Burlington might be one of the few places in the United States where a crowd would cram an auditorium on a sunny spring Saturday to listen to a lecture on the Danish social welfare system.
The 200-plus audience members gathered in city hall auditorium got what they came for. In a 90-minute session sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Denmark’s U.S. ambassador, Peter Taksoe-Jensen (pictured), laid out a lengthy list of benefits his country provides all its citizens.
He said Danes receive free health care; free education from pre-school through university; $40,000 annual pensions after age 65, “with no need to have any attachment to the labor market”; a full year of maternity benefits, including payment of the woman’s full salary for the first six months after her baby is born; and guaranteed day care through age 5, with parents paying a maximum of 25 percent of its cost. The list also includes a $17-an-hour minimum wage (compared to the U.S. standard of $7.25) and two years of payments to unemployed Danes of 90 percent of the wages they had been earning.
Taksoe-Jensen also described Denmark’s progressive energy policy, which aims to phase out all fossil fuels by 2050. Already, he said, renewable sources cover 40 percent of the country’s energy consumption. In the U.S., it’s 13 percent.
The ambassador pointed out that Danes rank as the happiest people in the world, according to a United Nations survey. And the Vermonters listening to his litany might in turn have qualified as the most envious people in the world.
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Bernie never mentions that the European countries that handed out money like candy for so many years are now rethinking their policies. For Bernie it’s always better somewhere else.
Except it’s not.
Free everything, and you don’t even have to work! Sounds perfect. Where do we sign up?
Not really free, but rather, covered, and paid for, via their tax structure. A different thing from “free” and at least worth discussing I think.
…Except that it is.
Check out the U.S. standing in the world with regard to everything from infant-mortality rate, to education, life-expectancy and poverty rates. You’ll find that we rank way down low in relation to most of the developed nations.
Denmark may need some reforms to its social welfare system because life is “too rich” for Danes; but that is nothing compared to the enormous reforms, upward, that are needed to bring American standards to a level once enjoyed in the U.S. and now only available elsewhere.
No, NOT fully paid for by the tax structure, at least in most of the Eurosocialist countries anyway, which is why many of them are in crisis (being bailed out by Germany, where most people still work) and most of them are cutting back on the cradle to grave giveaway mentality, including, as noted above, even Denmark.
And yet, everyone wants to live here, and everyone who can find a way to do so, does so.
Any working class American who would rather live in Denmark, should apply to go. Let’s see how many do.
I see you’re still here.
As I said, the grass is always greener. Except it isn’t.
I’m here because I believe we can make a better future for our country.
I don’t simply bail-out because I don’t like the status quo. That would be very poor citizenship.
Like it or not, those of us who think the U.S. can be a better place to live are not going to simply abandon the country to those who have no vision.
Whether or not we agree, you have no business saying that people who do not share your views have “no vision.” That’s extremely arrogant. I do not want the U.S. to be Denmark, or Bernie’s dreary animal-farm world where everyone is “equal.”
By the way, in case you don’t know. Bernie is not like us. He’s way more “equal” than us. He’s filthy rich. And he made it all on the public teat, while manipulating the electorate with his class warfare demagoguery.
Hey, I wasn’t the one suggesting that you should leave the country. That, in my humble opinion, is a pretty intolerant and arrogant response to someone who is simply pointing out that the U.S. may have a less than perfect society.