QT3 attracts interesting people!
Yeah, there’s totally nobody here with any significant international experience.
(Me? While I’m currently living, yes, a few miles from where I was born in Michigan, I’ve also lived in the UK; I’d happily move back there if there was a good opportunity)
It’s not quite as rosy as that. If you have a full-time job you have security. But there’s a growing number of people who don’t have, and have never had, full-time employment. And for these people the safety net is sketchy and tangled up with beaurocracy.
You can’t make plans for continued employment, when you lose your employment and can’t find another it can take months before social services process your last-ditch application so you can get money for food and rent. Half of which they’ll deny you because they’ll calculate your previous income and tell you that your minimum wage salary should have lasted you another month if you had lived like you were already on welfare, nevermind what you actually had to spend it on. You’ll get sent to increasingly more and more meaningless job activation programs, culminating in you still being on welfare while the government pays an employer $750 a month if they would only take you on and shore up their unemployment numbers.
On the other hand, healthcare is good and quite cheap.
Credentials:
Lived in Denmark and the UK, stayed for long enough (months) in Australia to experience everyday life. The wife have lived and worked in New York.
I think overall the Scandinavian model is the best. It’s by no means a perfect paradise, but overall it offers the most benefits for the most people… and even though conservatives keep painting that picture we don’t see corporations or rich people up and leave due to taxes (only those caught stealing of which we have our share too).
But like Case, I could totally see my self living somewhere else. We’ve talked about Africa (before we got settled… and my wife being pregnant stopped us from applying for positions in Mozambique), Greenland, The US and Australia.
With the right position we’d totally up and leave just for the experience (and climate change)… unfortunately my skills aren’t widely sought after and my wife can’t make enough to provide for the whole family (especially not if our social security net was no longer there)
Thats impossible without going to America. Sean Hannity told me so.
You can’t live the American dream in Australia.
So I’ve lived in the UK, Germany, Australia and now Hungary. I’ve traveled to the US, most of Europe and a chunk of the Middle East and the rest of Asia.
I’d say:
UK: Great for European entrepreneurs - very easy to do business, but poor safety net, and mediocre healthcare.
Germany: Great for job security and families, great healthcare, difficult to start and run a business, too much paperwork.
Australia: A lot like the UK, only sunnier and with more positive, friendlier, energetic people.
Hungary: Great if you are an ex-pat with a decent western wage, awful for locals. Great as long as you are earning money, terrible if you are not. Good job security, but weak safety net that only pays out at low local standards. Health care is free but not great. Byzantine kafkaesque government but moving to a low flat-tax for businesses.
My girlfriend is from Estonia and I have a lot of experience of that country. They seem to have a hybrid of decent safety net with low (by European standards) flat taxes, simple, efficient, electronic government. It’s a great place to do business, you get decent job security, the costs are low, but if you have no job you won’t be able to live at Western standards. Plus everyone speaks English. It’s like a low cost, low tax Finland.
If I ran my own company and had so much money that I’d never have to worry about health, retirement, and education for my kids, I’d definitely pick America. But anything less than that makes Europe my choice. I’ve only got research to go on, but I definitely like the look of the Scandinavian model.
While I have only lived here in Norway I would also give a vote for the Scandinavian system. While the public sector here is far to large and the bureaucracy can drive you crazy sometimes, the support system and semi-free healthcare more than makes up for it. Like Hans said, it’s about offering the most benefits to the most people. The value of a society can be measured in how it takes care of the weakest IMHO.
New Zealand - home. Social welfare ideas of Scandinavia combined with business focus - second best place to do business after Singapore! Nice balance of many things but I particularly enjoy the relaxed approach to life (we are like Aussies but without the chip on the shoulder) and a can-do attitude. First powered flight was in NZ 9 months before the Wright Brothers, after all!
Norway would be next. Very similar to NZ, beautiful country and friendly people too.
Sigapore because I love drug dealers being executed. As long as you have no interest whatsoever in meddling in Govt, Singapore is great, even if you are not well off it seems.
The UK would be next. Plenty others have outlined the pros and cons.
The US comes in late as I hate long commutes, endless freeways, sidewalk-less streets, strip malls, crazy expensive healthcare, having to no swear or tell religious jokes, etc. Living in the middle of NY or SF could solve much of this, but I am not rich enough by any means!
Indonesia would be last. Third world countries are great if you are a bastard who enjoys dealing with corruption and bribery. You can make a lot of money just because it is a big, fast-growing economy, but you need to be a dick and you need to semi-wall yourself off from the non-Chinese natives (the Chinese natives just want to screw you in business).
The best rags to riches story I’ve heard recently was about an Iranian refuge who arrived in Denmark age 17. Without any education she was within a few years CEO of a larger airplane catering business and owner of several sports cars. The fact that she owned several cars, that would cost around $700,000 in Denmark while making $13K a month didn’t really bother anyone…
… until last week when the Swiss mother company suffered a severe drop in stock value after telling in a press release that their Danish CEO had somehow taken them for $24 million.
I would like to live where Hans lives, and not because of young Iranians with sports cars. I think the Scandinavian approach is best. Sadly, I have no reasonable way to move there, as I doubt that they welcome immigrants.
Robert, you’re a white college professor, I doubt you’ll ever be “an immigrant” in the unwelcomed sense.
As I said. No paradise and our way of treating immigrants is despicable… and while being white helps a lot, we’ll still make your life very very difficult (but once you’re in…).
Now if you were doing research for a Danish company or played football really well, you’d be welcomed and could skip most taxes for at least the first 3 years (we have a thing called “researcher tax”, which for some reason is mostly used by pro soccer players…)
Scandinavia, definitely (and I’ve lived in both Norway, Sweden and Denmark - the differences are minimal, although the Danes have become increasingly xenophobic over the past decade compared to their neighbors). There are issues with the Scandinavian model (like anything else), but the truth is that compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world, the concerns of the average Scandinavian are extremely trivial and petty. I sometimes think that most of the people here fail to realize just how well off they are, compared to pretty much every other place I’ve ever lived in or visited.
Of course, if you’ve got (or can earn) the big money, then anywhere is basically fine.
Dude, having post offices in grocery stores was not the way I was raised! WORST REFORM EVER.
Let’s just say if there are any Finnish ladies out there looking for lurve (and a visa), I wouldn’t say no.
I think the primary reason for the success we’ve had is the education system, the thought that everyone should have access to free education at any level. This makes sure the best and the brightest can be found and given a chance, instead of being doomed to burger flipping.
Its like Ratatouille, the acknowledgement that not everyone can be a genius, but a genius can come from anyone.
Private schools takes average and turns it into above average, then gives them the best jobs, it a sick system.
Second on the list is how taxes is used, Sweden for example doesn’t have higher taxes than the US, but they use them far more effectively as a redistribution of wealth.
Last, on New Zealand, they pay their teachers bugger all, and its classified a tax heaven, I am NOT impressed.
Watch The Wire, season four. Yes, it’s fiction, but kids like them have access to free education and it doesn’t give them much of a chance at all.
Second on the list is how taxes is used, Sweden for example doesn’t have higher taxes than the US, but they use them far more effectively as a redistribution of wealth.
Are you sure?
Last, on New Zealand, they pay their teachers bugger all, and its classified a tax heaven, I am NOT impressed.
From what I know university lecturers in New Zealand are among the best paid in the world, relative to local costs. I think only Australia is better, and they may have outstripped them as prices have shot up in Australia over the last few years. Not sure about school teachers, though.
It’s the standard of living that needs to be considered. If New Zealanders pay half as much rent, they can earn less money and still be better off.
For those of you from New Zealand, you forgot to mention the fly fishing there. Reason enough to move. ;)
Can we really determine what’s the best system based on the standard of living in a particular country though? For one, a system that works well in one country might not work as well in another. For another, the higher standard of living might be due to other factors besides the system. Also, due to the interconnectedness of all countries how much of the standard of living is also based on benefits it accrues from other countries?
I guess what I’m saying is that to really answer this question we have to examine just what the systems in these countries are and how they work. it seems most of this thread though is focused on the experiences of living within the various systems, rather than a discussion of the actual systems.