Authored by Joakim Book via TheDailyEconomy.org,
Every few years, Americans rediscover Scandinavia.
Someone visits Norway or Denmark, returns dazzled and envious of parental leave and universal childcare, and asks why America refuses to copy what obviously works. On the day dedicated to celebrating America, Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote for The New York Times that America is so great that, in fact, it should be more like Norway. If American companies can pay high wages and generous benefits to workers there, Kristof observed, they could do so in New York, too.
If only America were willing to embrace a little more social democracy and bigger government, this popular and recurring story goes, perhaps it could enjoy the same prosperity and flourishing that Norway does — and have its population also routinely rank among the happiest on the planet.
I was born and raised in one Nordic country, have worked in another, and for the last six years have lived in a third, so I’m fairly familiar with our way of life. I’ve also spent much time in America, stunned and enamored of the way things are in the vast, diverse, and unruly union of states. Europeans are simultaneously READ MORE AT SOURCE »
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