Denmark may have figured something out
America may have its exceptionalism. But the Danes have a way of life
I started roaming the world just over 30 years ago in a state of arrogant provincialism: Strong was my conviction that the US had figured things out while other places were pitiful backwaters or sleepy museums. That’s what Ivy League degrees, nightly network news, and the jackhammer propaganda of exceptionalism will get you.
I just spent a few days in Denmark, one of the sleepy museums. Let’s just say that they may have figured something out as well. We might try to learn a little from them.
Taxes are high, yes: Denmark has the highest tax-to-GDP ratio in the developed world, at 46.6% (compared to 16% in Mexico, 25% in the United States, 33% in the UK, 42% in Italy and so on). On the upside there is no wealth tax.
That money buys a lot. The place is spotless and functional. The people are well-behaved in a way that suggests contentment and trust (I saw practically no jaywalking). Public transport is efficient and clean. The social safety net is real, universal healthcare is beloved, and higher education is free as opposed to the bankruptcy-inducer that it is in the United States.
Consequently, the UN-derived World Happiness Report has Denmark at number 2 in the world after Finland. Sweden, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands are all near the top as well.
You know who’s nowhere near the top of the list? The United States is not.
Perhaps that is because the United States has no healthcare guarantees before retirement and a political culture torn between far-left progressives who think universities should be safe spaces from offense and raging MAGA malcontents who seem consumed with a need to cause it.
It also features the developed world’s highest rate of gun deaths: On a per capita basis, there were 14.6 US gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2021 – about 20 times higher that Denmark, where the figure is under 1. You have to wonder at Americans who think this is a mental health problem unrelated to the US lacking almost any control on gun sales; are Americans 20 times crazier than Danes?
Do the Danes lack such madness because they’re homogeneous?
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