Submitted 1 day ago by PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to [deleted]
I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
New Zealand has good QoL but does have issues with inequality with the Maori (original Polynesian settlers). They are strict about immigration which tries to help reduce immigrant inequality. Australia has better economic QoL, but there is no wildlife in NZ that will kill you.
Looking at this data Norway seems to have low levels of economic inequality, low rates of poverty, and a high median disposable income (behind Luxembourg but around that of France and Austria).
Its far from perfect, but I imagine social inequality for stuff like gender and race is pretty low, officially speaking at least. I get the feeling that Scandinavians can be a big negative about foreigners, but I have zero firsthand knowledge on that.
The only reason their society is that way is because it’s not diverse.
all the scandavaian counrties are having issues because of immigration is destroying their social harmony.
Do you have sources you can cite?
In English if possible. Though I’ll understand if not, and make due with what you have.
That’s not intirely true. Some people definitely are like that, like in any country. Others agree that if you work and pay taxes, you deserve all the same benefits.
Norway admittedly has gigantic, relatively recent, oil and gas reserves that allow it to fund all sorts of social programs. Not saying those are bad or anything, just not a particularly exportable model.
It’s actually pretty exportable. There’s a lot of countries out there that have natural resources that should be the property of the people instead of wealthy individuals.
Except that the Nordic has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
Interestingly enough, Norway was already doing quite alright before they discovered the oil - they were at 10th place amongst all European countries. The oil has given them additional wealth, but it has become somewhat of a national myth that the oil is the sole reason for Norway’s success, leading to their current reluctance to spin the industry down, despite it running fully counter to Norway’s self-image of a green nation.
Nordic countries are the best example. A lot of Europe might fit depending on how low “low social and economic equality” is defined.
Plus immigrant friendly, I guess.
Plus immigrant friendly, I guess.
I mean, this is exactly why I kinda side-eye Lemmings when they are like “why did you choose to move to 'such a shithole’¹ like the US, isn’t China much better”, (¹their words btw, not mine) like… (first of all, I didn’t even choose, my parent did) lol I’d go to Norway if they took us, but no they don’t lmao, the US was our only option for emigration… it was either this or stay in mainland China with all that pollution stuff and Hukou bullshit and crowded, and hard to find income.
… and there goes most of them.
None of them.
Pretty much all high quality of life countries have large economic inequality, and life is great if you’re in the top quarter of the economic strata, and everyone else is often struggling.
Nor really true. In most northwestern countries you’ll find a high quality of life even when not rich and though there is still inequality, it’s not even remotely comparable to the US, for example.
I don’t know from experience, and I haven’t researched it, but that kinda sounds like Canada.
Maybe Germany.
Canada has a lot of immgration that has brought about increasing inequality.
Canada was going to have the inequality anyway. The immigration is a scapegoat for the declining quality of life but many policy decisions outside of immigration were already impacting quality of life. The housing bubble and oligarchy/monopoly of major sectors (grocceries, telecommunications etc) are the main issues driving inequality in Canada.
Canada could support its ambitious immigration goals if it were willing to invest in the country to support them, such as extensive public transit overhauls and nationalizing essential services like rail, communications, and energy.
Sweden has it but also massive immigration and crime, while getting poorer and poorer.
I would go for netherlands i think.
I’d love to see a comparison of crime statistics between Sweden and various US cities.
Antarctica
There’s the Gini coefficient , which is an index for social inequality. Its easier to spot the blue countries and guess if you’d like to move there.
I’d recommend researching quality of life metrics and cross referencing with nations’ gini coefficients.
Most European countries.
You and tittyfrog have basically the exact opposite comments
Xandar
Is that real or is it like Narnia?
Countries with high racial homogeneity top the list. Japan, Norway, China, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Israel.
you have an aparthied on your list? lol i mean yes off course israelis themselves are happy to enjoy unchecked privileges and ethnic supremacy, while palestinians get ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Not to mention that Hungary and Poland are pretty dictatorial.
Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia fits this bill if we assume for the moment that slaves don't count toward the equality aspect, beings slaves and all.
There are graphs in the book The Spirit Level which show exactly this. The two things correlate. From memory Iceland, Japan and maybe Poland do well, or at least they were when the book was published.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 hours ago
You might want to look at the IHDI, inequality-adjusted human development index.
It takes the life expectancy, years of education, and GNI (PPP) per capita, and adjusts it for inequality.
Ideally it shouldn’t even take GNI into account, imho (but an economic type-agnostic system, that takes the environment into account as well).
The top 15 is:
Iceland (Nordics)
Norway (Nordics)
Denmark (Nordics)
Switzerland (Central Europe)
Netherlands (Western Europe)
Belgium (Western Europe)
Finland (Nordics)
Germany (Central Europe)
Sweden (Nordics)
Ireland (Western Europe)
Slovenia (Southeast Europe)
Australia (Oceania)
United Kingdom (Western Europe)
Canada (North America)
Czech Republic (Central Europe)
The IHDI still has some issues, though, like not taking workplace democracy, environment and sustainability, and public transit into account. Had that been done, Spain probably would rise higher.