepted to be the strongest bastions of democracy internationally (when you ignore American patriotic "we were first and best" arguments, anyways). We, in this discussion, haven't come up with a useful measure for saying "strong versus weak democracy"; I suspect that I'm more strict than you are, but I also suspect that my notions are inconsistent, since the whole point of this is that I'm saying "strong but fragile", which smells contradictory.
Here's the thing: democracies are really, really hard when you have highly heterogeneous groups. As soon as that heterogeneity becomes a point of contention, your democracy is going to face some severe trauma. The last hundred years of American domestic politics have literally been a struggle with the fallout from the Civil War. For a different example, see Sudan. Or rather, Sudan and South Sudan.
> Because Denmark lacks this large muslim population a national paper actually dared show the images, with backlash from the islamic world as a result.
And this is my point. Denmark's democratic structures are held up as a guiding light for other nations. But if we actually look at how they got there, it's not because they successfully navigated the traumas that resulted from heterogeneity; it's because they never had to.
Immigration is pretty low in Scandinavia. Coming from Paris, it's quite bizarre to visit Copenhagen or Árhus and wonder what happened to the non-white people.
There are actually a lot of refugees/immigrants in the Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Netherlands from Islamic countries, now. And, those communities tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes, although this could be for a variety of reasons -- poverty before moving, poverty after moving, culture, age, ... (Biology seems like the least likely, especially given how bloodthirsty the vikings were only 50 generations ago)
You're welcome to show increasing percentages of non-white people in Scandinavian countries instead of spouting vitriol like an insulting and borderline racist ass.
Scandinavian countries also didn't go around colonizing others, or getting involved in slave trading, or importing cheap labor when convenient, or generally meddling in other countries affairs.
Actually at least Sweden was involved in slave trading, out of a slave fort in Ghana called Carolusborg. I'm pretty sure there was one or a few short lived attempts at colonies as well, somewhere in the Carribean.
You should be careful when posting such statistics. People might think you have racist sentiments, or worse they might enforce their own racist sentiments.
Statistics like that should come with an explanation on how these graphs correlate very strongly with social economic status and other societal effects on lower economic class communities and that actual correlation between race and criminal behaviour is not nearly as dramatic as implied here.
I would imagine the homogeneity in most forms (race, creed, income status, class, political views, etc) reduce conflict and crime. Such homogeneity is not always a good thing though; in the US, at least, we ostensibly follow the "melting pot" philosophy.
I agree with your sentiment, but note that the white English "working" class has descended into much higher criminality and violence over the last fifty years. So there are other factors at work. In contrast this has not happened to nearly such an extent in the USA, for one example.
Yes, we do enjoy our 50-60-70% tax rates here in Europe. Thankfully Sweden recently stopped pissing away the Swedish taxpayers' money by paying for the university education of foreigners.
Yes, we do enjoy our tax rates because we know the benefits (such as the average quality of life) are higher than in other parts of the world (such as USA). Check out the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
I used to do this when I worked for the post office (not in the US) and it was by far the dullest thing I have ever done. Truly loathsome work. It was referred to as "coding".
There were rules in place so you could only do it for 20 minutes at a stretch and only a couple of times (three?) per shift. Presumably this had to do with the fact that the quality - which was a problem - would collapse otherwise. You needed to keep a low average time per letter or you would get booted off coding duties. I can't remember exactly how long, but you needed to be able to code a letter in a matter of seconds.
The American setup looks a lot more hardcore (six screens?!) than the one I used though. Pretty sure the application was written in Visual Basic.
The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route.
"The machines which sort mail are pretty bad-ass. Not only can they sort by postcode, but also by address so the mail comes out in the order in which the mailman visits each building on his route."
Yes. The local bus control station has displays with two rows of three monitors showing bus positions on large maps. They have them set up so operator's eye line is about middle of the two rows. They are just looking at the red dots for buses on a large set of maps though...
Screw you, seriously. You want to remove childbearers from the workforce? You want to reduce everyone's employment experiences by diminishing the market of employees and ideas? You want your ten bucks a year so that you can say you don't support single mothers (note -- extensive public health research demonstrates that productivity and well-being of women of child-bearing age is the best indicator of the overall health of a society)?
Why should society give you anything at all? Why should my tax dollars go towards protecting you from crime, or paying your emergency room bills? And I mean you, specifically, not people in general -- if you don't want to contibute to make everyone's lot better, why should anyone give a crap about you, or for that matter your opinions?
I see I hit a sore spot. I don't really want to remove childbearers from the workforce, but I do want a frank discussion about who bears the costs. Actually, just an admission of the inherent injustice of the system would be nice. Ten bucks a year? Screw you. I pay roughly 70% of my income in taxes every year.
And holy thoughtcrime Batman! Despite paying tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, all government services should be denied to me just because of my opinions?
The tax credits and possible cost of guaranteed time off with pay for having children is nothing compared to the immense cost of raising children that will pay future taxes to allow for the continuance of government and government services.
I don't think you've thought that through. A straight-out bachelor tax would simply make bachelors work less. Tax revenue would fall, and there would be even less money for you leftists to redistribute to women.
Presumably a propaganda piece designed to win over the remaining 50% of the American voters who still haven't bought into the idea that the Democratic party can turn the US into a leftist utopia.
"Democracy will cease to exist when people realize they can vote themselves more money." Does the article mention that 15% of Swedish, female voters work in (government) health care? Add a couple of more percentage points for teachers and other government workers... Is this sustainable?
Does it mention the injustices of the welfare system, where fresh-off-the-airplane "refugees" can receive more in benefits than I net after taxes in my work as a software engineer?
Does the article mention the great Moslem slums of the cities? There are places in Scandinavia which firemen and postmen can no longer go into unescorted for fear of being pummeled by rocks. Does it mention the occasional "youth" riots? (We just had one a few weeks back in Gothenburg). The Sahlgrenska university hospital in Gothenburg must now keep its emergency entrance locked due to recurring fights breaking out between various clans.
> The Chinatown political machine ensures that they get the lion’s share of the benefits
That headline is bolded. Use of the word "they" suggests to me more than one leader.
Maybe it's just a cultural thing, (I'm in the UK) but this next paragraph feels weird, almost xenophobic. It's the kind of thing that only fringe politicians would say.
> But I’m sure that the camera shops, trinket stands, and street-side produce markets of Chinatown are the ones providing the city with most of its tax, jobs, and commerce income.
> No, he should disregard them because as written they're sexist, and don't even have good methodology to try and stand in their defense.
So... If he had a sufficiently good methodology which proved his assertions, they would cease to be sexist and you politically correct lot would approve of them? Somehow I doubt it.
Yes, if proven they would cease to be sexist, because they'd be discriminating based on facts, not based on his apparent prejudice. (However, since the conjecture does seem to come from a combination of sexism/ageism/confirmation bias, it would be surprising if they were proved.)
BTW: Are you proud not to be in the politically correct "lot"? All it really amounts to is trying not to be unnecessarily hateful or demeaning to one another.
I'm not sure that stating an observation that a certain tendency "seems to be" more common among a particular subgroup really counts as discrimination.
> Yes, if proven they would cease to be sexist, because they'd be discriminating based on facts, not based on his apparent prejudice. (However, since the conjecture does seem to come from a combination of sexism/ageism/confirmation bias, it would be surprising if they were proved.)
I see. It's good to know that employers are now free to throw out all applications from Ethiopians, because of the fact that the average IQ in Ethiopia is 63.
> BTW: Are you proud not to be in the politically correct "lot"? All it really amounts to is trying not to be unnecessarily hateful or demeaning to one another.
Please. Political correctness amounts to much more than that.
There needs to be a logically-valid reason to bring gender/age/country of origin/etc. into the discussion at all.
I.e., if you're interviewing an individual for a job, that means you're evaluating that individual's ability to fulfill the job requirements.
You'll get a hell of a lot better mileage out of, say, talking to them about complicated problems than you could ever get from even the average IQ in their family, let alone country or some other ridiculously large group like that. No need to get into the discussion of how valid that number is -- it's irrelevant to a job interview.
To the original point -- if maybe some large-scale study does show that young women tend to make more "social noise" than young men, I'm still having trouble imagining ways that might be relevant when noisy people enter a room I'm in.
My effective income tax rate is 50%, and then there is an additional 25% VAT on everything I buy. How much more of my income does the all-knowing Eli Gottlieb suggest I "contribute"? Perhaps I should give away the remaining 25% and go live on the streets as a declaration of solidarity?