How to actually make America great again

How the US government can solve modern challenges by learning from the Nordic countries

Introduction

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden constitute the Scandinavian countries. A more inclusive term, “Norden” (the Nordic countries) refers to the Scandinavian countries plus Finland and Iceland. The Nordic countries are relatively small in population compared to their European peers, but they are globally competitive and wealthy states. They are also liberal societies and well-known for their social services and welfare model (Jørgensen & Ærø, 2008).

This paper will examine three areas that the Nordic countries do well: environmental stewardship, public education, and energy security. Policy, economics, and social influences will be considered in each area. The end goal is to show how the United States can learn, adapt, and implement Nordic policy domestically as a means of solving modern challenges.

Premise

Let’s begin by clearly outlining why the Nordic countries are worth modeling after. First, the quality of life for these countries ranks among the best in the world, as determined by the Social Progress Index which scores:

1. Basic Human Needs, including medical care, sanitation, and shelter;
2. Foundations of Wellbeing, including education, access to technology, and life expectancy;
3. Opportunity, including personal rights, freedom of choice, and general tolerance (Smith, 2016).

The 2016 rankings, determined by the non-profit Social Progress Imperative, placed all five of the Nordic countries in the top ten of the world; these results are reflected in Figure 1 (Smith, 2016).

Figure 1: Top Ten Countries ranked by the Social Progress Index (Smith, 2016)

It is worth learning the models and practices of the Nordic countries as a means of applying them elsewhere, like the United States, to improve the quality of life.

The level of government effectiveness in managing social and welfare services sets the Nordic countries apart. These terms have broad meaning, but for the sake of this paper, welfare will be defined using Professor John Hudson’s interpretation of Beveridge’s five giant social problems, “social security/income protection, health care, education, employment, and housing” (Dwyer, P. & Shaw, 2013, p. 5).

Health Care

The healthcare systems Nordic countries serve as examples of equitable and effective care. Their systems are “well-established with regard to primary and preventive healthcare. These couple into sophisticated occupational health standards which are considered to be models by the outside world” (“Overview of the Healthcare Systems in the Nordic Countries,” 2010). The Nordic healthcare systems are taxation based, meaning their universal healthcare is directly funded by government tax revenue.

Education

Finland’s education system ranks among the top of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test annually which measures performance in math, science, and reading, as well as equity in education. The PISA results from 2015 noted Denmark as having achieved “high levels of performance and equity in education outcomes” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2015a).

Another factor that adds to the uniqueness of the Nordic countries is the income per capita. As Klevens (2011) states, “[The Scandinavian Countries] rank among the highest in the world in terms of income per capita, as well as most other economic and social outcomes” (p. 77). The Nordic countries are aware of their success and government effectiveness; Nordic think-tanks are known for publishing reports in English about their reformations (“Special report — the nordic countries: The secret of their success; lessons,” 2013). That’s a more than subtle nod to the United States and others that the Nordic way can be learned and imitated.

It raises the question: why can’t the United States be more like these countries? The remainder of this essay aims to answer that question, identifying the shortcomings of the United States’ social structures and proposing policies and solutions modeled after the Nordic countries.

Money Matters

In order for the Nordic countries to provide broad social services, their governments need to have the necessary funding for those services. How do governments collect money? Taxes. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the Scandinavian countries have the highest tax rates compared to their European peers and compared to the United States (Kleven, 2014, p. 78).

Henrik Jacobsen Kleven researches the policy design of the Scandinavian governments in his article “How Can Scandinavians Tax So Much?” in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Kleven outlines three key findings:

1. “First, the Scandinavian tax systems have very wide coverage of third-party information reporting and more generally, well-developed information trails that ensure a low level of tax evasion.”
2. “Second, broad tax bases in these countries further encourage low levels of tax avoidance and contribute to modest elasticities of taxable income with respect to the marginal tax rate.”
3. “Third, the subsidization or public provision of goods that are complementary to working — including child care, elderly care, transportation, and education — encourages a high level of labor supply” (Kleven, 2014, p. 78).

How can the United States learn from this?

Let’s operate under the assumption that many social problems are directly related to policy ineffectiveness or a lack of policy altogether. It’s tempting to immediately jump into the ideation process for policy solutions to social problems. However, we must acknowledge that every policy comes with a cost, both financial and economic. Therefore, money does matter when it comes to the policy discussion. In order for the United States to implement the suggested policies and solutions that will be detailed below, it’s necessary to propose mechanisms of funding those policies.

The United States can learn from Kleven’s (2014) work which identifies how the Scandinavian countries collect more in taxes than most other countries in the world, “namely the use of far-reaching information trails that facilitate tax compliance, broad tax bases that limit the scope of legal tax avoidance, and large public spending focused on complements to work” (p. 96). It’s reasonable that the United States can mimic these three core components if Congress is capable of passing comprehensive tax reform. As of November 2017, tax reform is a key issue slated for debate and policy proposal at the national level in the US.

Ways the United States can innovate

United States government can be considered stagnant, bureaucratic, and wasteful (Gallup, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2013a; Pew Research Center, 2013b). While the United States may not be able to implement the same tax structure and enforcement as the Scandinavian countries, there is still value in examining particular policies that otherwise remain within feasible economic and social reach.

Let’s examine some areas in which the United States can implement policies that have been successful in the Nordic countries, including the environmental stewardship, education, and renewable energy.

Environment — Policy Recommendation #1

A common sense and novel way to reduce plastic and glass waste

Framing the Problem

In 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish according to research out of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2016. Plastic bottles are a substantial part of the problem; they take 400 years to naturally decompose. However, plastic bottles are also highly recyclable; this means that the bulk of the plastics problem can be remedied with high rates of recycling. The Nordic countries are among the top countries for recycled and composted waste; all five Nordic countries outperformed the United States (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2015b).

Figure 2: Municipal waste disposal and recovery shares, 2013 or later (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2015b)

Norwegian Solution

Deposit-refund systems (DRSs) are commonplace in the Scandinavian countries. Here’s how the system works: consumers pay a deposit when purchasing a product, e.g., a beverage in a plastic bottle, and consumers receive refunds upon returning the used product, e.g., an empty plastic bottle (Numata, 2016, p. 1). In Norway, for example, the deposit and refund per recyclable container is 1 NOK ($0.13 US dollars) for containers less than 0.5 liters.

It’s common practice for Norwegians to gather their used bottles and take them to a “reverse vending” machine, often found in supermarkets where the product was purchased. Returning the bottle results in a receipt that can be cashed in; this is the refund part of the DRS. In other words, there is a direct cash incentive to return bottles. The Norwegians even give a name to this process. “To pant” (å pante) is to return a bottle or can to get a refund of the deposit that was paid in the initial purchase (Nikel, 2012). The entire process is based on the premise that you’re buying the contents of a beverage, not the bottle; this justifies the elevated price tag associated with the initial purchase of the bottle.

Implement A Nationwide Deposit Refund System

Some states in the United States have adopted bottle-deposit refund systems which have lead to increased rates of recycling; see Figure 3 (Container Recycling Institute, 2005). The data reflects the degree to which DRSs influence rates of recycling; Michigan, for example, has an average annual return rate of 97.3% (House Fiscal Agency, 2013).

Figure 3: Beverage Container Redemption Rates in Select Deposit States vs. the U.S. Average (Container Recycling Institute, 2005)

However, for the country as a collective to improve its rate of recycling, a federal initiative should be implemented to expand bottle-deposit refund systems to all fifty states.

Now, let’s address a significant problem with the current system: in some states, you must return the bottle to the its place of purchase, i.e., the you must use the reverse vending machine in the grocery store where the product was purchased. It would be significantly more convenient if bottles could be purchased anywhere and recycled anywhere. However, since only some states have deposit refund systems, it would be problematic if people started crossing state lines with hordes of glass and plastic bottles to profiteer from the reverse vending machine. However, federal legislation that implements a nationwide bottle deposit refund system would remedy this problem; every state would have the same dollar value for the refundable deposit.

Steps to make this process even easier have already been ideated. Greenbean Recycling — a company founded in 2010 — was started to modernize the reverse vending machine process. Their machines have users “sign in” with their phone number before returning bottles. Then, the deposit is sent electronically to one’s PayPal account or a charity of choice; this eliminates the paper receipt (Averett, 2011). Additionally, the Greenbean Recycling machines accept containers for beverages sold anywhere, not just the store of the original purchase (Averett, 2011).

A system of reverse vending machines like Greenbean Recycling could make these ubiquitous across America. This is an ideal intersection of government policy and industry innovation. The end goal is to reduce the amount of waste the United States produces by incentivising recycling practices; a nationwide deposit refund system could make this possible.

Education — Policy Recommendation #2

Let’s transition now to Finland’s system of education as a model for the United States. As stated earlier, Finland is world-renowned for their educational outcomes (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2015). For history and context, education became a focal point of the country’s economic revitalization efforts in the 1970s (Hancock, 2011). When the first PISA results were published in 2000, it became apparent that Finish education was among the top in the world for education outcomes (Hancock, 2011). Assuming that the United States aspires to raise the quality of education, it is of interest to examine what the Finish system does differently.

Reduce Standardized Testing

There are no mandated standardized exams in Finland, with the exception of a final exam at the end of student’s senior year in high school (Hancock, 2011). This stands in stark contrast to the United States. There’s two telling graphs that explain the degree to which standardized testing exists in the United States. Figure 4 represents the average number of mandatory assessments for US students from Pre-K to 12th grade; Figure 5 shows the average time spent on testing per year for every grade level (Hart et al., 2015). For example and for context, the average 25.3 hours of testing that occurs in the 8th grade is equivalent to 4.21 full school days.

Figure 4: Average Number of Total Assessments per District Mandated for All Children by Grade Level (Hart et al., 2015, p. 26)

Figure 5: Average Testing Time in Hours Per Year for All Mandated Assessments for the Population of Students at Each Grade Level (Hart et al., 2015, p. 28)

It’s clear that the United States has an obsession with standardized testing, and this raises a variety of problems. First, every minute spent in an exam is a minute that students are not receiving education. Second, standardized tests induce unnecessary stress on students; a majority, six in ten, of school psychologists say the Common Core learning standards have increased students’ anxiety (Heiser et al., 2015). More than three-quarters of psychologists (76 percent) reported that standardized tests from the state cause greater anxiety than local assessments (Heiser et al., 2015). Not only are standardized exams having an adverse effect on students’ mental health in the form of anxiety, that anxiety may lead to lower test scores. Research by von der Embse and Hasson (2012) found that students who score higher on the Friedben Test Anxiety Scale tended to correlate with lower scores on state exams (p. 183).

Adopt Intersectional and Auxiliary Support Systems

It’s well known that students who are hungry or whose families are experiencing homelessness do worse off in school. In Finland, these issues are rare. “Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free” (Hancock, 2011). In short, the Finish system is comprehensive, addressing a variety of intersectional needs that affect a student’s academic performance. The United States, however, takes a narrow scope of responsibility by only providing classroom education and modest programs like free-and-reduced lunch. If we expect students in the United States to perform better, it is reasonable to suggest that the US government — Department of Education and individual State governments — consider and supply auxiliary support to improve student success.

Implement Universal Pre-K

Education is often referred to as “the great equalizer.” However, many children of color and children from low-income families too often enter kindergarten at a disadvantage. Research from Nores and Barnett (2014) found that African American and Hispanic children can be 9 to 10 months behind in math and 7 to 12 months behind in reading when they enter kindergarten in comparison to their white peers. The difference in preparedness with respect to income is described as a continuous gradient from low to high income families. The disparity between the top and bottom quartiles is stunning, “equivalent to a difference of 20 months in age for a child entering kindergarten” Nores & Barnett 2014).

Friedman-Krauss, Barnett, and Nores (2016) outline two key problems with pre-K in the United States: first, rates of access vary widely as a function of socioeconomic background which particularly affects African American, Hispanic, and low-income children; second, the quality of early education programs, particularly those serving low-income children of color, is not high enough to significantly improve academic readiness (p. 1). The problem of access to early education could be solved if the United States adopted an education policy known as universal pre-K. Finland has done this, providing preschool to every child under the age of seven as a right, i.e., regardless of family income; ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool (Hancock, 2011).

If the United States can successfully implement pre-K for all, the benefits are clear, including “long-term improvements in school success, including higher achievement test scores, lower rates of grade repetition and special education, and higher educational attainment. Some preschool programs are also associated with reduced delinquency and crime in childhood and adulthood” (Barnett, 2008). This is important since it reveals that preschool not only leads to improved academic success but also improves social issues like crime. The Finish recognize this benefit as well, which is why their pre-K encourages play and socializing (Hancock, 2011).

Renewable Energy — Policy Recommendation #3

The Nordic countries are pioneers in the renewable energy sector. Renewable energy, “energy that is generated from natural processes that are continuously replenished” (Ciolkosz, 2017), includes biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar. Iceland generates one hundred percent of its electricity with renewable energy, roughly 75% from hydropower and 25% from geothermal (Gipe, 2012). Denmark generates 43% of its energy from renewables, and the country recently set an ambitious goal to increase that number to 70% by 2020 and abandon coal, oil, and gas entirely by 2050 (Jeppesen, 2014). The United States, by comparison, only produces 10% of its energy from renewable sources (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2017). Although making progress in the transition to renewable energy, the U.S. still relies heavily on coal and petroleum; a breakdown of U.S. energy consumption as of 2016 can be found in Figure 6 (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2017).

Icelandic Success

As the UN Chronicle (2015) said, “First and foremost, Iceland is an inspiring example of what is possible, with many important lessons to share for any country seeking such a transformation.” The Icelandic success is rooted in an economic motive rather than an environmental one. The country sought energy security after significant price fluctuations in oil prices around the 1970s (UN Chronicle [United Nations], 2015). Keep in mind that Iceland is a relatively small country by population, and its GDP is $20,047 million as of 2016 (World Bank, 2017). Yet, the country saves about $100 million annually in imported fossil fuels by using geothermal energy (Aldred, 2008). The overall economic savings sum to roughly $8.2 billion over 30 years (Aldred, 2008).

To encourage the adoption of geothermal energy, the Icelandic government created a geothermal mitigation fund; this was used for research and covering the costs of failed projects (UN Chronicle, 2015). Additionally, the government created a legal framework which incentivized homeowners to switch from fossil fuels to the new geothermal network (UN Chronicle, 2015).

Perhaps the greatest lesson to learn from the Icelandic success is the number of barriers that the country overcame. In the 1970s as Iceland began its energy transformation, “ the country was emerging from centuries of poverty and foreign rule, lacking basic infrastructure and knowledge about the potential of its resources, as well as the experience in undertaking major energy projects” (UN Chronicle, 2015). In comparison, the United States does not face these challenges. Rather, the U.S. is among the wealthiest countries in the world, can tap into research from some of the best institutions of higher education in the world, and can call upon history to mimic successful infrastructure advancements, namely, the New Deal under FDR or the Interstate Highway System under Eisenhower.

The United States is capable of transforming its energy infrastructure, and as seen from the Icelandic example, there is a strong economic incentive to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources. To make the transition in a similar way to Iceland would likely require a favorable legal and regulatory framework, public engagement, and long-term planning with respect to renewable energy (UN Chronicle, 2015). All of which are possible if policymakers and elected officials in the United States make renewable energy a policy priority.

Federal Support for a High-Voltage Direct-Current Transmission Grid

Research from MacDonald et al. (2016) found that the United States could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by implementing more renewable energy. “Our research shows a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2016). These researchers at the NOAA and University of Colorado Boulder built a model to evaluate affordability, reliability, and greenhouse gas emissions by varying different sources of energy in a national energy system (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2016). The model was used to determine the value of a high-voltage direct-current transmission (HVDC) grid.

HVDC systems increasingly considered in grid modernization efforts (U.S. Department of Energy, 2017). There are several benefits to HVDC systems, most notably being able to transmit electricity over long distances with little electrical losses (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], 2016; U.S. Department of Energy, 2017). With respect to renewable energy, ”HVDC is a key technology in overcoming problems with renewable generation like wind, solar and hydro — that these resources are seldom located near the population centers that need them” (U.S. Department of Energy, 2017). With the NOAA, U.S. DOE, and researchers in the discipline all in agreement with the benefits of HVDC, it’s logical to propose such a system for the United States.

The case of renewable energy in Iceland outlined the economic value of implementing renewable energy sources and demonstrating that the transition is possible despite significant barriers. The HVDC is the solution to how the United States can improve its energy infrastructure.

Cultural Considerations

It is critical to understand that Scandinavian policy is hard to separate from Scandinavian culture. As Kleven (2014) states, “[These countries] are small and homogenous, racial and religious diversity is limited, human capital is high, and they have been largely unaffected by violent conflict” (p. 96). For context, the population of North Carolina alone is nearly double the population of Norway. Those very specific conditions make it challenging to predict if Scandinavian policy can be transferred to countries who do not share those conditions. The United States is large, culturally diverse, and its people have vast income and wealth inequalities. Additionally, it remains an open question as to whether it’s the culture that creates the policy or the policy that creates the culture; this is a matter of correlation versus causation.

Conclusions

The United States can solve some of its most pressing modern challenges — environmental stewardship, improved education, and energy security — by imitating Nordic policy. Norway serves as a model for improving rates of recycling and thus caring for the environment. Finland leads the way in successful systems of education and support services to enhance student success. Iceland demonstrates what is possible by utilizing renewable energy sources. Implementing any of these Nordic ideas requires a commitment to action by elected officials and policymakers in the United States. Funding these programs may be daunting and beyond the scope of this paper, but the return on investment of a clean environment, better education, and renewable energy should lead the discussion. The United States is capable of implementing these programs to tackle modern challenges if the people themselves make these ideas a priority. The solutions are out there; it’s up to the United States to take action.

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