Lessons from Denmark
Thank you CaptainsOfIndustry for providing us with this. The text is long and I have chosen to paraphrase some of it, but it is really worth a read as a roadmap to a successful nation:
Denmark should not be rich. Instead it is one of the most prosperous and stable economics on the planet. It has faster GDP growth than Northway and Sweden and one of the lowest public debt levels in Europe. Its citizens get free university, free health care and 90 percent of their salary when they lose their job...
For most of its history Denmark was poor, as a small agricultural country...By the end of World War Il it was still a low productivity agrarian economy with a choice to make. It chose to modernize, and then made a series of bets that almost nobody else was willing to make.
It chose education and vocational training. Danish workers became some of the most productive in the world.
The second bet was healthcare and it was framed as an economic strategy rather than a social policy.
The third bet was taxes, and this is where Denmark confounds everyone. Its tax to GDP ratio rose from 29% in 1965 to nearly 50%. Critics warned that businesses would flee and growth would stall. Instead the opposite happened. The key was not how much Denmark taxed but what it taxed. Corporate taxes sit at just 22%, below the OECD average and far lower than Germany or France. Payroll taxes are low. The heavy burden falls on personal income and consumption instead. That productivity is what made everything else possible.That structure matters enormously. High payroll taxes make hiring expensive and slow job creation. Denmark avoids this by keeping employer costs low while taxing individuals on what they earn and spend. Businesses face fewer barriers to hiring and expanding. Denmark now has one of the highest startup rates in Europe and the World Bank ranks it among the easiest countries in the world to do business.
The labor market works the same way, through a system called flexicurity. Danish companies can let workers go with almost no restrictions. But when workers are laid off they receive up to 90% of their previous salary for up to two years. The government actively helps them retrain and find new work rather than simply paying them to stay home. Companies are not afraid to hire. Workers are not terrified of losing their jobs. The result is one of the highest labor market participation rates in the world, over 77% of working age adults actively employed.
Novo Nordisk (maker of Ozempic) was founded in Denmark in 1923 focused on a niche nobody else wanted: diabetes treatment. Today it controls nearly a third of the world's insulin supply and its weight loss drugs helped it become Europe's most valuable company with a market cap exceeding $350 billion. Maersk, also Danish, moves 14% of all global trade. It was founded in 1904 and took advantage of Denmark's position between the North Sea and the Baltic to become one of the largest shipping companies in the world.
In the 1970s while most countries were doubling down on fossil fuels Denmark made a bet on wind power that almost nobody took seriously. Renewables were seen as expensive and unreliable. Oil and gas were the backbone of the global economy. Denmark invested anyway. Today it produces over 50% of its electricity from wind alone, and turned that knowledge into an export industry. Vestas now sells wind turbines to the world. Denmark has some of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita among developed nations while continuing to grow its economy.
Danish CEOs earn about 60 times the average worker. In the US that number is closer to 290 times. Denmark has a Gini coefficient of 0.28, one of the lowest measures of income inequality in the world. The US sits at 0.41. The UK at 0.32. Low inequality is not just a social outcome in Denmark. It is the result of deliberate policy, progressive taxation, personal deductions for low earners, and a housing system where homeowners can lock in fixed mortgage rates for up to 30 years even when moving between properties.
None of this works without trust. 88% of Danes say they are happy to pay taxes because they believe their government uses them well. In the US only 16% trust the federal government to do the right thing. In a low trust society high taxes feel like theft. In Denmark they feel like an investment, because the schools are excellent, the healthcare works, and the safety net is real.
The model has limits. Nearly 1 in 5 Danes is now over 65. An aging population means higher healthcare costs, fewer working age taxpayers, and growing pressure on the pension system. Almost all of Denmark's population growth since 1980 has come from immigration, which has filled labor shortages but raised questions about long term sustainability of the welfare model. Denmark is already raising its retirement age gradually to 70 and linking it to life expectancy.
Can other countries copy it? Not simply. Denmark has advantages that are hard to replicate, a small population of 5.9 million, high social trust built over generations, and a geographic position at the heart of Europe's wealthiest markets. ( Nearly 70% of its exports go to European countries. The model was also built gradually over decades through consistent reform rather than imposed overnight.
But the lessons are clear. High taxes do not automatically destroy an economy if they are structured correctly. Investing in education, healthcare, and labor flexibility pays off over time. And a population that trusts its government, that sees taxes as the price of a functioning society rather than money taken by force, is one of the most powerful economic assets a country can have. Denmark spent a century building that. It shows.
Keith Jarrett
I was happy to see that he is alive and well though and amazed at what he can play with his one workable hand. Rick Beato interviewed Keith in 2023 and it is chock full of information about Jarrett's life, his collaborations with many of the greats in the jazz worldthe jazzworld. He has left an indelible mark on jazz and the musical industry in general. Spend a little while listening to some of his amazing creations and listening to a great overview and interview with him by Rick Beato:
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
The Complete Köln Concert
The Best Songs of Keith Jarrett
Danny Boy
Psi Encyclopedia on Reincarnation
Society for Psychical Research
Children who had memories of past lives and provided facts that checked out including their name, where they lived, how they died, a language they spoke (and were never exposed to), etc. etc. seemed to me the closest I would get to evidential proof that consciousness survives the body and that this is not all there is....
The psi encyclopedia covers an exhaustive amount of material on paranormal phenomena and in the reincarnation section, specifically documents many of the known cases of people, mostly children, who remember their past lives. It sounds like quackery but if you delve deeper one will see that many of these cases have been deeply investigated using rigorous scientific methods. Ian Stevenson and his protegé Jim B. Tucker, of the Division of Perceptual Studies, a branch of the University of Virginia Medical School, have been on the forefront of these investigations in the United States. Here are a few links to my most favorite cases:
Ryan Hammons/Marty Martin
Painting of the Week
Pam Smilow. Love is Blue. mixed media on canvas, Private Collection, Houston, Texas.
Charity of the Week:
Doctor's Without Borders
Book of the Week
About The Author
New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow, began writing the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.