Does Denmark have a federal deficit?
Asked by
JLeslie (
65412
)
October 24th, 2009
I recently saw an episode on Oprah showing how people live around the world. Denmark was the first featured, they explained that the country has socialized medicine; people rarely work past 4:00 pm; up to 4 years of federal help if you lose your job; and people get paid while going to college, and the tuition is free.
So, I wondered if this has been working when looking at practical concerns like federal deficit, economy, standard of living, etc., and for how long it has been sustainable? The country seemed so civilized (a reputation they have in general in my mind).
Denmark seemed like a country Gene Roddenberry would invent, except everyone is blond.
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8 Answers
Nope..
Budget:
revenues: $188.6 billion
expenditures: $176.3 billion (2008 est.)
From CIA factbook
Holy shit….
Unemployment rate: 1.9% (2008 est.)
The horror.
You see what happens when the Socialists win! Nobama! I want my country back!
@johnpowell Andorra and Monaco have unemployment at 0% (surely they’re screwing about with the figures somewhere).
@Jack_Haas “It even forces people to leave.” The article was about one young person leaving, and he wasn’t exactly “forced.” He simply chose to live in a lower tax, lower benefit society, much the same way Americans who move to Costa Rica do.
If American high schools required four foreign languages and provided an education of comparable quality, no doubt there would be some Americans leaving too. And, guess what, there are about 3 million of them.
@laureth Denmark’s $16.5 billion deficit is a drop in the ocean compared to ours. Keep in mind that the world is in recession and a lot of countries are running a deficit in order to keep aggregate demand stable. Income from North Sea oil is also down due to global market forces.
Yes, their per capita debt is roughly twice ours, but they have a full employment economy and they rank 17th in total amount of external debt, whereas we rank first in the world, with an official unemployment rate around 10% and an unofficial unemployment rate around 19%, with a good chunk of our industrial base (the auto industry teetering on the edge of bankruptcy).
I didn’t claim that theirs was bigger than ours, nor did I compare their income. All I did was try to answer the question. :)
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