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The American Dream Has Moved to Scandinavia
We noted in 2010 that the American Dream – the possibility of a “rags to riches” success story – has moved abroad … since social mobility in the U.S. is much lower than in many other developed nations.
(And we pointed out that conservatives are as disturbed as liberals by the collapse of social mobility in modern America.)
A paper published last year by University of Ottawa economics professor Miles Corak tells us exactly where the American Dream has gone … to Scandinavia. Here’s a chart from the study:
Denmark, Norway and Finland have the most social mobility (and Sweden is not that far behind).
On the other hand, the UK, Italy and America have the least social mobility.
True, the UK and Italy are a tiny bit worse than the U.S. in terms of social mobility. But the U.S. has the most inequality. Indeed, the U.S. arguably has the worst inequality anywhere in the world at any time in history. Indeed, inequality is so severe in America that most of the profits are flowing into the hands of an incredibly small group of people … and you’re not very likely to become one of them.
On the other hand, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway have the least inequality. In other words, it’s a lot more likely that you can get a reasonable slice of the pie there.
Indeed, Norway is arguably the world's most prosperous country. Denmark is 4th; Sweden is 6th; and Finland is 8th ... but the U.S. has dropped down to 10th place.
Sadly, the American Dream is now spoken with a Scandinavian accent.
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This is such total BS. I live in Sweden. I just got an apartment after being on a waiting list for FIVE YEARS! And it's no dream place. I upgraded from a one bedroom to a 2 bedroom, so my kids can have their own rooms, while I sleep on the couch. Something that takes a day in America takes 5 years in Sweden.
If the situation is so great here, why is the average mortgage term in Sweden over 200 years long? Does that sound even remotely reasonable? Do you know why that number is so high? Because most Swedes have infinite mortgages, and never pay off the loan. They just pay the interest enough to keep the debt from rising, but never pay it down. 600,000 USD will get you a tiny 1.5 story cookie-cutter house (full 2-story houses are rarely built because that would be too "ostentatious"). If you're lucky, it also has a carport.
Furthermore, this notion of equality is so fricking skewed. WTF does that even mean? They say in America 10% own 90% of the wealth, well in Sweden 0.01% own 99.9% of the wealth. Is that what you call equality? Is that what you call a better chance at getting a slice of the pie? We are worse than feudal serfs. I'm in the top 20% income bracket, and I only make $40K annually. After the government takes its share, over 50%, I have nothing.
George Washington can kiss my grits!
I will be VERY hapy to take up residence in one of the countries listed after global warming gets there first - last time I went to Finland I got frostbite.
Frankly, I believe this is a misinterpretation of the data.
in part, it is. it starts with the fact that in our globalized world, if "you make it", "you make it big"
so we don't have one hundred Bill Gates, we have one. and we don't have one hundred IKEA families, we have one
and those "Big Boyz" are seriously big, and distort a lot of statistics, particularly for small countries
meanwhile, Bill Gates still resides in the US, while his Swedish counterparts more often then not... don't
having said that, a lot of those statistics have to do with the local RE markets and taxes. which are often both beyond comparison
Very few are aware that after the Irish, no other nation had more immigrants to US than Norway back in the days. So many words originate from Norwegian. Surveys show Norwegians love the US more than any other nation, and I am one of them. But I cry for your society, and I trust your politicians about as far as I can spit. When I inform people here your politicians are immune from insider trading, that your FED is owned by banks instead of the nation, they stare back in utter disbelief. At this stage I wonder if the main reason to remain an ally is to be on the side of the likely winner in the coming war for control of resources and wealth. A sick feeling in my stomach...
It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to pay for your own military protection and you have a homogenous generally hard working population.
GW, Sir, is there actuallually one fokker that, no try agaon.
Himaroid, sir,
I have no idea what you were trying to say ... but welcome:
Like Canada, none of those are real countries.
One serious challenge and they will all have different names.
The US, Russia, China are all serious countries. They don't behave well probably because they don't have to.
I'd love to live on a better planet but don't hold up any of those countries that live off Pax Americana. Until we resolve the dollar reserve issue and as long as large countries believe war is still an option it will be this way. Once the nature of our planet's limited wealth is revealed in the coming monetary system crisis we may finally see people demand better behaving governments. Until then those who are believed to be rich enough to make major trouble will do the work and small countries can pretend their little socialist paradises are the result of their superior system.
Canadians burned the White House down in 1812; the US cannot even beat Afghanistan, Iraq it certainly couldn't take over Canada.
You don't know your history.
Sweden has fought 11 bloody wars with Russia. Finland kicked the Soviet Unions ass during WWII. Finns had a kill ratio of 30-50/1 on the soviets depending on which sources you look at.
Sweden during WWII (extracts)
December 25, 1939, Sweden declares itself Non-belligerent (does not fight in a given conflict) in the Winter War.
March 12, 1940, the Winter War ends in the Moscow peace treaty, and Finland cedes large territories to the Soviet Union.
April 9, 1940, Germany carries out Operation Weserubung, and invades Denmark and Norway.
April 12, 1940, Swedish Foreign minister Christian Gunther informs the foreign policy council, that the government has denied Norwegian King Haakon, the Crown Prince, and members of the Norwegian government entrance to Sweden.
According to international treaties, Governments in exile (a political group which claims to be a country’s legitimate government, but is unable to exercise legal power and instead resides in a foreign country) are not allowed to exercise their legal powers from a neutral nation…
Fall of 1941, Sweden starts trading directly with the German Wehrmacht in Finland. Among other things tents with stoves, and trucks, in exchange for nickel from Petsamo. This is kept secret from the Western Allies, and most likely a breach of Swedish neutrality. …
Spring, 1944, the Finnish government rejects Soviet offers of peace as the Finnish army stands undefeated in the remote Karelia. Sweden advises Finland to make peace with the Soviet Union. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II_%28Timeline%29
Germany got over 40% of its iron from Sweden. Without "neutral" Sweden, Germany wouldn't have had a war machine.
Once had a Chinese gf who had lived in Denmark for some years... basically she got bored to death there.
Danmark is a very tiny country in comparison to the rest of Skandinavien.
Danes are really nice people but really confined. Plus it's flat and gets real windy being totally surrounded by water.
Nice people but I definitely would never want to live there. You're Kina Doll knew what she was talkin' about.
;)
It's also a bastion of socialism and similar to the other centrally planned Scandinavian economies suffering from a huge housing bubble.
They also pay over 200% tax on car purchases. Imagine biking around in that wet, cold, dark country.
and now they shall freeze
First start with better genes....homogenous population until the last 25 years(mass arabs,blacks) ...add tribal minded national mores and you get nations like Norway with a sovergien wealth fund of almost a trillion dollars that ACTUALLY belongs to the Norwegian folk. I wonder what my great gramps would think about emeigrating to America now.lol
I wouldn't hold up the Scandi countries as nations to follow necessarily. Their socialist utopias are in trouble and from what I hear the taxes are really stifling - no way they can be incubators for innovation. On the other hand, you can live a fairly nice middle class life there on the government dole, and not work so hard, but how long can this go on for especially given the mass third world, low-skilled immigration that they are encouraging? There are growing "no go" zones in Malmo and other parts of Sweden that are suffering from creeping Islamization these days too. And what does the government do against this? Claim that anyone who is against mass immigration is "racist" and instead increase the number of immigrants.
Their "Jante Law" speech codes make it damn near impossible to debate things rationally (think US/UK PC speech codes gone wild) too.
Also, there are some pretty wacky other laws there (there's a lot of Feminist & "gender neutral" stuff, alcohol is really pricey and Norway in particular is expensive as hell - worse than Switzerland (but with hotter chicks!)).
That said, it aint' the worst place in the world and the women are prettier than the land whales in the US but I can't see it really being a "capitalist wild west" sort of place where any entrepreneur can make it. That makes no sense.
I suggest you read the following:
http://www.li.com/prosperityindex
http://www.prosperity.com/#!/ranking
The index was released a few weeks ago.
color me unimpressed
but at least they look hot in fluro push up bras that distract from the skin cancer
The Australian dream is 500k of house mortgage to keep a roof over your head while your misses spends outrageous sums of money trying to out slut her peer group.
ha ha yeah heard that about Oz....probably not as bad as in the US. Given the divroce ("frivorce") laws in these countries it's a wonder any man gets married there anymore...or buys an expensive house (that he's got a 50% shot of losing in any divorce settlment).
Been wanting to move there all of my life. Great standard of living, beautiful architecture, friendly, intelligent and engaging people. What's not to like?
http://www.swedishmailorderbrides.org/
I won't bore you with my background & my life. I'll just say if a person is industrious, honest and non-egotripped, Scandinavia is the place for anyone who wants to go far realising your dreams. Good Luck.
Please do bore us with your background because I'd really like to know what experiences you've had that make you think Scandinavia is great.
My experience of 15 years here is the opposite of what you portray. I would guess that either you came from such squalor in the US that Scandinavia is step up, or you're so well off and connected that money isn't a problem for you, or maybe you don't mind being a tax slave, paying 68% of your income to the government.
http://translate.google.se/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fww...
I work my ass off, only to get beaten down with taxes and regulation over and over again. See also my comment later in this thread.
The fact is Scandinavia IS where the 'american dream' has moved.
I've lived up here for over 30 years. If one is a go-getter you'll do just fine.
Statistics are relative when it comes to the intergration factor for a foreigner. I'd say Norway/Sweden are tied for 1st place, Danmark 2nd & Finland 3rd.
btw I 've lived in Finland for 3 years so I know its 3rd for the moment; they got it pretty tuff at the moment. Whatever you do, don't tell too many people about all this. Don't need an invasion of selfish stuck-up yuppies here. ;)
Many Norwegians who've tried to start small businesses refer to their country as "NoWay" because of the overreaching regulation. Of course Norway is a very socialist country with lots and lots of government bureaucracy... I guess bureaucrats are limited in how far they can go. Therefore inequality is limited.
Here in the USSA, I think the current inequality is rooted in the free money/zirp/carry trade/lo-flation(lmao) story spun out by the Fed-Heads and other friends of Richy Rich. I also believe it's deliberate.
It is funny, when this data basically came out in the NYT a few years ago, most here disagreed with it.
Funny what a few years can do...
THe chanting crowds of deadbeats (occupy) seem to have moved on too…
It’s impossible to compare the Scandinavian countries with America, IMO, when there has been a massive tsunami of Third World immigration sweeping all over the continental United States – to the detriment and displacement of the native population. American has no stable population that can provide its young with jobs while working their way through school, that allows them to attend university at a reasonable price, and that enables them to go forth from university to get a good paying job upon graduation.
Instead, the job opportunities are flooded by not only legal immigration coming from the Third World but from massive illegal immigration as well as from H-1bs and L-1bs to take the better, higher education jobs. In contrast, Sweden had an ethnic breakdown of 91% Swedish and 3% Finnish in 1996 according to The Portable World Factbook, although that is changing somewhat due to the globalist push for ethnic and nationalistic wipeout.
With the current policy of ethnic displacement in the US, how could a population have mobility for its young people? Or security for its displaced and jobless older people? In short, the American Dream didn't go anywhere. It has been destroyed by a new ruling elite that hates America's native population.
The Scandinavian countries are socialist with vestiges of fake capitalism. And socialism, throughout history, has been proven not to work. For instance, the Scandinavians have relatively nonexistent military budgets (relying upon other western nations for protection), nor do they subsidize other countries around the world as does the USA.
Nor are they enfolding the Third World into their nation as is America, or outsourcing their manufacturing and intellectual base to the Third World without comparable advantage for their own citizens. According to the refutation of “Socialism Works,”
http://www.paoracle.com/SocialismWORKS!/?sw=Sweden
"nor do they subsidize other countries around the world as does the USA". This is a joke. The US has never subsidized anyone other than transnational banks and corporations. Oh, I heard all of this when I was growing up. "Why does the US give away all this foreign aid?
Horse shit!
The US never "gave" anyone foreign aid. That foreign aid was all bull shit.
Instead the IMF and World bank made loans to foreign countries that they knew were not repayable for the specific intent of stealing the foreign country's natural resources, assets and means of production when they defaulted on their loans and would be forced into Austerity programs.
Read Michael Hudson's, Super Imperialism. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Naomi Klein's, Shock Doctrine. Read Howard Zinn's, A Peoples' History of the United States.
Get your head out of your ass. And start learning what the US has always been about.
The US is actually propping up countries – to the tune of $42 billion in aid to 186 countries around the world in 2012; especially to Israel that received $6 billion in 2012, according to Time. That money is not from the IMF or World Bank; that comes out of the US Treasury.
The November 2011 estimate by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs of cumulative total U.S. direct aid to Israel was $123.202 billion.
The executive editor of the Report, Richard Curtiss, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, wrote: “It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel. But it's a question that will never occur to the American public because, so long as America's mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers.
http://www.wrmea.org/congress-and-us-aid-to-israel/494-congress-a-us-aid-to-israel/9748-u-s-financial-aid-to-israel-figures-facts-and-impact.html
Just taking the opportunity to point out that the American Dream IS: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It IS NOT: "a house". (Or 'homeownership'"; or $x in fiat income; or 'retirement'; or government 'services'; or 'security', which doesn't exist in the real world, not as long as every life ends in death.)
<<In short, the American Dream didn't go anywhere. It has been destroyed by a new ruling elite that hates America's native population.>>
Well, they hate the native population, and the immigrant/naturalised population, and foreign populations, all populations and any individual who isn't a crony. This is why they've been destabilising populations all over the world, including the U.S.
It's a global problem, now, not just USian, and in every country the "American Dream" (which some may consider "human rights") is under attack by this mafia of globalist sociopaths. They are loyal to no people, no country, and no code, constitutional or otherwise. This includes the British 'Crown'.
I'm just saying it's important to remember, now more than ever, that this is much bigger than just a USian problem. We are "the world," and THEY, the enemies of this world, should be isolated in our language as the predatory fringe they are.
Great post, Renfield. If the world's ruling elite did not hate the people they rule and cared more about humanity, they would help in the development of struggling countries such as Mexico. But their investments always are self-serving, and with the Mexican population driven out to flood the United States for welfare and low-pay jobs, these elite rulers have turned their backs on Mexico.
Anyone familiar with North American labor and resource problems knows that the Mexican people crossing the border are not doing it because they would rather be in the United States than in Mexico. Because of the international bankers and the corporations who put a premium on low wages and low fringe benefits--who made a deal with Mexico’s and America’s corrupt governments--Mexicans are forced to leave a homeland and a culture that they love. Mexico is favored with abundant natural resources and willing labor and most any Mexican would rather have his culture, his friends and his community than to move into a new situation with a new language and new trials.
Unfortunately, for everyone involved, Mexican laborers are being used to force American workers to accept lower wages and/or unemployment, while America’s banker/corporation system begins to mirror Mexico’s corrupt government, both now using workers as pawns.
These international corporations could have gone to Mexico to develop a free enterprise system with an emphasis on freedom, instead they chose to put both America and Mexico and the world on the road to serfdom, rather than put all on America's old road to prosperity.
Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos in his essay "The Fourth World War Has Begun" that originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique in September of 1997 documents the link between globalization and bank fraud, . Here is a brief excerpt from Marcos in an article on Zero Hedge by JS Kim:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/startling-link-between-globalisation-and-bank-fraud
Each day the big finance centres impose their laws on countries and groups of countries all around the world. They re-arrange and re-order the inhabitants of those countries. ...
The objective of neoliberalism’s migration policy is more to destabilise the world labour market than to put a brake on immigration. The fourth world war - with its mechanisms of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganisation - involves the displacement of millions of people. Their destiny is to wander the world, carrying the burden of their nightmare with them, so as to constitute a threat to workers who have a job, a scapegoat designed to make people forget their bosses, and to provide a basis for the racism that neoliberalism provokes…
With the beginning of the fourth world war, organised crime has globalised its activities. The criminal organisations of five continents have taken on board the "spirit of world cooperation" and have joined together in order to participate in the conquest of new markets. They are investing in legal businesses, not only in order to launder dirty money, but in order to acquire capital for illegal operations. Their preferred activities are luxury property investment, the leisure industry, the media - and banking....
One of its first victims has been the national market. Rather like a bullet fired inside a concrete room, the war unleashed by neoliberalism ricochets and ends by wounding the person who fired it. One of the fundamental bases of the power of the modern capitalist state, the national market, is wiped out by the heavy artillery of the global finance economy. The new international capitalism renders national capitalism obsolete and effectively starves their public powers into extinction. The blow has been so brutal that sovereign states have lost the strength to defend their citizens’ interests. ... (end)
What is George Soros but a world class criminal?
Couldn't resist copy-pasting this example from another thread, of what I was alluding to earlier, that our governments are now (maybe always were?) only about commerce law. doctor10 commented:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-26/we-blew-it-chuck-schumer-says-d...
The Supreme Court decided the "premium payment" mandated by the ACA was a tax; otherwise it is un-Constitutional. Congress may NOT force individuals to do business with a company. They may, and have done ao with the ACA, force you to pay a tax. The fact is that the insurance companies are merely collecting it. And that America has been taken for a suckers ride over all this by Congress, the Supreme Court , and the insurance companies.
It is amazing that it has taken Americans this long to
1. See what really happened to them with this legislative raping
2. Have yet to comprehend what "their " representative legislative and judical bodies have morphed into.
JR: From you, a real compliment. Many of your comments have been immortalised in my home files.
<<Because of the international bankers and the corporations who put a premium on low wages and low fringe benefits--who made a deal with Mexico’s and America’s corrupt governments--Mexicans are forced to leave a homeland and a culture that they love. Mexico is favored with abundant natural resources and willing labor and most any Mexican would rather have his culture, his friends and his community than to move into a new situation with a new language and new trials. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, Mexican laborers are being used to force American workers to accept lower wages and/or unemployment, while America’s banker/corporation system begins to mirror Mexico’s corrupt government, both now using workers as pawns.>>
I have begun reading M.E. Croft, whom I've decided I want to be when I grow up. The common people of the world - the world's populations - are considered by governments (the banks who run them) to be chattel property, in the service of their commerce. I am becoming convinced that giving the government power to tax and license activities, especially day-to-day living activies necessary for life - is key to bank power. The key is that populations are tricked into thinking that they MUST - not by informed choice, but by compulsion - subject themselves to the bank/government system of taxes and licensing. When this turns against them, as it inevitably does, then they must forfeit their beautiful native homes and all wealth of resources that were previously theirs, and only given up by virtue of their (non-informed) AGREEMENT:
"Why would a free man or woman require permission from the government to get married, drive a car, start a business, add onto one's home, or improve one's property? We are no longer free to do anything because statutes have been enacted requiring us to get permits in order to do some activity which does NOT infringe upon the life, liberty, property, or rights of another. It's all about control The Catch-22 of this is that you're damned if you don't have a licence because you will get fined for not having one, and damned if you do because you will get fined for doing something which the permit does not allow. Either way one is asking for control ... The problem is the contract. If we don't have a contract with the 'authority', they have no authority over us. Alleged 'authorities' do everything in their power to intimidate us into getting these permits, such as telling us it is law, etc. when in fact they cannot make anyone get a licence for anything since this would be forced contracting, the very nature of which would make it invalid. Not only do we have unlimited right to contract but also unlimited right not to contract. ...Licences control, regulate, stifle, intimidate, rob, and destroy. Licensure is presented under the guise of protectionism. Governments license in order to make work for secretaries, boards, bureaucrats, and commissions whose function it is to assure government an additional source of revenue from the price of granting its permission. Tyrannical governments prefer that their subjects/slaves be required to ask for their permission prior to, and as a condition of, doing nearly every kind of independent, public, or private activity. Such governments want servile subjects who do what they are told to do." (Croft)
I am becoming convinced that the philosophy of our legal system has changed, or maybe it's just become more obvious. Common law exists to protect human rights, or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." COMMERCE laws, on the other hand, protect the FLOW OF COMMERCE. I noticed that Obamacare advocates, for example, justify it by COMMERCE law, not common law.
When banks write your laws, they are less concerned with HUMAN rights, than with COMMERCIAL rights. Sadly, many of us do not seem to know the difference. (I include myself here, as I am still just learning for lo these 7 years,. Before that time I was a happy little commercial entity claimed by the government, along with most other people these days. But I am working to learn this as though I had been raised with it.) And of course, international "wars" on terror or drugs or cancer or poverty -- along with various 'free trade' agreements -- are all about commerce and its freedom from individual rights to personal property, including one's health or body. (And when 'property' includes one's body and its labour, then those commerce laws may and often do infringe on the common right to 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness'. But which do courts, governments, and banks favour? And they're the ones writing the laws.)
The words 'international capitalism' ring as false to me as they are evil. I expect that when Soros is brought to justice, it will be under some national system of laws, not an 'international' one. I hope this century will put the lie to 'globalism' once for all, or at least for the next thousand years.
http://thecrowhouse.com/Documents/mary-book.pdf
For those who believe in "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness", to junk the evolution of the US state : from Hamilton's federalism to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan and beyond, saying: "we have become the opposite of our own orginal ideal", is a damnation of US history that is of the same scale as Italy damning the despotism of Rome.
The Italians, after Rome's fall, refused to UNITE in the face of foreign imperial invaders for 1500 years.
Such was the scalding effect of Rome's hegmony on its Italian neighbours. Italy stayed city state and thus little influenced the geo-political course of Western power plays (except in the domain of Religion, Commerce and Culture; no mean feat). Its the Byzantine Greeks, Germans, French, Austro-Spanish, Russians and British that dominated the power plays from 500 AD to 1900 AD, when the age of America began.
In the face of current global integration, all organised by Pax Americana's Oligarchs to spread American exceptioanlism; aka Corporate capitalist hegemony; it is strange to see elements of the US populist segment now crying out like ZAPATISTS; anti-statists; against their own 250 year old political tradition and evolution.
It does not lack in IRONY.
You now cry : "We know the enemy, and its not the US people, its the global corporate Oligarchs" (An invention of Pax Americana's legacy over 100 years since Rockafella/FED days).
But you have no solution to look to except Revolution and THAT is a baby whose convolutions are never easy to control nor to predict. As History teaches us that BABY loves to eat its own sons, and the cycle rebegins.
Keep that in mind. We are in a cycle of Western cultural regression by the looks of it.
And it seems like it is working in the US. We are done as a 1st world country. We will be number 3 in the near future.
One word: The FED.....
OK, two words...
+ 1,000, JR