this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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I don't know a ton about Norway, nor have I visited. Can you edify me on the reality compared to the Potemkin village facade? Are there social safety nets? How do they work/not work in practice? What's phony about other European countries? The closest I've been to Norway is Denmark and I had a lot of conversations with locals about healthcare and qol and they all seemed better off than what we have in America.
I've met a few homeless Norwegians here in Central Europe. They told me enough stories about how "good" their welfare system works. The patterns were the same as in all other European countries. You have a certain amount of homeless people, then you open up temporary shelters for less than one percent of them (And those shelters are always the worst places imaginable, much more filthy and dangerous than the streets, often just as cold as outside because nobody pays for heaters). And of course plenty of housing first projects nobody can ever get into because they're all fake, all you ever get is a stupid brochure. But it's good material for propaganda in newspapers which helps "social" parties keep and attract voters (The rich "left" bourgeoise love this type of stories). So all that has been achieved is to push homeless people around Europe, always looking for that one country that doesn't suck, it's a neverending loop of misery. And the only people they have to talk to are other homeless. Not a single housed person listens, they only silence you ("No, Europe is Utopia, you have plenty of options, you just don't want to be housed again!"). And of course no newspaper reports about any of this either, political parties make sure no such article will ever be released by threatening to take press subsidies away.
And that's just about homeless shelters. The same applies to welfare benefits, disability benefits, "universal" healthcare and so on. I met disabled people who only got 40 Euros emergency assistance per month. How can you buy food, clothes, hygiene products, medication and pay for the homeless shelter too (most are not free) with just 40 Euros? I didn't believe it until I saw the official documents myself. That's the real Europe. That's the "social" Utopia dumb/uneducated US citizens dream about.
There is one difference though: Police here is much more chill, they rarely harass you or destroy your stuff for fun. That is indeed much worse in the US. Here they just tell you to go away and look for another place.