[aklemm]

Go there and look at how they live; that takes inspiration. The benefits of their social welfare are apparent in their lifestyle compared to US daily life.

And the flip: Shouldn't Scandinavia be overrun with drug-addled do-nothings if social welfare is so bad?

[rrdharan]

I completely agree and am generally supportive of universal healthcare and the welfare state and suspect the Scandinavian model would be an improvement on the current US state of affairs.

I’m just skeptical of the parent poster claim that a Cambrian innovation explosion awaits us all if we would just welfare harder.

[gosub100]

And reverse your flip: how do Scandinavians perform when they immigrate to other countries (vs the local population) ?

[gizajob]

They spend a lot of money on education, and almost everyone is multilingual – Finns generally speak both Finnish and Swedish natively given they’re the state languages, and many I’ve met have very fluent English and German alongside. So I imagine they do pretty well. Look at Linus Torvalds, for example…

Oh btw, “Scandinavians” only includes countries in the Swedish axis of influence, so to include Finns alongside one has to say “Nordics”. Finland is Nordic without being Scandinavian (technically)