One Week of Exposure to Compassion in Denmark

One Week of Exposure to Compassion in Denmark Good Citizen of Humanity

I am in an airport lounge in Denmark waiting for my plane back to the states.  I have just spent a week working and living in Denmark, a very good experience.

Denmark is a very small country, you can compare to life in the United States, the official version.  But, mine is about impressions, a limited number for sure.  First, I have yet to see my first fat person, or even someone I would consider overweight.  Everywhere I look there is a beautiful body … Portion sizes at restaurants are small, and as you can see in the link they consume about half of the energy (electricity and oil) that an American consumes.  

There are no homeless people.  All people have medical coverage, retirement, a place (a flat) to live in whether they have a job or not.  If you have no job you will be provided with a place and an income quite sufficient to take care of yourself and your family.  They feel all people must be taken care of with the basics, food, shelter, doctors, etc.  You simply have to ask for help.  

The national budget is balanced, education costs for the individuals are modest, and they do have a reasonable size military for a country of 5 million.  They are well educated, most people speak from about 3 to 5 languages.  Houses are smaller, older, but quite substantial.  I’m guessing, but their footprint seems about 60% the size of an average middle class American home. They are built to last forever is my impression. The city I was in furnished hot water to all the homes for heat via radiators.  

Taxes are high, about 50% of your income is taken by taxes, but then again,  you have security throughout your life.  Of course, you don’t have 3 tv’s in your house, probably just one.  Cars are taxed heavily, a value added tax, so they cost 3X the amount in the U.S.  Plenty of computers, iphones, ipads, androids everywhere.  The traffic lights are smart, if you approach a light and no one if coming on the cross roads, it changes to green so you don’t have to stop.  Lots of traffic circles so you don’t have to stop has often.  Plenty of buses and trains.  Everything seems well maintained, I did not see any slums.  All the farmers fields are green, because that is the law … a crop must be planted to cover the field and prevent erosion in the winter.

Politics

Their conservative party is more liberal than our democrats.  The left are socialists and even the dreaded word, communists.  Of course, it is a democracy.  I love they feel the compassionate to take care of all their people, especially those that need help.  Their method is quite simple, the middle class shares with those that need help.  The middle class has less, just a little more than the poor … which aren’t really poor by American standards.

Fears

Of course, there is fear that those on the dole, since they represent a large minority, will vote themselves more and eventually take everything.  But, I am guessing there is still an ambition among those on the dole to move up to the working middle class even if it is a small step up.  So, I’m guessing no one wants to kill the golden goose.  And guess what, people still want to work, to have a career, and go to work everyday even though they don’t need to in order to survive. Who could imagine that in America?

Oh, not much violence here.  Yea, they still have abusive men and robberies and all the petty stuff … despite the fact that everyone is taken care of..  I’m thinking that there are always people that want more and are willing to break the rules to get there.  They have one tenth the incarceration rate as in America, surprise, surprise and instead spend it on people needing help.

Being a country with only 5 million, their medical system seems to take care of normal stuff pretty well, but they travel to other countries if they have something complicated. They are more likely to let someone die and not spend a fortune trying to keep them alive an extra month …

Global Warming  

They are pushing solar and wind power strongly in this country.  So much so they have the highest power costs in the world about $0.40/kwh, or about 4 X the U.S. rate.  But they use half as much power because their homes are designed to be more efficient.  So, on global warming they are doing their part -- the U.S. is unlikely to match them in this area.  We like our money too much, we are unlikely to spend it to help the world.

GNP versus Compassion, Caviar and Gutters

I would definitely like to see our country move more toward the Denmark model, it fits with my belief that I am my brother’s keeper -- and I would like to less greedy and selfish.  But, I think our religious right/Republicans think people are inherently bad and must be controlled and punished, so they would never trust people like they do here.  Our level of compassion for people in need would not even register on the scale here in Denmark.  They think here in Denmark that Obamacare is completely inadequate.  I do not believe I will live long enough to see Americans having enough faith in or compassion for  their fellow humans to become a Denmark.  Seeing a country that acts out the idea that we are our brother’s keeper makes me a little sad that we have chosen to worship the god of the GNP instead.  

I might add, their per capita GNP is about the same as ours.  So despite being a small country, with a system that we believe could not work, they do as good as us on average.  They just don’t have the wealth inequality we have where the top 10% get 80% of the wealth. In short, they don’t believe in a rich man dining on caviar as a poor man starves in the gutter like America does.

Of course, they are not as profitable as Switzerland or Norway, but of course, neither are we.  But again, GNP is not their god here in Denmark, its ours.