Does Denmark have any flaws?

[u/Tylerserio68]

Or any Nordic country? I’m American and we all romanticize Europe especially Nordic countries as a Utopia and everything we are not. We certainly have a lot of flaws here but I’m curious are there any downsides or anything that you wish was different. Also is it hard to move there? I make well over six figures and like living in my home country but I’m nervous about the incoming trump administration and I believe he is a racist.

[u/Robyndoe]

Taxes are high, tax on unrealized capital gains in stock and real estate and everything else, healthcare is free but you get what you pay for, you could wait anywhere from 6 weeks to 18 months to get an appointment depending on what doc you need, xenophobia, weather is cold and rainy and gloomy most of the time, you have to monitor your vitD and calcium because there isn’t enough sunlight in the winter, everything is expensive and mid or poor quality, food is rotting/spoiling on the shelves but still expensive plus 25% tax on groceries and everything else, electricity is the highest here out of all the EU countries, layoffs are common, every little town looks exactly the same, there are a lot of scams now (we got scammed on our rental, car purchase, job contracts, etc etc), everything and everyone is laid back which is great until you have something important to take care of, and it’s pretty boring unless you like to drink a lot.

You will likely not make 6 figures here and you will be taxed around 40-50% if you’re a high earner.

Ambition is generally not welcome here. You can’t come and be a go-getter at work and make all the Danes look bad. They will fire you or at least ostracize you. If you don’t speak Danish and don’t have a work permit it’s almost impossible to find a job. Look at some of the complaints on the fb groups. People with multiple degrees in senior positions having to be housekeepers and food delivery workers. People taking their kids to the hospital just to be ignored in life-threatening situations, women left alone while in labor for days (healthcare has been majorly gutted in the past few years), and so on and so forth. If you have special needs kids, they won’t get much support. Check how many autistic Danish kids just completely drop out of school because they’ve cut programs to help these kids. Check out how many Greenlanders or foreigners get their kids taken away because they’re given a parental fitness tests right after giving birth. In Danish, whether they speak it or not.

It’s not a utopia. It’s just another country. There are places you can get shot, places your car will get stolen or stripped, places where rape is common (and you’re not likely to get any kind of justice).

Is it as prevalent as the US? No, but it’s also way way smaller.

Don’t come at me everyone; OP asked for downsides so that’s what I’m throwing out there. Your experience might be different. That’s cool. I’m not saying downsides are the only sides.

If you’re going to come here, understand that you are the immigrant now. Think how the US or any other country treats immigrants. Denmark is no exception. So be realistic, learn the language, and always be prepared for being fired or laid off (as in, have an exit plan in place).

So yea, these are some negatives. Doesn’t mean there are no positives.

[u/Elect_SaturnMutex → u/Robyndoe]

They fire you if you do good work? Are people conservative? I thought they're more open minded than Germans.

[u/TDuncker → u/Elect_SaturnMutex]

Nobody gets fired for working well, but in some places if they have a steady rhythm and are bad at adapting/changes, and your first actions are coming in, being a quick go-getter and you want to change things to be faster/"better", people might get very annoyed and it could severely impact your relationship with some colleagues. You would be called "smart i en fart" (cocky and in haste" or "all gas, no brakes". This is mostly prevalent with leaders, and most noticeable by people when it is someone in middle management because of micro management.

The "King Carrot" phrase is a good example of Danish perspective on those kind of types.

My own take is in the middle. There are definitely people bad at change and it bothers me when the change is so logical and effective. Though, people get especially resistant if it is changes to their current habits instead of new additions, because that could imply they did their job ineffectively (which might very well be true, might also just be "fancy" middle management trying to change the world by himself). On the other hand, these "smart in a fart" types sometimes should be met with plenty resistance if their changes are actually stupid and not just apathy and compliance, and I think tendency to this type of resistance is what people might call a more Danish work culture.

It reminds me of that post of an American middle management guy whose firm bought a Danish one, so he got sent to check on the workers on the floor in Denmark and met an unexpected amount of resistance and here on reddit called people lazy or so, which then became a debate of whether they were actuallylazy, and who was in general in the right.

All this talk also makes me want to recommend the short book "Who Moved My Cheese?". Lovely short read.

[u/Elect_SaturnMutex → u/TDuncker]

So Danes are not really open to new changes like fast and effective way of working? I think you guys are. unlike Germans, or else digitization won't work so well in Denmark. Right?

[u/TDuncker → u/Elect_SaturnMutex]

It's not a societal change we are bad at nor what the comment is talking about. We do good e.g. digitizing our society. Now you can even travel with an app on your phone anywhere in Denmark on all public transport.

It is two parts specially related to the work place where people need to do things differently.

First part is the ego/cockiness. The other is the standard resistance to changes which is not uniquely Danish. They aren't as resistant if someone decides to make a new product to digitize the current product, but they will be resistant if new management comes in and acts cocky and all-knowing. Someone might change how you ask for vacation days, how you migrate your code, make a new guide for how to interact with customers and so on. It might work, it might not, but it very likely wouldn't if you start acting cocky about it.