Michael Booth > Quotes

“Perhaps Danish happiness is not really happiness at all, but something much more valuable and durable: contentedness, being satisfied with your lot, low-level needs being met, higher expectations being kept in check.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Inequality breeds depression, addiction, resignation, and physical symptoms including premature aging, that affect the entire population. In other words, the well-being of individuals, rich or poor, is mutually dependent.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not.”
― Michael Booth

“One of the keys to happiness, experts tell us, is autonomy in one’s life – the luxury of being able to decide your own destiny and achieve the fulfilment of self-realisation. It is no coincidence that the region that is consistently judged to have the highest levels of well-being and life quality, and the happiest, most fulfilled people, also has the greatest equality of educational opportunity and, according to a London School of Economics study comparing the incomes of fathers and sons over thirty years, among the very highest levels of social mobility in the world. The four main Nordic countries occupied the top four places on the list.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Inside the Nordic miracle - the truth behind the world’s happiest nations.

“When you visit a Danish company and can't tell the CEO from the office clerk, that's Viking egalitarianism at work.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“In Scandinavia the standard of education is not only the best in the world, but the opportunities it presents are available to all, free of charge. This is the bedrock of Nordic exceptionalism.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Some might argue that the reality of Nordic autonomy is that you are free ... to be Nordic. If you are a Muslim who is looking to build a mosque, or an American who wants to drive a large car, espouse your deeply held Creationist beliefs, and go shopping with your platinum card on Sunday, or even if you are English and choose to conduct yourself according to archaic forms of baroque politeness, you are likely to experience varying degrees of oppression and exclusion should you come to live in this part of the world. This is true.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“In Sweden, self-sufficiency and autonomy is all; [interpersonal] debt of any kind, be it emotional, a favor, or cash, is to be avoided at all cost. The Swedes don't even like to owe a round of drinks.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes. (What was lost without will be found within.)”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Now is probably a good time to make my confession about Finland, our next destination in this Nordic odyssey: I think the Finns are fantastic. I can't get enough of them. I would be perfectly happy for the Finns to rule the world. They get my vote, they've won my heart. If you ask me, they should just change the word 'fantastic' to 'Finntastic.' Helsinki? Heavensinki, more like.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“If you are spending more time matching your Kitchenaid to your kettle to your cupboards than you are cooking, something is very wrong.”
― Michael Booth, Doing Without Delia: Tales of Triumph and Disaster in a French Kitchen

“The Swedish royal family’s legitimacy is even more tenuous. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended neither from noble Viking blood nor even from one of their sixteenth-century warrior kings, but from some random French bloke. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, the then king, Gustav IV Adolf—by all accounts as mad as a hamburger—left for exile. To fill his throne and, it is thought, as a sop to Napoleon whose help Sweden hoped to secure against Russia in reclaiming Finland, the finger of fate ended up pointing at a French marshal by the name of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (who also happened to be the husband of Napoleon’s beloved Desirée). Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the fact that Bernadotte had actually once fought against the Swedes in Germany was quickly forgotten, as was his name, which was changed to Charles XIV John. This, though, is where the assimilation ended: the notoriously short-tempered Charles XIV John attempted to speak Swedish to his new subjects just the once, meeting with such deafening laughter that he never bothered again (there is an echo of this in the apparently endless delight afforded the Danes by the thickly accented attempts at their language by their current queen’s consort, the portly French aristocrat Henri de Monpezat). On the subject of his new country, the forefather of Sweden’s current royal family was withering: “The wine is terrible, the people without temperament, and even the sun radiates no warmth,” the arriviste king is alleged to have said. The current king is generally considered to be a bit bumbling, but he can at least speak Swedish, usually stands where he is told, and waves enthusiastically. At least, that was the perception until 2010, when the long-whispered rumors of his rampant philandering were finally exposed in a book, Den motvillige monarken (The Reluctant Monarch). Sweden’s tabloids salivated over gory details of the king’s relationships with numerous exotic women, his visits to strip clubs, and his fraternizing with members of the underworld. Hardly appropriate behavior for the chairman of the World Scout Foundation. (The exposé followed allegations that the father of the king’s German-Brazilian wife, Queen Silvia, was a member of the Nazi party. Awkward.) These days, whenever I see Carl Gustaf performing his official duties I can’t shake the feeling that he would much prefer to be trussed up in a dominatrix’s cellar. The”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Bjørnskov, an expert in the fields of social trust, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction, told me about some other, highly revealing experiments that had been carried out in the field. “Back in the nineties there was an experiment done [in 1996, by Reader’s Digest] where wallets were left around in various cities and they counted how many were returned. And the cool thing is that in the places where more people say they can trust others, the more wallets were returned. I think they did an experiment with about forty wallets and the only two countries where all forty were returned were Norway and Denmark. I thought it was too good to be true, but TV2 [a Danish TV channel] did the same experiment again four years ago in Copenhagen Central Station, and they literally could not even leave the wallets—people would instantly pick them up and come running after them, so they had to give up!”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“The Danes’ fondness for clubs and associations is shared by their Nordic neighbors. The Swedes have an even greater trade-union membership and in their spare time are particularly keen on voluntary work: they call this instinct for diligent self-improvement organisationssverige, or “organization Sweden.” The Finns are famed for their after-work classes, particularly their amateur classical musicianship and fondness for joining orchestras, while the Norwegians’ love of communal outdoor pursuits, most famously cross-country skiing, is one of their defining characteristics.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“The Swedish system is best understood not in terms of socialism, but in terms of Rousseau," he continued. "Rousseau was an extreme egalitarian and he really hated any kind of dependence--depending on other people destroyed your integrity, your authenticity-- therefore the ideal situation was one where every citizen was an atom separated from all the other atoms.... The Swedish system's logic is that it is dangerous to be dependent on other people, to be beholden to other people. Even to your family.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Though I set out to redress the rose-tinted imbalance in the reporting on the Nordic region in the Western media, as well as to get a few things off my chest, I hope, too, that I have shed light on some of the more positive aspects of Scandinavia—the trust, the social cohesion, the economic and gender equality, the rationalism, the modesty, the well-balanced political and economic systems, and so on. Right now, the West is looking for an alternative to the rampant capitalism that has ravaged our economies, a system that might avoid the extremes of Soviet socialism or American deregulated neoliberalism. Really, as far as I am concerned there is only one place to look for the economic and societal role model of the future, and it is not Brazil or Russia or China. The Nordic countries have the answer”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Their greatly reduced circumstances bound the Danes together more tightly as a tribe than any of the other Nordic countries. As historian T. K. Derry writes (about the accession of Norway to Sweden), “The Danish king and people resigned themselves to the loss … as a common misfortune which drew them together in a desire to avoid all further changes.” The territorial losses, sundry beatings, and myriad humiliations forced the Danes to turn their gaze inward, instilling in them not only a fear of change and of external forces that abides to this day, but also a remarkable self-sufficiency and an appreciation of what little they had left. No longer the great European power it had once been, Denmark withdrew, mustered what few resources remained within its much-reduced boundaries, and decided never again to have ambitions in that direction. What followed was a process of what you could call “positive parochialization”; the Danes adopted a “glass half full” outlook, largely because their glass was now half full, and it is an outlook that, I would argue, has paved the way for the much trumpeted success of their society to this day.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Parochialism remains the Danes’ defining characteristic, but their radically recalibrated sense of identity and national pride has created a curious duality best described as a kind of “humble pride,” though many often mistake it for smugness.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Everything I read about the Swedish Social Democratic government of the last century suggested an organization that was driven by one single, overarching goal: to sever the traditional, some would say natural, ties between its citizens, be they those that bound children to their parents, workers to their employers, wives to their husbands, or the elderly to their families.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Their most radical conclusion is that inequality breeds stress among poor and rich alike; the more unequal a society, the less benefit is obtained from an individual’s wealth. The stress of inequality does not just breed envy, it is not just about coveting your neighbor’s ox/Cadillac Escalade. Inequality breeds depression, addiction, resignation, and physical symptoms including premature aging, that affect the entire population. In other words, the well-being of individuals, rich or poor, is mutually dependent.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“The Gini Coefficient quantifies how large a percentage of the total income of a society must be redistributed in order to achieve a perfectly equal distribution of wealth.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“today, the Danes are the world’s leading pork butchers, slaughtering more than twenty-eight million pigs a year. The Danish pork industry accounts for around a fifth of all the world’s pork exports, half of domestic agricultural exports, and more than 5 percent of the country’s total exports. Yet the weird thing is, you can travel the length and breadth of the country and never see a single sow because they are all kept hidden from view in intensive rearing sheds.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“the Popsicle Index, which ranks countries according to the percentage of people in a community who believe that their children can safely leave their home, walk to the nearest possible location to buy a popsicle, and walk back home again.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Inside the Nordic miracle - the truth behind the world’s happiest nations.

“I recently read—and I am not making this up—that members of Sörmland County Council had passed a motion, so to speak, to insist that men working for the local council should urinate sitting down, with the ultimate aim of making their public toilets genderless. Reading about all this you get a sense of the almost religious fervor with which the Social Democrats went about dreaming up and implementing their radical policies.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“More than 754,000 Danes aged between fifteen and sixty-four—over 20 percent of the working population—do no work whatsoever and are supported by generous unemployment or disability benefits. The New York Times has called Denmark “The best place on earth to be laid off,” with unemployment benefits of up to 90 percent of previous wages for up to two years (until recent reforms, it was eleven years). The Danes call their system flexicurity, a neologism blending the flexibility Danish companies enjoy to fire people with short notice and little compensation (compared with Sweden, where jobs can still be for life) with the security the labor market enjoys knowing that there will be ample support in times of unemployment”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Finnish women are dominant,' Roman Schatz enthused. 'Traditionally, on Finnish farms the woman was chief of everything under the roof, including the males, and the men were there to take care of everything outside. No Finnish man would ever decide anything without consulting his wife. Men do the dishes. We don't have housewives in Finland - no one can afford to live from one salary. Women don't stay at home and breast-feed, they have their own careers and bank accounts. It's great - my divorce only cost me a hundred euro.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“During the sixties and seventies the Swedish state also became notorious around the world for the large numbers of children it took into care, sometimes for apparently spurious, even ideological, reasons. When it was revealed that Sweden’s Orwellian-sounding Child Welfare Board had proportionately taken more children into care than any other foreign country, journalist Brita Sundberg-Weitman wrote: “This is a country where the authorities can forcibly separate a child from its parents to prevent them from giving it a privileged upbringing.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Proper, deep, enduring joy usually requires a remarkable facility for denial, something which the Danes have in spades.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“Could it be that, once a society achieves a certain high level of equality, beyond that point greater equality merely leads to diminishing happiness returns? As has been proved with measures of wealth, once people have enough equality to cover their basic needs, greater equality does not necessarily result in corresponding increases in happiness. Could this explain why the Danes were judged to be the happiest people on earth, even though they were not the most equal? “Colleagues at Harvard think there might be a leveling-off in terms of some health aspects,” said the professor. “But if you look at our graphs, where we put all our sources together in terms of all health and societal problems, there is no sign of it leveling off at the other end. It is a linear relationship. My view is that we don’t know what happens if you get more equal than Sweden.” Ultimately,”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia