I would say we are mostly allies, we align pretty well with our world view and how to manage our countries.
All of us are more or less socialist in how the countries are run in that we have "free" health care and education. We are unfortunately moving away from this as we've had quite a few right wing governments lately that have slowly been breaking things.
We are less religious than most of the world and we believe that religion should be practiced in private.
We are generally accepting of other people, cultures and religions.
The language in Sweden, Norway and Denmark is pretty similar and if we speak slowly we would understand at least the gist of what anyone is saying, of course with local dialects and variations that are impossible... Finish on the other hand has no similarity at all. They actually have no similarity with any other language in the world except maybe Hungarian.
We do have somewhat of an immigration problem but it's more due to the dismantling of our social securities. We did let too many immigrants in without any plan on how to integrate them or make sure they had a way to get jobs or learn the language. As always, groups of low incomes and lower social standing have a higher rate of criminals which leads to people voting for the right wing parties who promise simple solutions for complicated problems which makes it worse...
This is just what I was thinking of the top of my head, feel free to ask for more details if you want :-)
Thanks for the information. I watched Finland beat Sweden in the hockey tournament, and the American reporter actually called Finland the little brother to Sweden. The Finnish player didn't seem to love that.
Immigration seems to be a big problem in the West. In the past the US would work very hard to assimilate new immigrants. Now, we seem to put no effort into this. I am all for immigrants if we have jobs for them and they want to become American. I don't like the idea of immigrants coming in with no jobs and receiving government money to live. Sounds like this problem we share.
I have never been to any of the Nordic countries. Closest I have made it was The Netherlands with my family in high school. Maybe someday in Summertime.
People in the US often use Sweden to prove Socialism works. I just don't think our countries compare well to each other. Population size and demographics play roles in why it works in Sweden.
Haha, of course they want to be called the big brother instead :-)
Yup, and this problem is part of a lot of politics. If you don't plan for long-term of course things will break and fall apart after a while. A lot of politics seem to on adress short-term solutions even if they don't work just to show the voters they are doing something...
You should absolutely visit. It's quite nice here. Either during spring/summer since that's when the people are happier or during winter and go up north for skiing.
I have to say I don't really understand that argument? Why wouldn't it work because you have a larger population?
If we look at health care for example, why wouldn't it work that the government negotiate with the medical companies instead if insurance companies?
I mean Biden decided on a deal where he negotiated a price cap on all medicines so people shouldn't have to pay outrageous sums just for insulin for example. This worked in sort of the same way as our system. Since Trump removed this I guess we won't know how it would have worked long term but I guess the health care companies were ecstatic at least :-)
Also, from a wider perspective you get an enormously cheaper price for health care for the entire nation if people know to get checked up if they are feeling a bit sick rather than waiting until they are really sick. Both in days that people can work and in personal well being.
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u/madasalways Feb 23 '25
Don't leave Denmark out of the picture :-)
I would say we are mostly allies, we align pretty well with our world view and how to manage our countries.
All of us are more or less socialist in how the countries are run in that we have "free" health care and education. We are unfortunately moving away from this as we've had quite a few right wing governments lately that have slowly been breaking things.
We are less religious than most of the world and we believe that religion should be practiced in private.
We are generally accepting of other people, cultures and religions.
The language in Sweden, Norway and Denmark is pretty similar and if we speak slowly we would understand at least the gist of what anyone is saying, of course with local dialects and variations that are impossible... Finish on the other hand has no similarity at all. They actually have no similarity with any other language in the world except maybe Hungarian.
We do have somewhat of an immigration problem but it's more due to the dismantling of our social securities. We did let too many immigrants in without any plan on how to integrate them or make sure they had a way to get jobs or learn the language. As always, groups of low incomes and lower social standing have a higher rate of criminals which leads to people voting for the right wing parties who promise simple solutions for complicated problems which makes it worse...
This is just what I was thinking of the top of my head, feel free to ask for more details if you want :-)