Because Denmark has so few poor people, the country enjoys a remarkable amount of social stability. The 5.9 percent unemployment rate is a third lower than the EU average of 9 percent. What’s more, Berlin-based Transparency International ranks the Danish government as one of the three least corrupt in the world, along with those of Finland and Iceland.
Neils Henrick, a 30-year-old photographer living on the outskirts of Copenhagen, epitomizes the Danish sense of the collective good. Like everyone, Henrick got his education (he has a bachelor’s degree in creative arts) free. When his mother, a nurse, needed a lung transplant last year, the state totally covered the expensive operation. And what of Denmark’s notoriously high tax rates? “Obviously I think it’s pretty lousy that I have to pay 52 percent in taxes,” says Henrick. “But that’s the price for a good society. People here have a nice life.” Who said Robin Hood was British?
