# The United States and the Scandinavian Utopia **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067 "2016-12-07T00:15:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/41 "2016-12-09T00:00:04Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > That’s why I’m puzzled by the Krugman point quoted earlier. It is not obvious to me that you cannot have a generous social safety net _and_ a generous immigration policy. Canada has both. Really? How many does Canada take in legally and illegally? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/42 "2016-12-09T00:07:41Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > That’s why I’m puzzled by the Krugman point quoted earlier. It is not obvious to me that you cannot have a generous social safety net _and_ a generous immigration policy. Canada has both. I don’t know exactly what Krugman was referring to since there’s no cite or context. You can certainly have both, provided the immigration policy is sustainable, which is a very key concept. It means that the majority of immigrants need to be productive members of society, resulting in net gains to the economy. This is not callous or capitalistic, it’s basic math. We have an obligation to refugees on humanitarian grounds, too – and most of those turn out to be productive members of society anyway – but within sensible numerical limits. We have to consider the limits of growth and capacity of our own infrastructure, like roads, transit, schools, and housing. Admitting even the most brilliant of newcomers who overwhelm the existing urban infrastructure isn’t helping anyone and only leads to a degradation of living standards and strife. And even when, say, school capacity is nominally adequate, if schools are overwhelmed by the need to focus on ESL skills for new immigrants instead of basic education, the quality of education suffers. It’s all about numbers, common sense, and sustainability. That said, Krugman’s quote in isolation seems to be used here to support a point that I basically don’t agree with. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/43 "2016-12-09T00:10:14Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Really? How many does Canada take in legally and illegally? Well, in the case of Syrian refugees, about thirty times as many per capita in the last year as the US did, and about three times as many even in absolute numbers, for a country with one-tenth the population and infrastructure. ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/44 "2016-12-09T00:27:36Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Really? How many does Canada take in legally and illegally? I had no trouble getting in. Just showed up at the border with a job offer and they issued a work permit right there. After a year I applied for and got permanent residency. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/45 "2016-12-09T00:47:57Z")
Here’s a newsarticle you could look at, **Octopus** : “Canada: An Immigration Example to the World.” > **[London Free Press](https://lfpress.com/)** > > Read latest breaking news, updates, and headlines. London Free Press offers information on latest national and international events & more. Salient points: • 1 in 5 Canadians were born outside of Canada; • the Migrant Integration Policy Index ranked Canada sixth out of 38 countries in integrating its immigrants. The five who ranked ahead of Canada were Sweden, Portugal, Finland, New Zealand and Norway; • Canada is the only country in the world which has allowed immigrant rates of 1% of its population every year for the past two decades; • Canada leads the G7 countries in the number of immigrants. > **[London Free Press](https://lfpress.com/)** > > Read latest breaking news, updates, and headlines. London Free Press offers information on latest national and international events & more. See also this table of immigrants in counties’ populations. Canada has the greatest percentage of foreign-bit residents of any G7 country: Canada (17.4%); US (10.4%); Germany (8.9%); France (5.6%); UK (4%); Italy (2.4%); Japan (1.3%). [http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Foreign-population#](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Foreign-population#) ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/46 "2016-12-09T02:03:59Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Why should a species that reproduces sexually and doesn’t have huge swarms of sterile workers like an ant colony favor policy that promotes any other group at their own expense? Why do people expect biology to cease mattering? Mammals sometimes help others who aren’t related to them by blood. Discussions about the evolution of altruism tend to end up discussing iterated prisoner dilemmas and other such game theory, which I don’t find terribly exciting. I’m not sure that biology has been suspended in countries that have UHC or maternity leave. The citizens of those countries tend to view it as a collective benefit. You can posit a sort of parasitism strategy, like cuckoo bird eggs where the host’s caring instincts are fooled and diverted elsewhere. Perhaps that would please those who view bleeding hearts as being taken advantage of by undeserving outsiders. Leftists don’t tend to make such distinctions, perhaps only if free riders threaten the system. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/47 "2016-12-09T03:40:19Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Your basic facts are true but your conclusion is wrong. I would cite Canada as the _ **opposite** _ of what you’re claiming. Yes, it’s geographically large, and the population is very diverse, especially in major urban centers, and in many ways the culture is different in the different regions – the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and BC are all notably distinct, and then there’s the prairies and the northern territories. And yet, there are strong ties in shared social values, one of the chief ones being precisely the form of social democracy cited in the OP – for instance, universal health care completely decoupled from ability to pay, a strong social safety net, income security, and progressive social policies. All of which are closer to Scandinavian policies than American ones, though not always to the same degree. > > Which seems to prove that culture is more important than size or diversity in establishing social policy. It also disproves the oft-cited claim that the US is “too big” to implement something like universal health care, which is perhaps the ultimate expression of social solidarity. It isn’t “too big”, because programs like that can be administered by states, but under federal direction to ensure national standards. Canada’s welfare state is nowhere near as expensive or comprehensive as a Scandinavian country’s though: > **[List of sovereign states by tax revenue to GDP ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP)** > > This article lists countries alphabetically, with total tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for the listed countries. The tax percentage for each country listed in the source has been added to the chart. Canada’s taxes to GDP ratio is a quite reasonable 32.2%, and furthermore Canada has been brilliant at controlling spending. The Scandi countries have taxation rates in the 40s. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/48 "2016-12-09T07:13:37Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Why should a species that reproduces sexually and doesn’t have huge swarms of sterile workers like an ant colony favor policy that promotes any other group at their own expense? Why do people expect biology to cease mattering? A species with intelligence can realise that some benefits are possibly not immediate or first-level. For example, I am heterosexual, but I want people outside of that group to be treated fairly and equally - there is no direct benefit to me in that agenda, but what I actually end up aiming to promote is a society that is fairer and more equal in total. Any benefits from that may never actually come back to me, or they may, but either way, there is a reason for me to behave in a particular way that can be selected for or against by evolutionary societal processes - not survival of the fittest individual, but a trend toward the fittest ideas. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/49 "2016-12-09T08:29:31Z")
Sexual orientation discrimination doesn’t really have much of an evolutionary basis though, since homosexuals exist in all populations. Tribalism on the other hand was something humans evolved for a reason. I think that long after being gay isn’t a big deal, we’ll have racial and cultural tensions. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/50 "2016-12-09T08:46:34Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > To be honest I think you were just extremely unlucky. Yes, it was some time ago, but my experience with the personnummer was exactly like yours with the SSN. I got a temporary number within days and the full one after about a month. > > I have many friends here that are still employed “back home” and not locally. None of them have any issues. Well, apart from the Brits lamenting that they are still paid in the UK as the GBP is so weak against the SEK right now (yay Brexit). Are they renting or living in hotels? For other services, do they have personnumers or go third party? I had several coworkers who were also EU citizens and they were real surprised to find out how closely their stories matched. One from Spain, one from Poland, one from Austria, all took four years to get their personnummers. All are from countries where you don’t need a local tax ID to be able to get a contract for services. When we asked to rent cars in Sweden (the idea was fly to CPH, train to Helsinborg, get the car in Helsinborg in the morning) we were told we couldn’t, not without personnummers. We had to rent them from CPH and warn that the car would be going to Sweden. Met a guy from France who moved there with his bride; he’d also been sent to the asylum people. A coworker’s Mexican daughter in law had managed to get “I’ve been married to this Swede for five years in my country and I’m not a refugee!” through the bureaucracy and was therefore allowed to work (asylum seekers aren’t), but she was having her own bureaucratic nightmares. Maybe it’s a Stockholm vs rest-of-Sweden thing, but it was a royal pain in the ass. It simply was a bigger pain in the ass for me than for the weekly commuters because I was spending more time there, and for those who had moved there permanently than for me for the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/51 "2016-12-09T09:16:57Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Sexual orientation discrimination doesn’t really have much of an evolutionary basis though, since homosexuals exist in all populations. Tribalism on the other hand was something humans evolved for a reason. I think that long after being gay isn’t a big deal, we’ll have racial and cultural tensions. That’s not really the point I was trying to make. Selection acts on ideas and societal structures independently of biological reproduction. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/52 "2016-12-09T13:23:49Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Canada’s welfare state is nowhere near as expensive or comprehensive as a Scandinavian country’s though: > > [List of sovereign states by tax revenue to GDP ratio - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP) True, but our safety net is more comprehensive than the US, and we take in more immigrants than the US, and we have a diverse population. That’s why I’m sceptical about the Krugman quote and your comment that his thesis was not in dispute. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/53 "2016-12-09T14:13:12Z")
Canada’s welfare state is more generous than the US’s, but Krugman’s statement is kinda like the Laffer Curve. He doesn’t claim there is a set point where it gets to be too much. It’s just that at some point, you can can’t keep letting immigrants come in in high numbers who will be dependent on government services. And sure enough, Canada does not just let poor Third worlders cross their border and stay. Canada’s immigration system is mainly built on importing high skill immigrants, not cheap labor, like the US: > [@](#): > > Economic immigrants > Citizenship and Immigration Canada uses seven sub-categories of economic immigrants. The high-profile Skilled worker principal applicants group comprised 19.8% of all immigration in 2005. Canada has also created a VIP Business Immigration Program which allows immigrants with sufficient business experience or management experience to receive the Permanent Residency in a shorter period than other types of immigration. The Province of Quebec has a program called the Immigrant Investor Program.[14] > Family class > Under a government program, both citizens and permanent residents can sponsor family members to immigrate to Canada. > Refugees > Immigration of refugees and those in need of protection. Strangely, there’s no “felt like coming because I wanted to work as a hotel maid” category. > [@](#): > > he changes in 2015 moved permanent residency in Canada away from the ‘first come, first served’ model, and towards a new structure that took on permanent residents based on Canada’s economic need. The new system is called "Express Entry Wow, imagine that, a national immigration policy that is in the nation’s interest! Racism, some would say down south. > **[Immigration to Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Immigration_categories)** > > According to the 2021 Canadian census, immigrants in Canada number 8.3 million persons and make up approximately 23 percent of Canada's total population. This represents the eighth-largest immigrant population in the world, while the proportion represents one of the highest ratios for industrialized Western countries. > Following Canada's confederation in 1867, immigration played an integral role in helping develop vast tracts of land. During this era, the Canadian Government would sponsor info... And Canada may be “diverse” in an absolute sense, but is nowhere near as diverse as the US yet: > **[Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada#Demographics)** > > Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's second-largest country by total area, with the world's longest coastline. Its border with the United States is the world's longest international land border. The country is characterized by a wide range of both meteorologic and geological regions. It is a sparsely inhabited country of just over 41 million ... SOmehow only a few hundred thousand Latinos have made their way up there. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/54 "2016-12-09T16:04:25Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > SOmehow only a few hundred thousand Latinos have made their way up there. Among other things, because Canada doesn’t advertise itself, because there aren’t quite a few million Latinos who had family there from way back when, and because there is less _efecto llamada_ than in other locations. I don’t know what’s _efecto llamada_ called in English, but it’s what happens when someone is thinking of moving Elsewhere and they pick a particular Elsewhere because they happen to have contacts there, people they can _llamar_ (phone/call upon). What it means is on one hand that once you start getting immigrants from a certain location, the likelihood of getting other immigrants from the same location increases, and on the other it’s how those Little Wherever enclaves grow (or at least, how they grow when the people living there aren’t restricted from living in other areas). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/55 "2016-12-09T16:13:58Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > The red tape must be bad, if a Spanish person is compaining about it 😉 : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXWZ3uAEKsw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXWZ3uAEKsw) > > (To be fair, I suspect that bureaucracy always seems worse in another country, compared to the bureaucracy that you grew up with. I have known people coming to the UK being exasperated at the way we do things here.) I know you realized it’s a comedy, but aside from being a comedy the only form for which they give a code doesn’t exist and either the agency is as imaginary as the form or the order in which she’s supposed to have done things is upside-down. (You begin by going to City Hall, where you sign up for IAE and present your DNI; then with your IAE you go to Seguridad Social Treasury, where they sign you up for autónomos. No need to do anything with Hacienda/Treasury itself until you’ve actually been working as autónomo for a while, unless you wish to be listed as an International Operator; if you want to do that, you go to Hacienda with your IAE and ask to be signed up for the ROI. Or you can skip all that and pay your local Chamber of Commerce to do it: current fee for mine is €25. What you always need to do with Hacienda is start paying your taxes as autónomo the first time a quarter rolls around.) ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/56 "2016-12-09T16:45:16Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Well, in the case of Syrian refugees, about thirty times as many per capita in the last year as the US did, and about three times as many even in absolute numbers, for a country with one-tenth the population and infrastructure. That’s relatively cherry picked. How about totals? ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/57 "2016-12-09T16:46:21Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Here’s a newsarticle you could look at, **Octopus** : “Canada: An Immigration Example to the World.” > > [Home | London Free Press Home Page | London Free Press](http://www.lfpress.com/2016/01/22/canada-an-immigration-example-to-the-world) > > Salient points: > > • 1 in 5 Canadians were born outside of Canada; > > • the Migrant Integration Policy Index ranked Canada sixth out of 38 countries in integrating its immigrants. The five who ranked ahead of Canada were Sweden, Portugal, Finland, New Zealand and Norway; > > • Canada is the only country in the world which has allowed immigrant rates of 1% of its population every year for the past two decades; > > • Canada leads the G7 countries in the number of immigrants. > > [Home | London Free Press Home Page | London Free Press](http://www.lfpress.com/2016/01/22/canada-an-immigration-example-to-the-world) > > See also this table of immigrants in counties’ populations. Canada has the greatest percentage of foreign-bit residents of any G7 country: Canada (17.4%); US (10.4%); Germany (8.9%); France (5.6%); UK (4%); Italy (2.4%); Japan (1.3%). > > [http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Foreign-population#](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Foreign-population#) Thanks for the links. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/58 "2016-12-16T09:19:38Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > About 150 years ago about half of Sweden moved to the US. Today Swedish Americans have a average income 50% higher than Sweden as a country. This implies that switching to a Swedish style economy would have dire consequences for most Americans. I don’t think it does. Swedish-Americans are a slice of American society characterised by sufficient family stability to follow their ancestry back 150 years. And spending that time as white protestants in the US. I.e. the selection slices out anyone black, Latino, Asian-American or Native American. As well as Irish or Italian which mattered for some of those years. To compare to Swedish society, you’d need to compare to a selection of Swedes which has similar advantages. Otherwise, you are making an argument similar to saying that the immediate families of congressmen have more money than the average American. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/59 "2016-12-16T13:53:58Z")
I think that’s really, really wrong. The swedes that came here weren’t the rich ones. They were the ones without hope because they came from a backwards, broken country where you couldn’t get ahead unless you were a member of an aristocratic family. Otherwise you were probably a poor peasant farmer. So they came here with nothing and became better off than their brethren that they left behind. That’s about as apples-to-apples as it gets. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067/60 "2016-12-16T15:42:47Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > I don’t think it does. Swedish-Americans are a slice of American society characterised by sufficient family stability to follow their ancestry back 150 years. And spending that time as white protestants in the US. I.e. the selection slices out anyone black, Latino, Asian-American or Native American. As well as Irish or Italian which mattered for some of those years. > > To compare to Swedish society, you’d need to compare to a selection of Swedes which has similar advantages. Otherwise, you are making an argument similar to saying that the immediate families of congressmen have more money than the average American. I don’t think it would be difficult to filter out all of the people in Sweden who are not black, Latino, Asian America, Indian, Irish, or Italian. I think they call the people left after doing that Swedish. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-and-the-scandinavian-utopia/774067.md?page=4)