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.
Sweden has it but also massive immigration and crime, while getting poorer and poorer.
I would go for Netherlands i think. Switzerland is nicer but much more expensive too.
Norway is also nice. Still money there and hasnt been wrecked by immigration yet.
I’d love to see a comparison of crime statistics between Sweden and various US cities.
Nordic countries are the best example. A lot of Europe might fit depending on how low “low social and economic equality” is defined.
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 increasing immigration is destroying their social harmony. the natives don’t want to give the new immigrants the benefits they get, and the immigrants dont’ want to assimilate to the scandavian values/lifestyle.
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.
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.
Edit: although looking at the map, its strange to see India and Japan having the same color. Anecdotally, I think the gap between rich and poor is much greater in India than in Japan, education and drinking water for example. Ive lived in both countries, and I think India should be yellow or orange, like southeast Asia.
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.
Antarctica
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.
Also if you want to emigrate, you better have a high paying specialist career.
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.
To be clear, I am extremely pro-immigration, but many of the immigration policies as written are tools used to suppress wages. This is the reason we see so many immigrants, often with degrees and training we refuse to recognize in Canada, in low paying, minimum wage jobs. I personally had the pleasure of working with a wonderful woman from the middle east who was a qualified teacher, stuck working 30 hours a week in a grocery store deli because we refused to recognize her degree or decade of experience. She spoke perfect English, was incredibly pleasant, and visibly intelligent and well-mannered, but she’s a brown immigrant, so fuck it, minimum wage for her.
We can take immigrants at the rate we have been while not using them to further wealth inequalities. But as a friend of mine says, the purpose of a system is what it does, and the current iteration is not about creating a multi-cultural nation.
For additional clarity, this isn’t to say that you’re wrong and immigration isn’t being used as a scapegoat. I’d just argue that the problem is more substantial than simply calling the issue a scapegoat suggests. There is a real problem, but it’s not in that we’re accepting immigrants at all; it’s the conditions we’ve agreed to accept them under.
I’d recommend researching quality of life metrics and cross referencing with nations’ gini coefficients.
Xandar
Is that real or is it like Narnia?
Most European countries.
You and tubulartittyfrog have basically the exact opposite comments
Not really. In most European countries inequality is still huge, with service jobs earning less than a living wage.
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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.
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.
