A TIL post on McDonald's staff in Denmark earning a $21 minimum wage irritates some users; "a high minimum wage increases cost of living". Redditor responds with an evidence based analysis showing the contrary.

There has been some interesting social science research in recent years looking into whether countries with a high degree of ethnic homogeneity, as has historically been the case in Scandinavia, tend to develop a more generous welfare state. The argument is that there is likely to be a higher degree of solidarity between rich and poor in such countries, where all classes share a national language, ethnicity, history, and culture. There is nothing racist in implying that homogeneity can lead to more stable, prosperous societies - humans are tribal creatures, multiculturalism is a contemporary phenomenon with very little historical precedent, and it's not hard to imagine people from group A would resent having to share what they perceive as theirs with people from group B. If you are a rich Norwegian and the poor people around you look and talk like you, you may be more likely to empathize with that person and think "there but for the grace of God go I", whereas if you are a rich American and perceive the poor as blacks living in urban ghettos*, you may find it more difficult to identify with the poor and easier to scorn them. In fact, here is a journal article from the European Sociological Review making the argument that in Sweden specifically, higher levels of immigrant population in certain areas correlates with lower support for welfare spending. You can also find articles disagreeing with this argument, but it is a very real contemporary debate among scholars.

*This article on perceptions of race and poverty demonstrates that Americans perceive the poor as much more black, and thus for the white majority "other", than is actually the case and examines the roll of the media in promoting such perceptions. According to a survey cited, the median response to "What percent of all poor people in this country would you say are black?" was 50 percent, and 54 percent of respondents believed there are more blacks than whites in poverty in the US. In reality, there are nearly twice as many whites as blacks among the poor in the United States.

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