More than 50% living on tax income – Denmark
Is this really the welfare state people wanted in Denmark? Less than 50% of the people in Denmark are now working to provide for the other half – more than 50% now get their income from the Danish state, reposts Danish newspaper Politiken today.
To me this sounds pretty bad. It raises a lot of questions, even if – as is the case with Denmark – everybody are provided for economically. To me, participation in the labor market is an important thing – that 50% is outside the labor market does not sound so good.
Also – how fair is this? How does it feel for the half that provides the goods? Not my kind of welfare state!
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February 6th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Oh, they haven’t really gotten the real extent of the problem either. You see, in addition to the 50% on welfare, a large part of the rest is also living off the state as employee’s.
Neither of these groups have any interest in voting for people who’ll lessen the welfare state (quite the opposite in fact), meaning that things can only go even more downhill from here…
The politicians are competing with each other to promise even more welfare, and focusing on larger problems than not being able to pay for the welfare state created. Those ‘larger problems’ are things like whether a few people should be allowed to wear burqua’s, whether it is ok to have school meetings only for women, and other utterly important things like that….
February 6th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Do take note that everyone is counted – not just the people who can be part of the labour force, and so the number also includes everyone who’s on the state pension… with a fairly high average living age that amounts to a lot of people. The reason that the situation will worsen is that more people are going on pension than are coming into the labour force.
Actually, if you want to look at the Danish unemployment figures they are extremely low. Even if they’ve risen during the financial crisis, many countries would still like to have that kind of unemployment figures.
February 6th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Jacob: Unemployment figures are hard to compare. They depend on a lot of things – unemplyment benefits (how they are, how long they last), what is counted (involuntary part time?), and not least a country’s practice regarding sick pensions, retirement plans and such.
For a long time there was very little unempolyment in Northern Norway, but very few were working (relative to the southern part of the country). The government simply didn’t want unemployment in the North, so people without jobs very given sick pensions “en masse” – for all sorts of problems.
So I actually believe the Danish figures underestimate unemployment in Denmark (as they do in Sweden and Norway too).