Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault
It began as a stunt intended to prove that hardship and poverty still existed in this small, wealthy country, but it backfired badly. Visit a single mother of two on welfare, a liberal member of Parliament goaded a skeptical political opponent, see for yourself how hard it is.
It turned out, however, that life on welfare was not so hard. The 36-year-old single mother, given the pseudonym Carina in the news media, had more money to spend than many of the countrys full-time workers. All told, she was getting about $2,700 a month, and she had been on welfare since she was 16.
In past years, Danes might have shrugged off the case, finding Carina more pitiable than anything else. But even before her story was in the headlines 16 months ago, they were deeply engaged in a debate about whether their beloved welfare state, perhaps Europes most generous, had become too rich, undermining the countrys work ethic. Carina helped tip the scales.
With little fuss or political protest or notice abroad Denmark has been at work overhauling entitlements, trying to prod Danes into working more or longer or both. While much of southern Europe has been racked by strikes and protests as its creditors force austerity measures, Denmark still has a coveted AAA bond rating.
But Denmarks long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them.
Some of that is a result of a depressed economy. But many experts say a more basic problem is the proportion of Danes who are not participating in the work force at all be they dawdling university students, young pensioners or welfare recipients like Carina who lean on hefty government support.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html?pagewanted=all
djean111
(14,255 posts)that illustrated why a lot of the "facts" in this editorial are skewed and/or misrepresented.
PETRUS
(3,678 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Higher than Greece but less than France...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
Cleita
(75,480 posts)at times women with children on welfare seemed to do better than single mothers who worked. Part of the reason was lack of decent day care for the working mothers. Another, was lower wages for women than for men and often the minimum wage was less than what was indexed as a living wage. Also there was a lack of access to affordable health care which the welfare mothers had. These are easy fixes. I do believe that we should give able bodied welfare recipients government jobs along with day care and health care. There is always something that needs doing. We should keep minimum wage a living wage so that when jobs open in the private sector there isn't a loss suffered by the welfare mother when making a switch. If the Danes are in fact concerned about this, it's any easy fix, but I really don't think they are. I read many such similar articles that seemed authoritative about Canadian health care back in the day that turned out to be untrue.
LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)73% of people between 15 and 64 are in paid work, as compared with an average of 66% in the OECD countries as a whole (and of course many of the remainder would be full-time students).
RainDog
(28,784 posts)The NYTimes is just engaging in right wing spin.
Since most Americans favor the level of equality that's achieved by Denmark's taxation system - that's what the right wing is really trying to go after. They want to discredit a system that has achieved better results than the American one, in terms of overall health and well being of a nation's citizens.
demwing
(16,916 posts)This looks as if the OP agrees with the editorial.
BTW - what happened to the 3 paragraph rule?
fasttense
(17,301 posts)I don't buy it. It fits too well into the right wingers - make you starve for your own good - deluded economic theories. There is a big piece of the puzzle they are leaving out and in about 3 months, after the lies have run around the world 3 times, we will find out how much of lie this is.
90% of all right wing neoCON welfare stories are made up on the spot.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Otherwise the "job creators" won't get to keep all the money.
PETRUS
(3,678 posts)This is covered by a Creative Commons license and not subject to copyright, so here's the whole damn thing:
The first paragraphs describe the generosity of the welfare state, then we get this ominous warning in the 5th paragraph:
"But Denmarks long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them."
Oooooh, scary! Yeah people are living longer in Denmark, that's something that's been happening for a couple of hundred years or so. Like every other wealthy country, people live longer in Denmark than in the United States. While they are projected to continue to see gains in life expectancy and further aging of the population, the increase is actually going to much slower than in the United States.
From 2012 to 2025 the percentage of the Danish population over age 65 is projected to rise from 17.8% to 21.2%, an increase of 3.4 percentage points. By comparison, in the United States the share of the population over age 65 is projected to rise from 13.6% to 18.1%, an increase of 4.5 percentage points over the same period, from a considerably smaller base. The impact of aging on the economy and the government budget will clearly be much larger in the U.S. than Denmark, especially since the government first starts paying for health care for people after they turn age 65 in the United States. (Like every other wealthy country, Denmark has national health insurance.)
The concern that, "in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them," is especially touching. In the United States we have such a region, it's called the "United States." In March, 143.3 million people were employed out of a total population of 323 million for a ratio of workers to population nationwide of roughly 44.4 percent. In many parts of the country it would be much lower.
The piece then goes on to describe the extent of the Danish welfare state with its 56 percent top marginal income tax rate, telling readers:
"But few experts here believe that Denmark can long afford the current perks. So Denmark is retooling itself, tinkering with corporate tax rates, considering new public sector investments and, for the long term, trying to wean more people the young and the old off government benefits."
Hmmm, it would be interesting to know what data the experts are looking at. According to the IMF, Denmark had a ratio of net debt to GDP at the end of 2012 of 7.6 percent. This compared to 87.8 percent in the United States. Its deficit in 2012 was 4.3 percent of GDP, but almost all of this was due to the downturn. The IMF estimated its structural deficit (the deficit the country would face if the economy was at full employment) at just 1.1 percent of GDP. Furthermore, the country had a huge current account surplus of 5.3 percent of GDP in 2012, more than $800 billion in the U.S. economy. This means that Denmark is buying up foreign assets at a rapid rate. By contrast, the United States has a large current account deficit.
If there is something unsustainable in this picture, it is not the sort of data that economists usually look at. Is marijuana legal in Denmark?
Then we find the real problem is that no one in Denmark is working:
"In 2012, a little over 2.6 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 were working in Denmark, 47 percent of the total population and 73 percent of the 15- to 64-year-olds.
"While only about 65 percent of working age adults are employed in the United States, comparisons are misleading, since many Danes work short hours and all enjoy perks like long vacations and lengthy paid maternity leaves, not to speak of a de facto minimum wage approaching $20 an hour. Danes would rank much lower in terms of hours worked per year."
So in spite of the generous Danish welfare state a higher percentage of its working age population works than in the United States. (Actually Denmark ranks near the top of the world in employment to population ratios.) Yet, somehow this doesn't really count because people in Denmark get vacations, work shorter hours, and have a higher effective minimum wage.
This ranks pretty high in the non sequitur category, apparently when you want to bash the welfare state, the rules of logic do not apply. Danes, like most Europeans, have opted to take much of the gains in productivity growth over the last three decades in the form of shorter work years rather than higher income. (One interesting result of this practice is that we have some hope to save the planet from global warming -- greenhouse gas emissions are highly correlated with income.) Of course Danes still work about 8 percent more hours on average than hard-working Germans, according to the OECD. If there is a problem in this picture, the NYT might want to devote a few paragraphs to telling readers what it is.
As far as the $20 an hour effective minimum wage, isn't the problem of a high minimum wage supposed to be that it creates unemployment. But the NYT just told us that Denmark has higher employment rates than the United States. (My brain hurts.)
Okay, we get it. The NYT doesn't like Denmark's welfare state. It doesn't really have any data to make the case that Denmark's welfare state is falling apart and leading to all sorts of bad outcomes, but they can wave their arms really fast and hey, they are the New York Times.
From http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nyt-uses-news-story-to-express-dislike-of-danish-welfare-state
bemildred
(90,061 posts)LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)I have never been to Denmark, but I have been to Norway and Finland, and think they are great countries, and the general atmosphere in Scandinavia, 'the land that Thatcherism forgot' as I call it, is much better than in many other countries.
Right-wingers tend to think of a welfare state as Some People (the 'workers' and 'strivers') subsidizing The Others (the 'shirkers' and 'skivers' plus a small number of 'truly needy'). This is not so. When it works properly, it means everyone looking out for everyone else. I find Finns and Norwegians on average more helpful on a personal, individual level than those in some other countries - perhaps because they have not been brought up on fear and suspicion of anyone who needs help. And yes, they certainly have a work ethic; e.g. when there for work collaborations, we started earlier in the morning than I've found typical elsewhere!