The people who do live in Denmark seem pretty happy about doing so, though (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.ht...). One reason might be that they're fairly wealthy to begin with, so it's taking a large percentage out of a large pie (Denmark's per-capita GDP is ~DKK 375,000 = ~$62,000). The social safety net is also rather strong as a result of the government's large amount of income, and it's popular, partly because nearly everyone uses parts of it--- free education, free adult education, free health care, free child-care, pensions, job retraining, etc.
And interestingly their unemployment rate is lower than ours* (at least since 2004). Evidence that providing more government services doesn't lead to people just sitting on their asses and cashing their welfare checks.
I don't think anybody's seriously arguing that a majority of people would just sit around, but more government funding or regulation services would throw incentives out of whack.
Everyone is brought up to think it's the best country in the world. But I'm glad I emigrated and the other people I know who moved seem pretty happy about it too.
No that stuff isn't free just because it's paid for by taxes. And because the government has kept growing the government is now running a deficit. It will have to do reforms to avoid growing the debt.
Some think the big government system is great. I don't. But even if you do think it's nice, the problem is that it's not sustainable.
The growth of the economy is projected be the 2nd lowest in OECD only in front of Japan.
Denmark has been a rich country for a while but as the government has grown it has been falling down the list and is now out of the top 10.
Bombs. Lots and lots of bombs. And, apparently, we love to use them. Prisons. We're good at those. Oh, and flags. We like to wave those a lot, too. Especially about the fact that we are "free" compared to those "socialist" menaces around the world. So, we pay an average of 40% in taxes, but does that pay for your higher education or your kid's higher education? Not likely. Does it pay for your health care? Probably not all of it (in some cases, none at all). Does it pay for daycare? Good retirement? So, when you factor that and a lot more into the equation, some countries don't have it so bad. The sad thing is, we could be doing SO well here if we just tweaked things a bit. Tweaking, apparently, is out of the question,
I've often tried to point this out to US taxpayers I've met. While in my country the tax rates are about the same, or perhaps a bit lower, our defence force is miniscule in comparison and thus social spending takes place instead.
Though, to be fair on countries like mine (and Denmark) we receive positive externalities from excessive US Defense Force spending, because we don't have to maintain a full sized force due to our treaties with the USA. As a negative, we're compelled to join in on such adventures as Iraq and Afghanistan as a result.
However, many of the smaller nations with similar tax bases and larger social benefits compared to the USA tend to forget about the effective subsidies paid by the US taxpayer for our national defense.
Additionally, there is definitely a component of the US Defense spending that is arguably social policy - even if it is part of the military-industrial complex. It does provide a lot of people with taxpayer-funded positions, and allows otherwise-jobless areas to enjoy employment opportunities with establishment of bases.
I clearly think there is a case for a reduced defense force in the USA - just one or two less Nimitz class carriers could build a lot of public hospitals, for one example, and removing bases from Europe and Japan would be another saving. But I don't think you can have an honest and full comparison with other countries until you start looking at the massive US defense force spending, and it's effects on other countries who effectively get to forgo that same spending.
