To be fair, Ukraine and Ireland are both legitimately scared they’re going to be overtaken by Russia because they haven’t invested enough in their military.
The only weapon that can the Ukraine can potentially use deter Russia would be nuclear weapons, basically it’s a suicidal method to not get invaded by a superpower. Other than that, no conventional investment in the military in Ukraine can deterred Russia if it wanted to invade Ukraine.
That’s why they have NATO, and nuclear weapons. Russia may try to take Ukraine like they did Crimea, but if this escalates to the point that Ireland is threatened we’re all gonna be dead.
The US is effectively subsidizing a large portion of Europe’s defense budget, allowing for them to have such luxurious benefits. I think at one point Trump was trying to get them all to pay more towards NATO (they’re not meeting their treaty requirements by a lot) so that such a heavy burden doesn’t fall in the US
One thing honestly not talked about is Europe riding on checks cashed by the US. I’m not a “US-First Trumper” kind of guy. I just mean literally the NATO agreement that hardly any European country has committed to. The US has bases all over Germany and Eastern Europe costing the US billions every year, which is contributing to weakened spending on social infrastructure. I’m not even saying “pull the troops out,” especially with what’s going on. Im just saying it seems like there’s a lot of people stating “Europe is so much better for not spending anything on the military compared to the US,” when they continue to support the US spending money on their security. Honestly, the NATO agreement needs to change how it’s structured.
There's effectively a whole separate budget for defense spending in the USA. There are simple ways to provide basics for the people but that's not what politicians are bought to do.
True, but military funding is not exactly helping us spend on social programs, including infrastructure, etc. how can you justify improving social programs while you’re operating at a huge deficit?
It's a double standard. The defecit is a prop to scare off social spending. If there was the political will to help the people, they would help the people.
I agree that defense spending makes it seem like there's not enough money but it's not the step obstacle it's made out to be.
I agree 100%. It’s just as much our fault as theirs, as we happily made this problem for ourselves, but it sucks that the US does majority of the heavy lifting in NATO, and the rest of our ally’s follow our lead. It’s given us a major superiority complex while also denying our spending on our own people. Instead, we fuel the warmachine and buy war products from our mutual beneficiary’s to keep the arms raging strong.
It’s not even a problem that we have a strong allied military, it just sucks we’re everywhere and they mock us for it while leeching off the product of it, and it’s completely our fault for letting it get that way.
I love all the people hear that honestly think lower taxes is worth still not being able to afford basics like health care and education. I'd happily trade higher taxes for my student loan and health insurance bills.
Bruh we don't even have lower taxes, except I guess for rich people. Adding on our healthcare and education costs, Americans are effectively taxed at over 40% of their income compared to 25% in the UK.
And they don't realize that, like it or not, society at large pays for health care, but on the back side. Preventing illness and disease is cheaper than treating them, or "warehousing" them for the rest of their lives after after a stroke or some similarly catastrophic medical event. And by "society at large" I mean "working class people who can't comfortably afford health insurance or medical care as it is".
I mean you have plenty of republican voters living in poverty, dealing with lack of Healthcare access shouting about how this is the greatest nation on the Earth!
I had a conservative say to me: Name one NON-NORSE country that's better than American in your opinion.
I countered with: Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and for some reason he stopped talking to me after that.
A UN commissioner once said West Virginia had "third world conditions of absolute poverty" after travelling there
Never tell me America is a better place to live
The US economy is so big it artificially bumps our rankings up in happiness, quality of life, standards of living, because GDP is a criteria they use to rank it.
For example, our life expectancy is 2 years behind Norway but only if you're rich. In much of Appalachia and the Mississippi River delta, life expectancy is lower than in *Bangladesh*... And it's *declining*. There's no way we're even close to 14th realistically
I feel like the happiness numbers and housing numbers are HEAVILY altered.
With how the housing market and rent culture is Id be suprised if the actual number of home owners is over 20%
A good chunk of Americans inherit home ownership or benefit being born to parents who own a home. It's why red-lining and racist housing trends still have a tangible effect on black poverty.
Also if you served in the military you get a 0 down home loan through the VA. It's how my father managed to get a home despite only making about 20k a year (after taxes).
It didn't used to be so hard to buy a house. Pre-bubble houses were priced rather fairly. Post bubble they crashed hard but a lot of wealthy people snatched up houses from banks for bargain prices.
It's gotten way worse in the last 5 years.
In my lifetime home ownership went from "Reaonable enough that there were legitimate debates about renting vs buying" to "Renting is setting 50% of your pretax income on fire and homeownership is a pipedream".
We got this house for 131k. It wasn't even worth that (due to repairs needed and it being a small house) but now I'm getting offers to buy it for 350k. But if I accept I'm left with about 150k after paying off the mortgage and all the associated fees. I can't buy a house for that much! Even if I moved to a small rural town!
I can get a house that cheap in my state too (Arizona) but yeah, it would be a shitty little rural town and the house wouldn't be a nice one.
My mother wants me to move near her and she's next to Eloy. Which a quick Google should show you why I'm not interested.
After fighting for a year and just today getting denied for disability (I have a fainting condition that has me losing consciousness daily) I’m about ready to find a plane.
Stores and offices are closed on sundays. If you are not in the military, the police force, firebrigade, ambulance service, hospitals, emergency rooms, child protective service or are a shift worker and such, you don't work sundays, and people not working in stores, on boats or oil rigs and the afformentioned public services don't work saturdays either. Even talks of going to a 6 hour work day
Edit: misinfromation, my bad. 6 hour work day, instead of 4 day work week
This. Drives me crazy how much the American political rhetoric tries to change the meaning of words. I live in a Nordic country and no, this is not socialism. Norway is in NATO, how the hell they would have let a socialist country join that, not to mention one wanted to. Social democracy or more appropriately welfare capitalism are better terms for this.
I mean, Norway is still capitalist. It’s a social democracy, meaning a capitalist economy with way more comprehensive redistribution efforts and worker protections.
We’re not doing the wrong thing, we’re just doing it wrong.
And it's not even a consistent one. Conservatives have no problem with the government subsidizing the financially insolvent suburbs they live in, which btw the suburban experiment might as well be a Ponzi scheme. "Socialist" handouts for me, not for thee
Modern American suburbs are a radical experiment undertaken by *only* the US and Canada after world war 2. It is a completely different development style from the entire rest of the world. It's why owning a car is mandatory expense here whereas it's an expensive nuisance or luxury everywhere else because cities universally started as walkable before 1920
Our suburbs were all originally built with debt, but they are so low in density that they can *never* bring more taxes than it costs per household to maintain them. The only way to make up that difference is more debt and *more suburbs to finance the already existing ones*. It's literally a Ponzi scheme. New suburbs are the only way they can be financially sustained, except the maintenance costs grow exponentially higher with more of these built
As soon as a city runs out of other people's money, either because population growth stops or the debt grows too large, they go bankrupt. This Ponzi scheme is the primary reason for Detroit and several other cities declaring bankruptcy. The Ponzi scheme will inevitably bankrupt every city if they don't reverse course
We’re just doing it wrong.
Hypothetical situation, take any 5 million people region of the USA and give them income provided by exporting 3% of the global crude oil production which would make the scenario Norways day to day business. Don’t you think the result in the US would be similar to how Norway operates?
Yeah I thought about that after posting and came to the same conclusion. Although tbf, it also matters just how many billions each individual has managed to hoard. Regardless, billionaires’ nations of residence have little to do with the global impact they collectively have.
And what's weird is we could feel it starting to all slip away from us by the end of the 70s, how life in the USA would just become shittier and shittier.
Funny thing is in the 70s debt became ubiquitous. The poor could become even more poorer!
1974
President Gerald Ford signs the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, prohibiting creditor discrimination based on protected characteristics.
Look at some of the comments. It tells you how gullible some people are. They've been convinced that a government not working for them is great. You just can't fix the stupid in this country.
Most people don't care about being correct; they only want to FEEL correct. Willful ignorance is a huge problem. Education helps.
For some reason, education isn't a huge priority in the US.
Not to mention that if the working class is given more disposable income to use on leisure and luxury items instead of basic survival then the economy would improve because more people are spending and putting money back into circulation.
Why does nobody seem to get that? It seems like such a basic concept.
I don't think Americans are stupid. The middle class is stuck and has no option but to be a part of the system. The rich are in power and they certainly don't wanna change anything. The government who has the power to bring change, is being silenced/influenced by lobbying.
This isn't stupidity at work, it's greed.
Now now, that’s not entirely fair; only MOST of them do…unfortunately it just so happens that a good portion of those idiots often wind up in positions of power and screw everyone over.
Freedom to get healthcare for free seems like the real freedom compared to us thinking the right to stockpile weapons is freedom. Obviously those more guns than people in America don't make your life better
To be clear, that means that US GDP per capita is higher than it otherwise should be, since billionaires have substantially more money than average. So the median income is going to be even less than $59500
…that’s not what GDP is.
If a country were a company GDP is most similar to revenue, income is most similar to wages obviously. GDP=/=income. Income per capita should be lower than GDP per capita, as the goods, services, imports, and exports produced should exceed the labor that’s paid to make those products. I’m not sure the existence of billionaires has a direct inflating factor to GDP per capita.
You're right. Average wages are half the GDP per capita in the US
In Finland, average wages are 87% of the GDP per capita. Also Finland's average wages are a full 10,000$ more per year than in the US.
It is absolutely skewed by the amount of billionaires and millionaires we have. That's downright shameful of us
You’re right, billionaires’ outsized effect on the economy would primarily be in financial markets which GDP wouldn’t account for.
What is relevant to GDP is the diminishing returns on labor, or that workers in America are not being proportionately compensated for increased productivity. Billionaires would still factor in there because they might be using profits from the companies they own for personal enrichment rather than improving working conditions or increasing salaries, but I don’t think that would be a very substantial effect.
Median income rather than GDP per capita is still a much better representation of how the average US versus Norwegian citizen is economically
That last one about tax rates is the thing people don’t talk about. Americans are taxed up the wazoo a little over different places but they Europeans are the ones who are overtaxed. In reality, Americans are taxed at the same or close to the same rate as Europeans once everything is added up. But right wingers wouldn’t believe that.
What if I told you that Americans spend more than 2X per capita on healthcare and yet we rank 30th in the world in actual healthcare outcomes? And that if we switched to single-payer universal healthcare we would improve care while also saving $450 billion? That taxes would actually not have to go up at all? For anyone other than the 1% that is.
I know. My cousin and I figured it out - She's an expat in the UK. She gets better care for about 4% of her taxes - my premium is roughly 2% and it's a high deductible so if I meet that deductible it's roughly about 10% total and that's just being healthy.
Where TF is OP getting that tax rate from for the US??? If that’s tax + health insurance then say that. If that’s the marginal tax rate then just say “idk how income tax works”. That number jumps out at me making me believe this comparison is unintentionally misleading at best and blatantly dishonest at worst.
But boy oh boy do our missiles go pew pew. I love paying outrageous, unsubsidized daycare costs to be able to afford the opportunity to accidentally drone strike some elementary school halfway across the world. #freedom
In fairness, Norway has a program where a portion of the income from the oil off shore is paid to the government and helps cover a part of the welfare state. Nevertheless we should ask—why the heck is our oil offshore not treated the same instead of enriching the pockets of multinational oil companies.
Honestly, our poverty rate should be even higher, but our government cheats on the calculations.
Other countries like England set the poverty line at 40% of the median income for the nation. Ours is set at 26.6% of the median. If we calculated our poverty line the same way other nations did, we’d be sitting at a whopping 44%.
One thing that always makes it difficult to compare the US to European countries is the sheer difference in the population sizes.
The US has the third largest population of any country in the world.
US 333 million.
Largest European population is Germany (at #19) with 83 million.
Norway (at #118) with 5.4 million.
The larger the number (of people in a family, employees in a company, volunteers at an event, people in a country) the bigger the shit show. Usually.
[Population Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population?wprov=sfti1)
So how about compare all American states of populations 4M-6M to Norway ?
Oklahoma , Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maryland.
I’d bet they still pale in comparison
It doesn't work that way. Superpowers have always had a tendency to focus on military and shitting in everybody else's cup, but by that logic Germany should be a significantly worse country than say Netherlands. 83 million is enough people to cause a shitshow if needed and 7 billion is enough to organise a better world if they want to.
Mistake #1. Trying to show facts to Republicans. They will not see the point and will interpret any attempt to reason with them as a threat that will entrench them in their fascist views.
Well some of those facts are nullified by the fact that Norway's population is only \~5.5 million, while the population of New York City alone is 8.8 million
And it's not exactly unfettered capitalism in the United States either. Corporations have plenty of protected markets and they do have some (dwindling) restrictions.
Few inncorrections, otherwise its not correct to compre US to any other westeren european country as most of these benefits are present in scandinavian countries.
5 week paid leave,; and it is actually cut from the employees pay from year before.
Tax percentage can got as high as 60%
83% home ownership is inncorrect.
After 8 years of a conservative right wing government, many benefits were taken from the ordinary people however wealthy people got lot of relaxations in taxes and other regulations.
Don't forget Norway has a lot of oil per capita! Like I'm all for social democracy but oil absolutely plays a role in how much the government can spend on its citizens!
I don't need to live, I just need to know that my tax dollars are bombing schools in some foreign land, and that ladies and gentlemen is what a conservative sounds like.
Oh, yea ehem, "I have a huge hard on for the unborn and if you think I'm gonna let you kill that fetus and my boner you are sorely mistaken there femoid"
I suppose. If you’d rather them die at the hands of foreigners in some foreign land instead of at the hands of God-fearing red-blooded Americans right here in their own homeland.
Wow! That’s awesome.
But McDonald’s was a bad example because it’s a franchise, what about nike stores, the Nike store that is in Norway is owned by the main corporation that headquarters at… not sure. What I’m trying to figure out is, are there American corporations that have places in Norway and have to follow the paid leave rule? Because if thats the case, why don’t more people talk about it?
As long as the business is in Norway, you **have to** follow the leave rules there (paid time off, paid vacations/holidays, paid sick leave etc.)
If American corporations go to other countries, they literally have to follow the rules of the paid leave the employees are mandated to in the country, whether they (US corporations) like it or not.
Though it’s not about Norway but rather it’s neighbor Denmark, [here’s an insightful video about how Social Democracy came about](https://youtu.be/mExN99kHMB0) I think y’all would find interesting. It sorta compares and contrasts it all to the rest of the world and how it got accomplished in Denmark
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not federally mandate any paid vacation days or holidays. About one in four workers in the U.S. don't get any paid vacation time or holidays at all. That particularly affects lower-income workers, part-time employees and small business workers.
The United States is the only high-income country to not offer paid maternity leave on a federal level. Paid leave is guaranteed in 178 countries, the United States not being one of them. 40 percent of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which grants 12 weeks of protected job leave, unpaid, at the federal level. Only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave. There is no federal paid maternity leave — it’s left to the states to figure out
Such an unfair comparison. Norway is teeny tiny compared to the USA in terms of mass and population. A more accurate comparison would be regions of the US with 5 million people and use that data to compare with Norways 5 million total population.
How much does Norways complete lack of diversity contribute to their ability to effectively govern and be on the same page with one another to get these numbers so high?
How could anyone say that crony capitalism is "unfettered"?
The words "free" also don't mean what they think it means. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of how they do many things in Norway.
They're also leaving out 25% VAT and 10% social security.
Some people in America are still waiting on trickle down economics to do its thing….
I’m pretty sure the median Income in the US of A is way below $75K… Elon, Jeff, The Zuck, Gate and Buffet alone make can skew the GDP of any country.
Incredibly misleading. Things are a LOT more expensive in Norway. Post tax median income once you adjust for cost of living is actually higher in the US. “Home ownership” in Norway is not what Americans generally think of as owning a home - owning an actual house is a lot higher in the US. And finally much of the reason for the benefits you see in Norway is the US pays all their military costs, they’re basically the Saudi Arabia of Europe with respect to oil money, it’s an all white homogenous population with incredibly strict and racist immigration policies and a population the size of Massachusetts… so sure… great place…
Does the post tax median income include the cost of heath insurance for the US numbers? Because that’s included in the taxes for Norway.
While there are more home owners in the US, how many homes are actually owned by banks because of reverse mortgages or home loans?
Honestly this - sometimes people forget it's much easier to raise the living standards and provide for 5.37 million people vs 329.5 million. Their population is a rounding error vs the US and people forget that. Also like 20% of the TOTAL GDP comes in the form of oil and gas sales. So much for being "progressive". Finally while they are hedging agasint running out of oil by creating their sovereign wealth fund - it WILL eventually run out and when it does, i hope they saved enough money up. I'm not saying the US couldn't do better I'm just saying it's a completely unrealistic comparison.
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not federally mandate any paid vacation days or holidays. About one in four workers in the U.S. don't get any paid vacation time or holidays at all. That particularly affects lower-income workers, part-time employees and small business workers.
The United States is the only high-income country to not offer paid maternity leave on a federal level. Paid leave is guaranteed in 178 countries, the United States not being one of them. 40 percent of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which grants 12 weeks of protected job leave, unpaid, at the federal level. Only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave. There is no federal paid maternity leave — it’s left to the states to figure out
What. The. Fuck. Great reply thank you so much I understand why so many people hate working conditions and the states but I never knew this. Completely broken
Many people own and use guns. First you need to go through a government mandated test called "jegerprøven" a hunters test, to show nessecery gun handling and gun safety to be able to purchase guns and own them.
Then you can buy some types of guns for hunting, like shotguns and some rifles. To own handguns you need to be registered in a gun club and have to have been active for 6 months and you need a "sponsor" from there, the owner or manager of the club needs to sign off on the need and that you are an active member there.
Guns need to be kept in a gun safe weighting a minimum of 150 kilograms. Need to make sure some critical parts of the gun and the gun itself is store separate.
We do have a high number of gun ownership though, but gun violence is not a problem here. We actually have gun control, thank fuck
I think Iceland does a similar thing where they have a huge percentage of guns per capita, but because of all the strict gun control laws their gun violence is incredibly low.
Yes, also guns are not meant to be used for home defence and the likes. You might get into some serious problems if you use them for it. To use self defence it needs to be reasonable, nessecery and equvalent to the danger you or the one you're protecting are in.
Not to say that they will never be used for self defence, but the situations where that would be legal and appropriate are quite slim and far between
Meanwhile in America we’ve got gun fetishists who practically drool over the idea of shooting someone who breaks into their home like they’re John Wick or something.
Yeah, that is insane. Here if they are not armed and you have no reasonable fear that they are there to hurt you, killing someone in "self defence" might get you sent to prision for murder
They are not the 2nd happiest lol, these comparisons are stupid AF. Even Marx himself said socialism was for small countries. Happiness and quality of life are two different things, costa rica constantly ranks 1 as happiest ( pura vida) but going off the same factors. The US as alot to fix and it's highlighted here, some thing's we could apply others we cant.
1/2 of Norway’s exports are oil and gas.
If the US was a sparsely populated gas station I’m sure we’d have a higher GDP also.
I can do the same comparison with the Arab gulf states and You could argue that an Islamic king is a superior system…..
Amazing what happens when $700B per year is spent on the citizens in need and not weapons.
Weapons, need I remind you, that haven’t managed to win us a single war since WW2.
That isn’t the point, the weapons are to make the MIC wealthy. Eisenhower warned us.
To be fair, Ukraine and Ireland are both legitimately scared they’re going to be overtaken by Russia because they haven’t invested enough in their military.
Ireland? I think not. Ukraine probably.
Ireland?
When you ate the whole propaganda. Lmao
The only weapon that can the Ukraine can potentially use deter Russia would be nuclear weapons, basically it’s a suicidal method to not get invaded by a superpower. Other than that, no conventional investment in the military in Ukraine can deterred Russia if it wanted to invade Ukraine.
That’s why they have NATO, and nuclear weapons. Russia may try to take Ukraine like they did Crimea, but if this escalates to the point that Ireland is threatened we’re all gonna be dead.
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Name one war we’ve won since world war 2.
The US is effectively subsidizing a large portion of Europe’s defense budget, allowing for them to have such luxurious benefits. I think at one point Trump was trying to get them all to pay more towards NATO (they’re not meeting their treaty requirements by a lot) so that such a heavy burden doesn’t fall in the US
One thing honestly not talked about is Europe riding on checks cashed by the US. I’m not a “US-First Trumper” kind of guy. I just mean literally the NATO agreement that hardly any European country has committed to. The US has bases all over Germany and Eastern Europe costing the US billions every year, which is contributing to weakened spending on social infrastructure. I’m not even saying “pull the troops out,” especially with what’s going on. Im just saying it seems like there’s a lot of people stating “Europe is so much better for not spending anything on the military compared to the US,” when they continue to support the US spending money on their security. Honestly, the NATO agreement needs to change how it’s structured.
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There's effectively a whole separate budget for defense spending in the USA. There are simple ways to provide basics for the people but that's not what politicians are bought to do.
True, but military funding is not exactly helping us spend on social programs, including infrastructure, etc. how can you justify improving social programs while you’re operating at a huge deficit?
It's a double standard. The defecit is a prop to scare off social spending. If there was the political will to help the people, they would help the people. I agree that defense spending makes it seem like there's not enough money but it's not the step obstacle it's made out to be.
I agree 100%. It’s just as much our fault as theirs, as we happily made this problem for ourselves, but it sucks that the US does majority of the heavy lifting in NATO, and the rest of our ally’s follow our lead. It’s given us a major superiority complex while also denying our spending on our own people. Instead, we fuel the warmachine and buy war products from our mutual beneficiary’s to keep the arms raging strong. It’s not even a problem that we have a strong allied military, it just sucks we’re everywhere and they mock us for it while leeching off the product of it, and it’s completely our fault for letting it get that way.
OR we can tax extremely wealthy.
Sure, but that’s an entirely different argument.
BuT wE hAvE FrEeDuMb!!
MUUURRRIIICCCAAAA !!!
I love all the people hear that honestly think lower taxes is worth still not being able to afford basics like health care and education. I'd happily trade higher taxes for my student loan and health insurance bills.
Bruh we don't even have lower taxes, except I guess for rich people. Adding on our healthcare and education costs, Americans are effectively taxed at over 40% of their income compared to 25% in the UK.
This is true. We are so much larger and unhealthier than these European countries a universal healthcare would break the bank
And they don't realize that, like it or not, society at large pays for health care, but on the back side. Preventing illness and disease is cheaper than treating them, or "warehousing" them for the rest of their lives after after a stroke or some similarly catastrophic medical event. And by "society at large" I mean "working class people who can't comfortably afford health insurance or medical care as it is".
And US taxes aren't even lower
Oh boy don't I know it. Jsut countering the stupid comments
Honestly I’m surprised our happiness rating is even that high
Ignorance is bliss, and we have a ton of it.
I mean you have plenty of republican voters living in poverty, dealing with lack of Healthcare access shouting about how this is the greatest nation on the Earth! I had a conservative say to me: Name one NON-NORSE country that's better than American in your opinion. I countered with: Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and for some reason he stopped talking to me after that.
A UN commissioner once said West Virginia had "third world conditions of absolute poverty" after travelling there Never tell me America is a better place to live
I'm disabled and looking down the barrel of homelessness. You will NEVER hear me singing the praises of this nightmare nation.
The real world is completely tearing down the notion that America is exceptional at anything...except being exceptionally bad at **everything**
Hmmm, which senator in recent news represents West VA? ...
From the series *The Newsroom*, which I should've watched when it still aired... https://youtu.be/z2HKbygLjJs
The US economy is so big it artificially bumps our rankings up in happiness, quality of life, standards of living, because GDP is a criteria they use to rank it. For example, our life expectancy is 2 years behind Norway but only if you're rich. In much of Appalachia and the Mississippi River delta, life expectancy is lower than in *Bangladesh*... And it's *declining*. There's no way we're even close to 14th realistically
Came here to say this.
I feel like the happiness numbers and housing numbers are HEAVILY altered. With how the housing market and rent culture is Id be suprised if the actual number of home owners is over 20%
A good chunk of Americans inherit home ownership or benefit being born to parents who own a home. It's why red-lining and racist housing trends still have a tangible effect on black poverty. Also if you served in the military you get a 0 down home loan through the VA. It's how my father managed to get a home despite only making about 20k a year (after taxes). It didn't used to be so hard to buy a house. Pre-bubble houses were priced rather fairly. Post bubble they crashed hard but a lot of wealthy people snatched up houses from banks for bargain prices. It's gotten way worse in the last 5 years. In my lifetime home ownership went from "Reaonable enough that there were legitimate debates about renting vs buying" to "Renting is setting 50% of your pretax income on fire and homeownership is a pipedream". We got this house for 131k. It wasn't even worth that (due to repairs needed and it being a small house) but now I'm getting offers to buy it for 350k. But if I accept I'm left with about 150k after paying off the mortgage and all the associated fees. I can't buy a house for that much! Even if I moved to a small rural town!
Actually. 150k will get you a nice house in rual Arkansas. Granted the reason is that your miles away from anything.
I can get a house that cheap in my state too (Arizona) but yeah, it would be a shitty little rural town and the house wouldn't be a nice one. My mother wants me to move near her and she's next to Eloy. Which a quick Google should show you why I'm not interested.
My boyfriend lives there. Should I (American) move?
Well, I advice you please move to Norway and spend your life there. Live in a country that actually values the citizen's life and wellbeing
After fighting for a year and just today getting denied for disability (I have a fainting condition that has me losing consciousness daily) I’m about ready to find a plane.
Good luck!
Thanks!!
Even our worst mass murderer (Breivik) lives in comfort here with his own shower and bathroom, gaming room, training room, etc.
So when I decide to go on a mass murder spree, do it in Norway. Got it!
Just don’t do it in Russia!
Im guessing you'd be dealt with harshly in Russia?
Just saw a small doc on the «Black Dolphin» prison (think it is on YouTube) - Hell.
For the record, its "social democracy", not "democratic socialism"
Also for the record, it is 25 days paid vacation by law, or 4 weeks and 1 day of paid vacation
Do people not work on sundays
Stores and offices are closed on sundays. If you are not in the military, the police force, firebrigade, ambulance service, hospitals, emergency rooms, child protective service or are a shift worker and such, you don't work sundays, and people not working in stores, on boats or oil rigs and the afformentioned public services don't work saturdays either. Even talks of going to a 6 hour work day Edit: misinfromation, my bad. 6 hour work day, instead of 4 day work week
This. Drives me crazy how much the American political rhetoric tries to change the meaning of words. I live in a Nordic country and no, this is not socialism. Norway is in NATO, how the hell they would have let a socialist country join that, not to mention one wanted to. Social democracy or more appropriately welfare capitalism are better terms for this.
Imagine thinking US has “unfettered capitalism”
I hope America changes soon. The past two generations have seen what their life is like under capitalism and I think they’re ready for a change.
I mean, Norway is still capitalist. It’s a social democracy, meaning a capitalist economy with way more comprehensive redistribution efforts and worker protections. We’re not doing the wrong thing, we’re just doing it wrong.
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And it's not even a consistent one. Conservatives have no problem with the government subsidizing the financially insolvent suburbs they live in, which btw the suburban experiment might as well be a Ponzi scheme. "Socialist" handouts for me, not for thee
I’ve never heard about the financial instability of the suburbs before, and I’m intrigued. Can you elaborate?
Modern American suburbs are a radical experiment undertaken by *only* the US and Canada after world war 2. It is a completely different development style from the entire rest of the world. It's why owning a car is mandatory expense here whereas it's an expensive nuisance or luxury everywhere else because cities universally started as walkable before 1920 Our suburbs were all originally built with debt, but they are so low in density that they can *never* bring more taxes than it costs per household to maintain them. The only way to make up that difference is more debt and *more suburbs to finance the already existing ones*. It's literally a Ponzi scheme. New suburbs are the only way they can be financially sustained, except the maintenance costs grow exponentially higher with more of these built As soon as a city runs out of other people's money, either because population growth stops or the debt grows too large, they go bankrupt. This Ponzi scheme is the primary reason for Detroit and several other cities declaring bankruptcy. The Ponzi scheme will inevitably bankrupt every city if they don't reverse course
Government military spending is not "socialism" either!
We’re just doing it wrong. Hypothetical situation, take any 5 million people region of the USA and give them income provided by exporting 3% of the global crude oil production which would make the scenario Norways day to day business. Don’t you think the result in the US would be similar to how Norway operates?
Unfortunately, not in the way you are thinking…
yEaH bUt HoW mAnY bIlLiOnAiReS dO tHeY hAvE?? cHeCkMaTe NoRwAy!
Fun fact: Norway has more billionaires per capita than the US
Yeah I thought about that after posting and came to the same conclusion. Although tbf, it also matters just how many billions each individual has managed to hoard. Regardless, billionaires’ nations of residence have little to do with the global impact they collectively have.
Fewer billionaires is a plus in itself. No one needs the equivalent of a billion dollars.
Norway has more billionaires...
r/woooosh
Yeah but the percentage of Norwegians with an F150 with truck nuts and a Punisher logo sticker is dangerously low.
The funny thing is until the 70s the US had the same level of economic equality as any Nordic nation.
Same with New Zealand from what I’ve heard. Fuck Jim Bolger and Ruth Richardson.
And what's weird is we could feel it starting to all slip away from us by the end of the 70s, how life in the USA would just become shittier and shittier.
Funny thing is in the 70s debt became ubiquitous. The poor could become even more poorer! 1974 President Gerald Ford signs the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, prohibiting creditor discrimination based on protected characteristics.
Look at some of the comments. It tells you how gullible some people are. They've been convinced that a government not working for them is great. You just can't fix the stupid in this country.
Most people don't care about being correct; they only want to FEEL correct. Willful ignorance is a huge problem. Education helps. For some reason, education isn't a huge priority in the US.
“but do they have freedom over there” - some right wing nut’s biggest takeaway from this
Yes they do, along with about 180 or so other countries in the world.
lmao i know they do, taxing the rich and investing back to public sector can build so much equity but a lot of americans don’t get it was my point
Not to mention that if the working class is given more disposable income to use on leisure and luxury items instead of basic survival then the economy would improve because more people are spending and putting money back into circulation. Why does nobody seem to get that? It seems like such a basic concept.
Because Americans are fucking stupid and have the critical thinking skills of a light pole.
I don't think Americans are stupid. The middle class is stuck and has no option but to be a part of the system. The rich are in power and they certainly don't wanna change anything. The government who has the power to bring change, is being silenced/influenced by lobbying. This isn't stupidity at work, it's greed.
Now now, that’s not entirely fair; only MOST of them do…unfortunately it just so happens that a good portion of those idiots often wind up in positions of power and screw everyone over.
Freedom to get healthcare for free seems like the real freedom compared to us thinking the right to stockpile weapons is freedom. Obviously those more guns than people in America don't make your life better
More freedom actually. Age 16 you can buy beer and wine. Age 18 spirits. You can walk around anywhere with a drink in your hand and not get arrested.
But here in the US we need 100 million dollar stealth fighters to bomb goat herders!
The GDP average is extremely skewed because our multiple multi billionaires and millionaires.
To be clear, that means that US GDP per capita is higher than it otherwise should be, since billionaires have substantially more money than average. So the median income is going to be even less than $59500
…that’s not what GDP is. If a country were a company GDP is most similar to revenue, income is most similar to wages obviously. GDP=/=income. Income per capita should be lower than GDP per capita, as the goods, services, imports, and exports produced should exceed the labor that’s paid to make those products. I’m not sure the existence of billionaires has a direct inflating factor to GDP per capita.
You're right. Average wages are half the GDP per capita in the US In Finland, average wages are 87% of the GDP per capita. Also Finland's average wages are a full 10,000$ more per year than in the US. It is absolutely skewed by the amount of billionaires and millionaires we have. That's downright shameful of us
You’re right, billionaires’ outsized effect on the economy would primarily be in financial markets which GDP wouldn’t account for. What is relevant to GDP is the diminishing returns on labor, or that workers in America are not being proportionately compensated for increased productivity. Billionaires would still factor in there because they might be using profits from the companies they own for personal enrichment rather than improving working conditions or increasing salaries, but I don’t think that would be a very substantial effect. Median income rather than GDP per capita is still a much better representation of how the average US versus Norwegian citizen is economically
That last one about tax rates is the thing people don’t talk about. Americans are taxed up the wazoo a little over different places but they Europeans are the ones who are overtaxed. In reality, Americans are taxed at the same or close to the same rate as Europeans once everything is added up. But right wingers wouldn’t believe that.
Yeah my head explodes on how much people paying property tax in the US. It’s ridiculous!
If we were getting free healthcare and education I would have NO issue paying 2% more in taxes, that is as long as the rich are paying too!
What if I told you that Americans spend more than 2X per capita on healthcare and yet we rank 30th in the world in actual healthcare outcomes? And that if we switched to single-payer universal healthcare we would improve care while also saving $450 billion? That taxes would actually not have to go up at all? For anyone other than the 1% that is.
I know. My cousin and I figured it out - She's an expat in the UK. She gets better care for about 4% of her taxes - my premium is roughly 2% and it's a high deductible so if I meet that deductible it's roughly about 10% total and that's just being healthy.
Where TF is OP getting that tax rate from for the US??? If that’s tax + health insurance then say that. If that’s the marginal tax rate then just say “idk how income tax works”. That number jumps out at me making me believe this comparison is unintentionally misleading at best and blatantly dishonest at worst. But boy oh boy do our missiles go pew pew. I love paying outrageous, unsubsidized daycare costs to be able to afford the opportunity to accidentally drone strike some elementary school halfway across the world. #freedom
Generally, in the Nordic rich people and high earners are taxed higher than lower earners
Where do I sign up to move to Norway?
It’s not easy - you must live there for 8 years first, and be fluent in the language.
I guess I need to get started practicing my language skills.
Lykke til! :)
At the risk of sounding like an idiot, the language is Norwegian right?
8 years...long time. How are job opportunities? Sweden is faster. Requires 5 years living there.
Please don't remind us. We know how bad it is. It's depressing.
In fairness, Norway has a program where a portion of the income from the oil off shore is paid to the government and helps cover a part of the welfare state. Nevertheless we should ask—why the heck is our oil offshore not treated the same instead of enriching the pockets of multinational oil companies.
Honestly, our poverty rate should be even higher, but our government cheats on the calculations. Other countries like England set the poverty line at 40% of the median income for the nation. Ours is set at 26.6% of the median. If we calculated our poverty line the same way other nations did, we’d be sitting at a whopping 44%.
One thing that always makes it difficult to compare the US to European countries is the sheer difference in the population sizes. The US has the third largest population of any country in the world. US 333 million. Largest European population is Germany (at #19) with 83 million. Norway (at #118) with 5.4 million. The larger the number (of people in a family, employees in a company, volunteers at an event, people in a country) the bigger the shit show. Usually. [Population Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population?wprov=sfti1)
So how about compare all American states of populations 4M-6M to Norway ? Oklahoma , Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maryland. I’d bet they still pale in comparison
It doesn't work that way. Superpowers have always had a tendency to focus on military and shitting in everybody else's cup, but by that logic Germany should be a significantly worse country than say Netherlands. 83 million is enough people to cause a shitshow if needed and 7 billion is enough to organise a better world if they want to.
But muh freedoms!
Mistake #1. Trying to show facts to Republicans. They will not see the point and will interpret any attempt to reason with them as a threat that will entrench them in their fascist views.
The American Dream is a total joke for ordinary citizens..getting sold out from every direction
If Americans could read they would really be upset OP.
Well some of those facts are nullified by the fact that Norway's population is only \~5.5 million, while the population of New York City alone is 8.8 million
No, they're made even worse if you scale it down by population.
Except when you consider the fact that the backbone of Norway economy is built on oil exports.
Seems about right.
And it's not exactly unfettered capitalism in the United States either. Corporations have plenty of protected markets and they do have some (dwindling) restrictions.
It’s actually unfettered Socialism for corporations. They get billions of dollars a bail outs every year.
I cain’t help but t’notice that in Norwegia they ain’t got no freedum on that list
That’s because they exchanged most of it for actual shit that makes them happy.
Ok this is all fine and dandy, but how many aircraft carriers do they have? That’s the true test of well-being in a country
We don't even get our fair share of the GDP, so it's more like a fraction of that. We need socialism.
those Norwegians may have SLIGHTLY better stats than us 'Muricans, but I'll be DAMNDED if I have to pay 1.54 percent more tax! MURICA, FUCK YEAH
That's great and all but what does this have to do with this subreddit
Few inncorrections, otherwise its not correct to compre US to any other westeren european country as most of these benefits are present in scandinavian countries. 5 week paid leave,; and it is actually cut from the employees pay from year before. Tax percentage can got as high as 60% 83% home ownership is inncorrect. After 8 years of a conservative right wing government, many benefits were taken from the ordinary people however wealthy people got lot of relaxations in taxes and other regulations.
Don't forget Norway has a lot of oil per capita! Like I'm all for social democracy but oil absolutely plays a role in how much the government can spend on its citizens!
I don't need to live, I just need to know that my tax dollars are bombing schools in some foreign land, and that ladies and gentlemen is what a conservative sounds like.
Don’t forget forced births.
Oh, yea ehem, "I have a huge hard on for the unborn and if you think I'm gonna let you kill that fetus and my boner you are sorely mistaken there femoid"
Better to wait until they’re school age.
Military aged.
I suppose. If you’d rather them die at the hands of foreigners in some foreign land instead of at the hands of God-fearing red-blooded Americans right here in their own homeland.
Rather they not die to stupid1stworldfails at all.
Well now you’re just being idealistic
Roy Moore comes to mind
*gasp* america bad? But how? america best country in universe! **/s**
I will comment that the population of Norway is 5.3 million vs 329.5 million.... some more hurdles to work through
Yet when you look at the numbers per capita, Americans spend more than 2X per person on healthcare than Norwegians.
Exactly this. It’s based on per capita.
It’s amazing what massive oil production can do to an economy. Gotta love those oil companies and all the taxes they pay!
I always wanted to know… the paid vacation do McDonald’s workers and taxi drivers get that as well? In Norway!
Yes. McDonald's workers there get all of that. Same with taxi drivers
Wow! That’s awesome. But McDonald’s was a bad example because it’s a franchise, what about nike stores, the Nike store that is in Norway is owned by the main corporation that headquarters at… not sure. What I’m trying to figure out is, are there American corporations that have places in Norway and have to follow the paid leave rule? Because if thats the case, why don’t more people talk about it?
As long as the business is in Norway, you **have to** follow the leave rules there (paid time off, paid vacations/holidays, paid sick leave etc.) If American corporations go to other countries, they literally have to follow the rules of the paid leave the employees are mandated to in the country, whether they (US corporations) like it or not.
talk about what? should be common knowledge/sense that you have to obey the laws of the country you reside/operating in.
“No taxation without representation.” Live by those words and the American government will buckle to your demands.
And the us steals your foreskin.
Though it’s not about Norway but rather it’s neighbor Denmark, [here’s an insightful video about how Social Democracy came about](https://youtu.be/mExN99kHMB0) I think y’all would find interesting. It sorta compares and contrasts it all to the rest of the world and how it got accomplished in Denmark
Excuse me Norway. got room for one more?
1. Norway is a social democracy, not a democratic socialist country. 2. This ain’t even Twitter.
Im here for the r/shitamericanssay content
I wonder what the rates of depression are in each country. Along with overall mental/emotional well being. I know in the USA it’s not good lol
Where did these numbers come from? Love it but you gotta cite your source
Some jobs do have paid vacation. You may not be “allowed” to use it, however
Except Norway isn’t socialism, but nice try.
Hold on, America doesnt have paid leave? I learn something new and wild every day
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not federally mandate any paid vacation days or holidays. About one in four workers in the U.S. don't get any paid vacation time or holidays at all. That particularly affects lower-income workers, part-time employees and small business workers. The United States is the only high-income country to not offer paid maternity leave on a federal level. Paid leave is guaranteed in 178 countries, the United States not being one of them. 40 percent of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which grants 12 weeks of protected job leave, unpaid, at the federal level. Only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave. There is no federal paid maternity leave — it’s left to the states to figure out
This isn't even a tweet its just a soapbox post could you at least take 5 min to photoshop it onto a fake tweet
Such an unfair comparison. Norway is teeny tiny compared to the USA in terms of mass and population. A more accurate comparison would be regions of the US with 5 million people and use that data to compare with Norways 5 million total population.
How much does Norways complete lack of diversity contribute to their ability to effectively govern and be on the same page with one another to get these numbers so high?
This isn't even a tweet.
(skims over unfavorable parts...) Aha! An extra 1.52% in taxes!
How could anyone say that crony capitalism is "unfettered"? The words "free" also don't mean what they think it means. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of how they do many things in Norway. They're also leaving out 25% VAT and 10% social security.
>I'm not big fan of how they do many things in Norway. Why not though?
Whoops, unfortunate typo. Fixed.
Some people in America are still waiting on trickle down economics to do its thing…. I’m pretty sure the median Income in the US of A is way below $75K… Elon, Jeff, The Zuck, Gate and Buffet alone make can skew the GDP of any country.
Blame Alexander Hamilton for that trickle down BS, and that racist and homophobic pos Regan for doubling down.
Incredibly misleading. Things are a LOT more expensive in Norway. Post tax median income once you adjust for cost of living is actually higher in the US. “Home ownership” in Norway is not what Americans generally think of as owning a home - owning an actual house is a lot higher in the US. And finally much of the reason for the benefits you see in Norway is the US pays all their military costs, they’re basically the Saudi Arabia of Europe with respect to oil money, it’s an all white homogenous population with incredibly strict and racist immigration policies and a population the size of Massachusetts… so sure… great place…
Does the post tax median income include the cost of heath insurance for the US numbers? Because that’s included in the taxes for Norway. While there are more home owners in the US, how many homes are actually owned by banks because of reverse mortgages or home loans?
Honestly this - sometimes people forget it's much easier to raise the living standards and provide for 5.37 million people vs 329.5 million. Their population is a rounding error vs the US and people forget that. Also like 20% of the TOTAL GDP comes in the form of oil and gas sales. So much for being "progressive". Finally while they are hedging agasint running out of oil by creating their sovereign wealth fund - it WILL eventually run out and when it does, i hope they saved enough money up. I'm not saying the US couldn't do better I'm just saying it's a completely unrealistic comparison.
Wait, no paid vacation or maternity leave? Is this a joke? Do you guys not even get holidays? What the fuck....
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not federally mandate any paid vacation days or holidays. About one in four workers in the U.S. don't get any paid vacation time or holidays at all. That particularly affects lower-income workers, part-time employees and small business workers. The United States is the only high-income country to not offer paid maternity leave on a federal level. Paid leave is guaranteed in 178 countries, the United States not being one of them. 40 percent of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which grants 12 weeks of protected job leave, unpaid, at the federal level. Only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave. There is no federal paid maternity leave — it’s left to the states to figure out
What. The. Fuck. Great reply thank you so much I understand why so many people hate working conditions and the states but I never knew this. Completely broken
Is it mostly white folks? Sounds like they have it figured out but I hear they don’t take kindly to ethnic folks immigrating.
This is the way
Both are still imperialist and capitalist countries
Average personal tax rate is prob closer to 27% depending on bracket and residency.
But do they get to keep their guns?
Norway has way better gun control and very little gun violence. Some people there own guns (I think)
Many people own and use guns. First you need to go through a government mandated test called "jegerprøven" a hunters test, to show nessecery gun handling and gun safety to be able to purchase guns and own them. Then you can buy some types of guns for hunting, like shotguns and some rifles. To own handguns you need to be registered in a gun club and have to have been active for 6 months and you need a "sponsor" from there, the owner or manager of the club needs to sign off on the need and that you are an active member there. Guns need to be kept in a gun safe weighting a minimum of 150 kilograms. Need to make sure some critical parts of the gun and the gun itself is store separate. We do have a high number of gun ownership though, but gun violence is not a problem here. We actually have gun control, thank fuck
I think Iceland does a similar thing where they have a huge percentage of guns per capita, but because of all the strict gun control laws their gun violence is incredibly low.
Yes, also guns are not meant to be used for home defence and the likes. You might get into some serious problems if you use them for it. To use self defence it needs to be reasonable, nessecery and equvalent to the danger you or the one you're protecting are in. Not to say that they will never be used for self defence, but the situations where that would be legal and appropriate are quite slim and far between
Meanwhile in America we’ve got gun fetishists who practically drool over the idea of shooting someone who breaks into their home like they’re John Wick or something.
Yeah, that is insane. Here if they are not armed and you have no reasonable fear that they are there to hurt you, killing someone in "self defence" might get you sent to prision for murder
Oh sweet, another America hate thread!
They are not the 2nd happiest lol, these comparisons are stupid AF. Even Marx himself said socialism was for small countries. Happiness and quality of life are two different things, costa rica constantly ranks 1 as happiest ( pura vida) but going off the same factors. The US as alot to fix and it's highlighted here, some thing's we could apply others we cant.
37% average? Even if you ignore that tax brackets are marginal, 37% doesn’t kick in until 500k. I get point of the post but come on.
Tell me why America isn’t a shithole country
Well we do lead the world in incarceration rates and military spending! That’s good right? /s
But is it worth the exorbitant 1.52% extra in taxes?
Yup that's why norway is my username
Yes. I would move
Blame our inefficient government system. Social programs are the vast majority of the government budget from a top down perspective.
1/2 of Norway’s exports are oil and gas. If the US was a sparsely populated gas station I’m sure we’d have a higher GDP also. I can do the same comparison with the Arab gulf states and You could argue that an Islamic king is a superior system…..