High living standard

The reason why Danish living standard is so high because of their labor unions. When labor union movements started in Europe, they spread to Denmark as well but with two key differences. One was that they were super successful in organizing workers and the second one was that they decided not to take the path to communism. If we boil it down to the essentials these are the two key reasons for the high living standards in Denmark.

At it's high point, between 1973 and 1982 membership of all labor unions in the whole country was a bit over 2 million. That is, 2 million people in the whole country were members of some labor union. Just for the comparison, in 1980 Denmark had total population of 5.1 million people. I think that portrays the picture of just how strong the labor unions were.

To simplify it, that gave negotiating power to the unions. Their membership was high enough that they could mount a serious pressure on the employers. Because of that employers organized themselves in unions as well and the negotiations started. Through and because of this balance of power between union organizations and employer organizations virtually everything related to work, working conditions, maternity leave, vacations etc. at the start was exclusively negotiated between these two groups and politicians stayed away. And this is what the Danes proudly call "The Danish model". This model and its huge success from the end of the 19th century to mid 1980is brought the prosperity Denmark is enjoying today.

But Danish labor Unions didn't buy in on the labor union ideals all the way. They stopped short of communism. Which means that while they did ask for better working conditions and shorter hours they never questioned the employers right to delegate work tasks. So importance of the employers was acknowledged and respected.

But maybe Danish labor unions were too successful. From 2007 membership in the labor unions is in a steady decline. Could it be that young Danes forgot why do they live such good lives? Foreigners most likely don't since they weren't brought up in Denmark. But that is a story for another post. Important point to take from this one is that Denmark is a well off country because it adopted a model in which profits are more equally distributed. Where middle and lower middle class have high buying power and that is the thing that makes their economy run around. If it weren't for the labor unions and the collective mentality "we are all in this together" Denmark wouldn't be where it is today.

Having too much

I come from a country that doesn't have the best living standard in the world but it definitely isn't that bad to live in. While paychecks are lower for more then half of what you get in Denmark, you can get by if you are just moderately careful with money. Main difference that I can notice in spending is mostly on fluff stuff. You still have plenty of money to buy and have everything you need to live a normal life like: place to live, food and other basic necessities. What you will lack after you pay all that is for other things. You will have less to spend money on things you do not need, like candy, rice cookers, carrot peeler, newest versions of smartphones etc. As an acquaintance from the Croatian ghetto said : "We have everything the Danes have, the main difference is that in Croatia it will take you 3 paychecks to buy new iPhone and in Denmark 1/3 of the paycheck." After living in Denmark for some time I started wondering are there any detrimental sideffects of high living standard? I think there are.

Higher living standard entails greater buying power and greater buying power leads to couple of not so great consequences.

First one is that you can pay your way out of a lot of things. Often people will choose to pay for some things rather then do it themselves. Even though they are perfectly capable of doing it and they have the time to do it but they have money so they can pay to somebody else to do it instead of them. While that on it's own doesn't sound bad, but it can lead to complete incompetence in executing some everyday tasks that I would never even consider outsourcing to somebody else, like cleaning the apartment or painting the walls or cooking.

I think this is one bad consequence of living in a first world country. The excess of money basically leads to people going into a very narrow specializations in life that makes them very depended on others in every single aspect of their lives. Literary for everything other then what they do for a living, they kinda become idiot savants that are great at what they are doing but can't do anything else.

Second bad consequence of having too much money is that people just become too trigger happy at spending it. It seems to me that is one of the causes of an obesity epidemic running wild in Denmark. If you have much more money that you need and you like munching candy and chugging down sodas, there is nothing to stop you from doing that, because you don't need to think if you are going to have enough or not. So you can just stuff your face with it all you want, so latter you can start crying how you have gotten fat and spend money on gyms, spinners, dieticians, slimming food supplements, healthy food, personal trainers etc. But none of that helps anymore 'cause you can't control yourself anymore but it doesn't matter anyways you have more than enough so why not?

Third bad consequence of too much buying power is excess! And you can see it everywhere. Articles that are on offering in the normal stores, number of stores like Offertisima or Pepco that sell useless shit that no one needs, number and type of a wide variety of different hobby stores which are obviously thriving. You can also tell about excess in peoples needs and wants. In stuff that are considered necessary for normal everyday life (cheese cutters, potato peelers, rice cookers etc), having a pot and a knife just doesn't cut it anymore. 

You can also see it in the people criteria for the adequate size of the living space. Newest example that I saw was when we visited a friend. He just moved in to a new house with his girlfriend. The house is huge: two bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, one huge living room plus kitchen. That is a house for 4 people but not more! I grew up with my parents in a 30 square meters apartment with one room, kitchen, bathroom and hallway. While I was a kid it was ok but in this apartment you could have 4 children and parents.

I must say that after I moved here I see what does it mean to live above the level of what is actually needed. I think that people could live with much less and be happy, but consumerism and modern economy is taking it's toll and there is no way back which may not be the best thing in the long run but that is a topic for another entry.