My recent diary, ”Living with Denmark’s Democratic Socialism,” (Daily Kos, 11 November) has generated a lot of discussion and positive feedback. Thank you. Several of you have made comments about Denmark’s high rate of taxation and asked how it feels to give up the equivalent of 50-60 cents on every dollar earned.
I can answer this best by telling a few stories.
Sometime in the late 90’s, while I was a tenured professor at the national J school, I was asked to teach a workshop of TV journalism professionals on the island of Bornholm. I was told that I would be paid extra for this assignment since Bornholm - closer to Poland than to Denmark - requires a long journey. The workshop was designed to last 3 days and I was instructed to charge for my services as a consultant. I went. It worked well. I returned to my regular position in Aarhus and submitted an invoice of over 25,000 kroner. When the money was deposited into my bank account, however, it was a mere fraction of the original amount; something like 20%. And I assumed it was an error.
My rather dramatic outrage was only slightly mollified by my Danish husband’s explanation: “Nancy, you already earn a big salary every month. This is extra. Above your regular earnings. What you earned on Bornholm is going to help pay for someone’s chemo therapy or a low income family’s smart kid’s education.” I stopped complaining but I was truly shocked. By then, I didn’t mind paying half of my monthly salary to taxes, but 80%!
Little did I know that one day in the near future I would personally benefit from this extreme tax system and everything would be forgiven.
My 73 year-old mother had moved to Denmark with me in 1991 and for the next fifteen years, lived a pleasant life - safe and secure - in her own little garden apartment. She liked to say that these were some of the best years of her life but then – in her late 80’s - she suffered degeneration from a previous stroke. She eventually regained her speech but not her ability to walk or even to stand. Had she been Danish, she would have been moved into a full-care facility.
Mom had learned a few words of Danish but without the ability to communicate, the social isolation in a nursing home would result in further deterioration. Or so this is how it was explained to me by the Danish health authorities. Instead, they ordered homecare: five times in a 24 hour period.
They moved a hospital bed into Mom’s apartment along with a weird contraption that was attached to a hydraulic lift. Her homecare assistant arrived in the morning, bathed her, made her breakfast and then attached her to a sling that carried her across the room and lowered her gently into a chair. At noon, another assistant came to make her lunch and in the evening, she returned to make dinner. At bedtime, the sling carried her back to bed. During the night, another assistant let herself in with a key to check on Mom and see if she needed anything.
There were times when I volunteered to take on some of this, but my offers were always rejected. “Your job is to visit with her and talk to her,” they told me. “If you start doing all these physical things, you’ll start to resent her. Let us do the hard stuff. You just give her love.” This went on for close to two years. When she passed away in 2010, the nurses lit candles in her room and put flowers on her chest.
There is no way I can thank these women enough for their reliable and conscientious care. I once tried to add up the costs and compare them to comparable expenses in the US and it boggled my mind. There is absolutely no way I could have afforded this kind of care in California.
Yet it didn't cost me one krone because as a taxpayer, I was already paying for this service or had paid for it – partially - when I gave up 80% of a single fee after working on Bornholm. I often think of all the others out there who helped pay for Mom’s care.
My mother had been a die-hard Republican her whole life, but after living in Denmark she was happy to say she was a Social Democrat. Were she alive today, she would be the first to convince her senior citizen friends to support Bernie Sanders. It is possible to have a humane and functional society.
All it takes is political will.