![]() ![]() ![]() As the economy sputters back to life, Danish companies are in a position to bounce back quickly without the cost of having to rehire workers. The upshot is that Denmark staggered through the pandemic with employees still on the payroll and still paying rent. Some of the $3 trillion that the United States has poured into unemployment benefits, stimulus payments, business rescues and industry bailouts has gone to worker retention, but the attention to avoiding layoffs is far less serious.Īs a share of G.D.P., Denmark’s coronavirus relief spending is a bit less than America’s, but it seems more effective at protecting the population. ![]() Denmark’s approach is simple: Along with some other European countries, it paid companies to keep employees on the payroll, reimbursing up to 90 percent of wages of workers who otherwise would have been laid off.ĭenmark also helped hard-hit companies pay fixed costs like rent - on the condition that they suspend dividends, don’t buy back stock and don’t use foreign havens to evade taxes. “Our aim was that businesses wouldn’t fire workers,” Labor Minister Peter Hummelgaard told me. America’s unemployment rate last month was 14.7 percent, but Denmark’s is hovering in the range of 4 percent to 5 percent. The trauma of massive numbers of people losing jobs and health insurance, of long lines at food banks - that is the American experience, but it’s not what’s happening in Denmark. Malls and shops will be allowed to reopen on Monday, and restaurants and cafes a week later. Put it this way: More than 35,000 Americans have already died in part because the United States could not manage the pandemic as deftly as Denmark.ĭenmark lowered new infections so successfully that last month it reopened elementary schools and day care centers as well as barber shops and physical therapy centers. The pandemic interrupted my reporting, but I’d be safer if I still were in Denmark: It has had almost twice as much testing per capita as the United States and fewer than half as many deaths per capita. So, here, grab a Danish, and we’ll chat about how a progressive country performs under stress. ![]() So, before the coronavirus pandemic, I crept behind Danish lines to explore: How scary is Denmark? How horrifying would it be if the United States took a step or two in the direction of Denmark? Would America lose its edge, productivity and innovation, or would it gain well-being, fairness and happiness? President Trump thunders that Democrats are trying to drag America toward “socialism,” Vice President Mike Pence warns that Democrats aim to “impose socialism on the American people,” and even some Democrats warn against becoming, as one put it, “ Denmark.” ![]()
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December 2022
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