But I don't really see how that could happen if you didn't also have a mortgage. You would easily be able to finance this, unless your property was also pretty much worthless. And if it was practically worthless you'd either not pay any property tax at all, due to deductibles, or pay basically nothing.
In Norway property tax (where applicable, it's up to local government) is measured as a percentage of the taxable value of primary residence. Usually 0,2 per mille or around that. The taxable value is less than the property value. It's a progressive scheme, everything below 10MNOK is measured as 25% of property value (marked value-ish), and 75% for everything over 10MNOK. For secondary houses the taxable value is set to the property value.
> Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net.
Educational attainment in the Nordic countries isn't actually that good. It might have been at one point. These days I think it sometimes looks good because some statistics count having any experience at higher levels, which having cost-free education facilitates. If you instead look at actual degrees the Nordic countries are average among OECD countries.
Bachelor's degrees
OECD Average 18%
Iceland 21%
Denmark 20%
Norway 20%
Sweden 18%
Finland 20%
Countries above 21% in OECD: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
You should look at the statistics more carefully. Educational attainment means the highest degree – those with a master's degree are not included in the numbers for bachelor's degrees. Nordic countries traditionally had a system where master's (or equivalent) was the primary undergraduate degree in proper universities (or equivalent).
I've added the Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees. Out of 38 countries that puts Iceland and Finland in 9th and 10th. And Denmark, Sweden and Norway at 16th, 17th and 19th. So primarily Finland redeems itself. (Iceland maybe not so relevant as it is tiny). The rest are still slightly above the middle. Considering these are among wealthy countries it maybe isn't bad. But for being smaller countries with decent resource and high taxes that are also deindustrializing I wouldn't say it is great.
It's been a decade since I was actually interested in educational policy and read the reports carefully. From what I remember, Nordic countries have long had higher educational attainment than most EU/OECD countries. In particular, the educational attainment that made people more likely to get a mortgage was higher (relative to peer countries) than it currently is.
At least in Finland, the educational attainment peaked with the people born in the late 70s. As higher education continues to grow in many (most?) peer countries, young Finns are no longer particularly highly educated, which may become a problem in the future.
Seems a bit general. Sweden is very much in debt because of the housing market. 15 years ago there were little regulation. You could get a 100 year mortgage with a variable rate and no money down. At the same time the government sold large amounts of public housing at below public market rate. Interest rates went from ~4% to ~1.5%. With no wealth or property taxes, but with tax deductions for renovations and interest rate payments. Most apartment buildings are co-ops, where the co-op have loans as well. Gradually there have been more regulation, but most still have variable rate mortgages which they are personally liable for and with no real a way to declare bankruptcy. Now interest rates will probably reach 4% again so hang on I guess.
Last time I looked at statistics Swedens debt to GDP was 35%, one of the lowest I saw, which doesn’t really make sense to me when I consider the weakness of the currency, but then again I am just a humble engineer and I have no clue about these things.
UK is close to 100% debt to GDP at the moment, the highest in recorded history.
> which doesn’t really make sense to me when I consider the weakness of the currency
When there is war, financial crisis, etc, money seeks the safest harbor. The safest harbor in the world today is the US. Rising interest rates, war in ukraine, competition with china, etc means that the world is buying treasuries. Demand for dollars goes up, demand for most other currencies goes down.
If there is a significant crisis in the world and the dollar doesn't gain in strength, then we'll know a paradigm shift has occurred.
Interest is also partially tax deductible, has been for ages. It makes no sense at all and has only served to fan the flames of an already overheated housing market. It's mostly lingered because nobody wants to be the one to rip off the band-aid. It would have been a very good opportunity to do it when the interest rates were negative, but still no. And at this point, it would it's inconceivable. Tens of thousands of households would be pushed over the brink.
> When I've thought of all the possible crappy outcomes that might happen, I can be confident that whatever happens, I'll survive.
I've heard this before, but it never worked for me because I can imagine things going pretty bad. I do think there is a lot of undue optimism. An assumption that things will work out. They often don't. Maybe worrying about nuclear war isn't that productive, but we should all be a lot more worried about things like working environment, rising inequality and the cost of living. Ask Japan.
Because they are potentially completely different processes. It is certainly possible, but what I see is a test fixture that could be made completely separate. Therefore it would be interesting to know if it wasn't, how they know that it wasn't and why Apple wouldn't on production lines costing many millions to billions.
Apple got strong-armed into making this available.
As to why they didn't create a hobbyist-grade tool for the self-repair program - all it would take is a couple of $900 phones damaged (followed by the outrage social media posts) by non-technical end-users to negate any savings. Better to make it bullet-proof.
Europe really isn't that much better these days. Obviously it isn't as extreme as in the US, but plenty of people still have had their lives ruined because of the pandemic and most societies are pretending like nothing happened. I hope there is a European country that is set to be better in 10 years, but at least I don't know about it.
The FAANG companies are 25 years old at this point, they aren't that relevant to today's situation. Europe has had many large companies going, but most got acquired by their US competitors. In part because they could use offshore assets and also avoid taxes once acquired.
But that is also only partly relevant, because the same is true of the US. If the US is doing so well by that metric where are the next US FAANG companies? The reality is that neither Europe nor the US moved up the value chain but sideways to primarily offer services.
That isn't because of manufacturing. Many think so because they don't know much about manufacturing. It is because of the cost of living. Western economies can't support a knowledge based ecosystem. I can have things made in Europe, or China. It doesn't matter. Where can I go and develop a product for years, or work my way up in a product company, or eventually hire a hundred people to do it, all without suffering? The answer is nowhere because the market is dominated by service focused companies that require less start time and have a less variable success rate. In China, its almost in every decent city.
They're definitely relevant in that they (plus a few others such as Red Hat, Salesforce, LinkedIn, etc etc etc) are the highest canopies in the US tech forest, meaning it's harder to grow as tall as them without being acquired by one of them. Possibly OpenAI could be one if it keeps doing well, and isn't swallowed by Microsoft.
I would probably peg Japan as most likely to be left behind by EV, to the point where Toyota is spreading FUD in Japan about EVs being a dead-end in favor of hydrogen fuel cell cars.
"Left behind" is somewhat subjective; [0] discusses the reasons for Japan's national strategy being big on hydrogen.
And if Toyota manages to FUD(/evangelize) consumers to buy hydrogen fuel cell cars, then they lock in customers and infrastructure towards hydrogen and away from EV. In part energy climate strategy, in part protectionism? Certainly it makes Japan less dependent on energy imports.
> Resource-poor, Japan began research on hydrogen after the 1970s energy crunch. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant accident and public anti-nuclear sentiment accelerated interest in hydrogen and other clean energies.
> [In 2021], the government issued its carbon neutrality road map, doubling the share of renewables providing electricity, to as much as 38% by 2030, with nuclear supplying about a fifth; its hydrogen-ammonia fuel target was set at 1%.
> Japan's placing multiple bets on hydrogen. With great fanfare, last year Japan opened one of the world's biggest "green hydrogen" plants, near the site of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
> Japan's hydrogen dreams aren't driven just by resource scarcity and meeting climate goals, [climate lobbyist InfluenceMap's] Nagashima said.
> "Japan has lost its competitiveness to other countries in terms of production of solar panels or wind turbines, and hydrogen is seen as a sector where it could lead in the world," Nagashima said.
>[US expert Wipke] said hydrogen is better suited to sectors like heavy industry and trucks, for long duration energy storage.
Given that you need electricity to produce hydrogen, EVs vs hydrogen for energy imports is a bit of a wash.
The results of this industrial strategy speak for themselves:
> Most are there to protectively top off their tanks, another employee tells me. Japan has only about 160 hydrogen refueling stations, concentrated in the country's three major cities. By comparison, there are about 30,000 gas stations across the country. Once every three months or so, a motorist ends up stranded, their tank empty, and they have to get towed. In addition to there being only a few vehicle models to choose from, which all have high sticker prices, the paucity of refueling infrastructure has turned consumers off.
And this all after Toyota has had 30 years to make the technology pan out.
(Obviously both BEV and FCEV need electricity, but that can equally come from renewable. FC has lower wire-to-wire efficiency than Battery, so clearly optimal energy efficiency is not Japan's motivation. Hydrogen refuels faster and a full tank gets you much further, but the tank is very bulky.)
Wondering given it's Japan and they keep stressing "resource-poor", is hydrogen FCEV less susceptible to embargoing on metals by China than BEV?
