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The first social insurance plan came in Germany,
under Otto von Bismarck, not known as a bleeding
heart kind of guy. He created, in fact, what is
now called the Bismarck model, one of four distinct
European social welfare styles. The rest of Europe
like what they saw, and thought that it would be
possible to do that without having all that marching
around tossed in. This turned out to be the case.
Soon, Denmark was not far behind with the Scandinavian
model.
This holds that benefits should be given to all
citizens who fulfill the conditions, without regard
to employment or family, given to everyone and each,
so that women have rights independent of their husbands.
The Scandinavian system is more comprehensive and
therefore far less complicated -- if it's a social
service, the odds are 1000 to 1 that the state does
it. For example, the wife of one of the most successful
CEOs in the country is getting her master's, and
is getting -- and is fully entitled to -- state
support while she works on it. As he put it, "My
wife is on the dole."
In Denmark, workers have the right to unemployment
after a minimum of one year's membership of an unemployment
insurance fund and a minimum of 52 weeks work within
the last three years. Unemployed are entitled to
anywhere between 65 percent and 90 percent of their
previous income. This can go on for four years.
Segments of some societies would interpret all
this as a license to coast. What has this done to
the work ethic?
Nothing at all. Danes are notoroious for very intense,
concentrated accomplishment while they're at their
jobs. Every employer has good things to say about
worker productivity and attitude. They have a 1,000-year
history of having to squeeze a living from severely
limited soil and fickle waters. These are the people
that, of all the places they could have gone to
tame, chose Minnesota.
People think production might be low -- it isn't
-- because they don't work Japanese hours. It's
a question of organizing things. One minister pointed
out that, "We have a flexible labor market.
You can fire people. It's very important, because
if they can't fire, they don't hire."
Malene Grunwald, a social worker says that people
working in Denmark may be responding to the same
primitive urge that put all the Vikings in a long
house, sharing meals and living for the communal
good. Even in anonymous Copenhagen apartments, people
are concerned with their contemporaries, and if
you aren't doing something, you're letting the rest
of the team down. You're cheating the rest of the
nation, in fact, and Danes feel guilty about doing
that sort of thing.
"Doing something," of course, can be
interpreted as painting/composing/writing your masterpiece,
or inventing warp drive, but whatever it is, you're
doing it. The jante lov kicks in, it's not just
stepping too high, but too low that can make your
neighbors dislike you. To sit around watching daytime
TV is, to a Dane, just as unseemly as driving a
flashy car.
Eighty percent of Danes belong to a union, which
send the unemployed out to job interviews. Job refusal
results in expulsion, to be cast onto the dole.
The dole keeps body together, but not soul. It doesn't
provide enough money to live in a nice way. Lone
Fons Schroder explains that "If someone offers
you a job -- the unions or whoever -- you have to
take it. Before you couldn't accept a salary too
much lower than your old one. Now you take it."
Charlotte Isaksson, who works in the service industry,
can't imagine being out of work. If she were fired
tomorrow the union would have her back out within
the week. "It is very important to wake up
feeling good about life, which I couldn't do on
the dole. Work is active, I can't sit around."
Still, why not just work out a scam and stay home,
collecting checks? Mads Lausten of CMC had a good
answer: "Because in Denmark, everybody works,
and there's no social community for those who don't.
You're isolated, by yourself."
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