 Dare I ask we need to be more like Scandinavia so that we can be happy like them How do we need to be more like Scandinavia Bob? Their poverty rate is less than half the United States and they have free health care, free higher education, free paternal leave, free vacation, free retirement, a living minimum wage, a higher happiness index score, and a higher individual GDP than the U.S. Scandinavia proves that democratic socialism can work Actually Bob the Scandinavian countries that people like to point to like Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway aren't really socialist at all What? Not only has the prime minister of Denmark gone out of his way to publicly say that they're a market economy Those four Scandinavian countries rank about the same as the U.S. as far as economic freedom is concerned Yes, they have very robust welfare systems that previous administrations have put in place But they've been trimming back both their social programs and their levels of taxation since the 1990s Once the people realized that their economies were suffering because of the expanding tax and spend social democracy Policies that kept being implemented as far as levels of poverty are concerned National-level poverty is measured comparatively to what other people in this same country are making and where that line is set varies from country to country not even the World Bank will release comparative data sets on that and all four countries have higher Individual and family tax burdens than the U.S. with Sweden and Finland's being significantly higher if you earn $54,000 once your employer has paid the necessary taxes for hiring you and youth paid your income taxes You're left with 39,000 in the U.S. and only 20 to 25,000 in Sweden I wouldn't call that free anything, but what about their GDP, huh? Well, according to the World Bank's most recent data only Norway had a GDP per capita that was higher than the U.S. And that's largely because of their relatively large petroleum reserves It's also worth noting that their per capita GDP has sharply decreased in recent years They're high minimum wage by and large. It isn't set by their government It's negotiated industry by industry between unions and businesses usually Bob It's great that you want other people to be happier But maybe we could find a way that doesn't involve government mandates or Viking horns You can keep the Viking horns then Hey folks, thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this, please check out fee.org for more educational content. Thank you You