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The American Dream in Denmark
In honor of Independence Day, let us consider the American Dream, the idea that through intelligence and hard work you can move up from the social class of your parents. It still exists . . . in Scandinavia and Canada. From the Ottawa Citizen:
"Turns out, the American dream is playing out more strikingly north of the 49th parallel, says Canadian economist Miles Corak, editor of a recent book exploring generational mobility in Europe and North America."
and:
"’The U.S. dream is probably more relevant here than it is the U.S.,’ Corak said.
Among rich countries studied, Corak said, Canada ranked with Denmark, Norway and Finland at the top of the pack in terms of intergenerational mobility. The U.S., the United Kingdom and France are the least mobile."
It must pain the ’wingers to think that their cherished mythology of the infinite possibilities of American upward mobility now only exists in lands controlled by gay commies. The article gives the specifics:
". . . one-fifth of the income advantage is inherited across generations in Canada. In the U.S. and the U.K., almost one-half is inherited.
Corak also cites U.S. research showing that almost one-half of children born to low-income parents become low-income adults, which means they fall in the bottom 25 per cent of income distribution. In the U.K, the tally is 40 per cent.
Children in high-income families, about four in 10, tend to become high-income adults in the U.S. and U.K., he said.
By contrast, there is significantly more movement between generations in Canada.
Corak says studies show that for every 100 people born at the bottom rung, one-third end up at the bottom, and almost one-fifth end up at the top.
For every 100 people born at the top in Canada, only one-third remain at the top."
The death of the American Dream in America has been rather quietly noted in the American press. It is entirely a matter of tax policy and government investment in access to education. Jon Talton of the Arizona Republic gets it:
"In magisterial work for the New York Times, reporter David Cay Johnston has documented the rise of the hyper-rich, the top 0.1 percent of income earners. These 145,000 people are leaving everyone else far behind, even those who would be considered wealthy. From 1980 to 2002, the latest year where data are available, the share of total income earned by the hyper-rich more than doubled. That earned by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers declined.
Johnston’s research also makes it clear that the new nobility was the chief beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts. Those helped create a deficit that will, we are told, force cuts to Social Security and college aid, among other programs.
Speaking of college aid, Jackson watchers also probably missed news that the federal government has changed the rules for Pell Grants. That, combined with declining state support for universities, will keep a record number of Americans from getting a college education.
These facts show some of the reasons the Wall Street Journal recently looked at the data and concluded that upward economic mobility has largely stalled in the United States. This historic ability to get ahead through hard work is the ’American dream.’"
The United States became the world’s most wealthy nation through years of prudent reinvestment in its human capital. Since Reagan - and clearly accelerating under Bush - it has been clear American public policy to squander its advantages through ruinous tax cuts and a reduction in social spending. How does this play out in the real world? Toyota recently passed up significantly higher subsidies offered by southern American states to build a car plant in the Ontario town of Woodstock. Why?:
"’The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,’ said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant."
and (my emphasis in bold; you have to laugh):
"Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use ’pictorials’ to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
’The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,’ Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson."
The knuckle-dragging hillbillies need ’pictorials’. These are the people Bush refers to as his ’base’. I could frankly care less about the stupidities of American public policy, except for the fact that it serves as such a bad influence in the rest of the world. In Canada, the ’wingers constantly use the example of American policy as the right example for Canada. The U. S. doesn’t tax its rich people so Canada shouldn’t. The U. S. doesn’t have a functioning health care system so Canada shouldn’t. The U. S. doesn’t provide access to proper education for poor people so Canada shouldn’t. This race to the bottom, leaving everybody poor except for a tiny hyper-rich plutocracy, is just plain stupid. The plutocrats wouldn’t even go along with it except for the fact that they have found, through the miracle of ’free trade’, that they don’t need American economic prosperity to be rich. They can find their workers, and their consumers, elsewhere. Now that American public policy is actually costing Americans money and jobs, do you think they will grow some brains and go back to the old policies that made the United States the wealthiest country in the world? No chance! Happy Independence Day!
Forum posts
6 July 2005, 00:51
Excellent article. The American supremacy vanished after 1970. Try to find a worker in the staates who has not recently immigrated and who can perform a task such as a repairment of a car!
The stock market scam and the dream of getting rich in a way without having particular knowledge - that’s why you see more and more real estate agents - is too tempting.
Why learning something useful if you earn money through similar scams. The production base in the U.S. is also diminished each year. The future is very bleak: more imports!
This sad tendency has been started through Regans economics!
6 July 2005, 10:52
This article could only have been written by a Canadian or a European. As a Dane having lived in the US, I see how comparisons between Europe and the US are most often dominated by prejudice, not facts. A recent Danish study showed that 92% of all Danish college/university students have at least one parent with a college/university degree. 15% of the Danish population holds a college/university degree. The study also finds that there is only a 3% chance that a person whose parents only have primary education will obtain a college/university degree. Social mobility?
The unemployment rate among immigrants in Denmark is 25.2% compared to 4.9% among native Danes. Danish-born children of immigrants have an unemployment rate of 14.8%! Even the third generation has a significantly higher rate of unemployment than “ethnic Danes” and the ones who work have a significantly lower income. Is that social mobility? The unemployment rate of immigrants in the US is the same as for non-immigrants. US-born children of immigrants have on average the same income as Americans having been in the country for three generations or more. That’s social mobility!
Europeans and Canadians need to get over their inferiority complexes and face the facts: The American Dream is very much possible in the US and definitely NOT in Europe (I don’t know anything about Canada – who does?). It’s much easier (it’s possible, that is) to work your way up without a degree in the US. I have never heard about anyone getting anywhere without a degree or rich parents in Denmark – and I lived in Denmark most of my life. I know many Americans who worked their way up from nothing. As a person who lived many years in both Denmark and the US, I can say that it’s OBVIOUS that the American dream is very much alive in the US where the average working class has a standard of living that most middle class Europeans only dare to DREAM of.
God bless the USA!
6 July 2005, 15:56
No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We’re an "empire," ain’t we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We’re No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:
The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
"The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education ’score worse than virtually all of the other countries’" (Jeremy Rifkin’s superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
"The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
"Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China.
Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We’re not the place to be anymore.
The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we’re 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
"The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that’s the company we’re keeping.
Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
"U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it’s the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families—more than 10 percent of all U.S. households—"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
"Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world’s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
"Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world’s leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world’s top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million—one in five—unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That’s why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world’s largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world’s largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn’t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That’s more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don’t show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
"Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
"Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
"Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
"The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we’re not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10465&fcategory_desc=Top%20Stories%20Ignored%20By%20U.S.%20Media
The Failure of the "New Economics"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1572460016/104-5726803-1266366?v=glance
America’s emerging Fascist economy (1975)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0870003178/104-5726803-1266366?v=glance
God bless fascist America!<<<<<<< I’m with stupid.
7 July 2005, 00:17
First I will ask you kindly not to call me stupid. That’s not a good basis for a constructive debate. And second: Stick to the subject. Who here said the US was number one in everything? (Or in anything for that matter?)
Go live in Scandinavia for a year or two and see for yourself. "The American Dream in Denmark"? A worker earning a minimum wage here pays 44% income tax. If you make more than $45,000/year you pay 63%. A VW Jetta or a Honda Civic is $60,000 due to a 215% registration tax on cars. A gallon of gas is $6. Sales tax is 25% on everything even groceries. People pay for health care through the high taxes but there is a waiting list to get treatment in the hospitals (public hospitals completely crowded out private hospitals so there is no way around the public hospitals unless you are rich enough to afford a private hospital abroad which not too many people are due to the high taxes), so people literately die on the waiting list waiting for treatment.
American dream? Not here in Denmark, let me tell you.
This Swedish study concludes that: (http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/books.asp?isbn=9175665646)
– If EU15 was an American state, it would be the 5th poorest. Only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi are poorer.
– If Denmark was an American state it would be the 10th poorest.
– The average POOR American has more dwelling space, than the AVERAGE Dane (not the average POOR Dane, but the AVERAGE Dane). Homeowner rates are higher among POOR Americans than among AVERAGE Europeans. The average POOR American is more likely to be the owner of a car, washer/dryer, air conditioner than the AVERAGE european.
So who cares, where scientific literature is produced? Who cares that twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth (how many Europeans believe that by the way?) and who cares that americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined?
Americans live significantly better than Danes. There is absolutely no comparison. I’ve had both hard times and good times (financially) in both countries. Having hard times in the US compares to having good times in Denmark. Believe me, or go waste a couple of years of your life to live the European nightmare yourself.