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for decades the right has tried to shout down any attempt to sand down some of the rough edges of capitalism, whether through health guarantees, income supports, or anything else, by yelling “socialism.” Sooner or later people were bound to say that if any attempt to make our system less harsh is socialism, well, they’re socialists.

The truth is that there are hardly any people in the U.S. who want the government to seize the means of production, or even the economy’s commanding heights. What they want is social democracy – the kinds of basic guarantees of health care, protection against poverty, etc., that almost every other advanced country provides.

Denmark, where tax receipts are 46 percent of GDP compared with 26 percent in the U.S., is arguably the most social-democratic country in the world.

According to conservative doctrine, the combination of high taxes and aid to “takers” must really destroy incentives both to create jobs and to take them in any case.

Danish adults are more likely to be employed than their U.S. counterparts. They work somewhat shorter hours, although that may well be a welfare-improving choice. But what Denmark shows is that you can run a welfare state far more generous than we do – beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives – and still have a highly successful economy.

while GDP per capita in Denmark is lower than in the U.S. – basically because of shorter work hours – life satisfaction is notably higher.

While the long-term performance has been great, Denmark hasn’t done too well since the 2008 financial crisis, with real GDP per capita falling substantially, then taking a long time to recover. In particular, Denmark has lagged far behind Sweden:

There’s no mystery about this recent underperformance. Denmark isn’t on the euro, but unlike Sweden, it has pegged its currency to the euro. So it has shared in the euro area’s problems

this is a reminder that microeconomics – things like the incentive effects of a strong welfare state – is different from macroeconomics. You can do great things on the micro front and still screw up your monetary policy

ocial Democrat Dan Jørgensen addressed opponents of the bill, demanding: “To those saying what we are doing is wrong, my question is: What is your alternative?

“The alternative is that we continue to be [one of] the most attractive countries in Europe to come to, and then we end up like Sweden.”

We’re simply applying the same rules we apply to Danish citizens who wish to take money from the Danish government,” Knuth said.

“Morally it is a horrible way to treat people fleeing mass crimes, war, rapes. They are fleeing from war and how do we treat them? We take their jewellery.”

“A Danish citizen could be searched in an extreme case if the municipality has a suspicion of fraud, but you need court permission to do so. For refugees, you would not need a court permission.”

The law introduces restrictive measures on asylum seekers that increasingly hinder their ability to apply for asylum in Denmark. We are particularly concerned by reduced social benefits and restricted access to family reunification. We are also concerned that refugees with temporary protection are only allowed to reside in Denmark for one year and yet are only able to apply for family reunification after three years.”

Mr. Madsen, the political analyst, said that many parties were only recently waking up to the climate rebellion, which is happening among the broader electorate as well as among students and other younger voters.

In a recent survey of 9,000 Danish respondents, more than 50 percent said they were willing to make “significant reductions” in consumption and wealth to mitigate the climate problem, while four out of five predicted that future generations would suffer from environmental change.

“I was doubting if I could allow myself to have children in this world which could collapse in 30 to 40 years,” Frederik Sandby, 26, said.

Pia Kjaersgaard, a leader of the Danish People’s Party and the speaker of Parliament, recently dismissed environmentally focused voters as “climate fools,” while her party’s chairman, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, warned that critics who criticized the agricultural sector for its carbon emissions were guilty of “climate hysteria.”

Martin Krasnik, editor in chief of Weekendavisen, a weekly newspaper, said their appearance on the scene was part of a trend. “For 30 years, everybody’s been moving to the right, right, right,” he said

Figures show the number of asylum seekers has actually dropped to the lowest level in Denmark in a decade. Even as the Danish People’s Party warns that the Social Democrats could loosen immigration policies, the reality is that both parties have largely supported the tougher line in parliamentary votes in recent years.

Ms. Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democrats, has been ahead in the polls and has said that she would mostly maintain a tough stance on migrants, creating a highly unusual policy mix for a European left-wing party. She said such an approach was a necessity, “if we want this society to function.”

Mr. Madsen, the analyst, noted that the tactics could provide a template. “What we’re seeing is a laboratory for what the center-left can be,” he said.

Sweden remained independent and shared control of Baltic coastal territories with Denmark.

olice say 279 people have been charged in the period from September 2015 to February 2016.

In January, a man was fined DKr5,000 (£517) for driving an Afghan family from the German border in September.

“I simply could not go home with the car empty. I did not think it was forbidden to take hitchhikers,”

I thought smuggling was when you pass a border and when you take money or benefit from it – not driving inside the country,” she said. “But unfortunately that seems to be the case in Denmark.”

“Denmark is no longer the number one in Europe on human rights, but at the bottom of the table. The past 10 years have seen the dismantling of Danish human asylum law,”

“The number of refugees coming to Denmark is dropping, but we speak about it as if we are Greece,” Søgaard said. “Common sense seems like a city in Russia right now, it seems such long way away.”

“There is a very different feeling among at least urbanised Danes, who see these prosecutions as unnecessarily punitive,”

“In a different climate the cases would have been dropped – in any other country it would impossible to prosecute, imaginable in Hungary perhaps,”

“It is an obligation as a person to act when you have the power to do something. You have to oppose laws that persecute other people,”

“I have been very worried that I could lose my right to stay here and be deported,”

Enthusiasts like Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and frontman of the 2016 referendum campaign for Brexit, argued that Britain could have its cake and eat it. His colleague, Michael Gove, who is now environment secretary, insisted that Britain held “all the cards and we can choose the path we want,” while another supporter of withdrawal, David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, said that there would be “no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside.”

“The last two or three generations have been left in a sort of time vacuum,” he added, “where they are still living in the past, with the idea that they are an empire, they won the Second World War and they can decide what they want.”

“In Denmark in 1864 there was a feeling that, ‘If this is reality, we deny reality’ — the view that it shouldn’t be like this, and if it is like this, it is wrong.

“The Brexiteers think, ‘We won the war but we lost the peace and we are going to win it back,’” he added. “They will be surprised when they try to resurrect the empire.”

“Sometimes there are events that have an effect as a catalyzer to open your eyes to the reality around you,

Might Brexit, a similarly interminable riddle, produce some sort of a benign renewal?Professor Ostergaard thinks it could, if Britain acknowledges reality and accepts its scaled-down modern status. He notes that, in forcing Denmark to come to terms with its true size, 1864 was the foundation of the small but successful contemporary Danish state.

“It was the most important point, completely dominating everything,” he said. “It was a defeat, but in the defeat the beginning of a success story, and of a national story as a small power.”

he enlisted in the French army

supporter of the Revolution

Bernadotte first met Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 in Italy. Their relationship, at first friendly, was soon embittered by rivalries and misunderstandings

In November 1799 Bernadotte refused to assist Bonaparte’s coup d’état that ended the Directory but neither did he defend it

When, on May 18, 1804, Napoleon proclaimed the empire, Bernadotte declared full loyalty to him and, in May, was named marshal of the empire

he was invited to become crown prince of Sweden. In 1809 a palace revolution had overthrown King Gustav IV of Sweden and had put the aged, childless, and sickly Charles XIII on the throne. The Danish prince Christian August had been elected crown prince but died suddenly in 1810, and the Swedes turned to Napoleon for advice.

Bernadotte was elected Swedish crown prince. On October 20 he accepted Lutheranism and landed in Sweden; he was adopted as son by Charles XIII and took the name of Charles John (Karl Johan). The Crown Prince at once assumed control of the government and acted officially as regent during the illnesses of Charles XIII. Napoleon now tried to prevent any reorientation of Swedish foreign policy and moreover sent an immediate demand that Sweden declare war on Great Britain

he respected his military ability, his skillful and humane administration of Hanover and the Hanseatic towns, and his charitable treatment of Swedish prisoners in Germany

Charles John was anxious to achieve something for Sweden that would prove his worth to the Swedes and establish his dynasty in power. He could, as many Swedes wished, have regained Finland from Russia, either by conquest or by negotiation

the conquest of Norway from Denmark, based on a Swedish alliance with Napoleon’s enemies. An alliance was signed with Russia in April 1812, with Great Britain in March 1813—with the British granting a subsidy for the proposed conquest of Norway—and with Prussia in April 1813. Urged by the allies, however, Charles John agreed to take part in the great campaign against Napoleon and to postpone his war with Denmark. The Crown Prince landed his troops at Stralsund, Ger., in May 1813 and soon took command of the allied army of the north

conserve his forces for the war with Denmark, and the Prussians bore the brunt of the fighting

After the decisive Battle of Leipzig (October 1813), Napoleon’s first great defeat, Charles John succeeded in defeating the Danes in a swift campaign and forced King Frederick VI of Denmark to sign the Treaty of Kiel (January 1814), which transferred Norway to the Swedish crown. Charles John now had dreams of becoming king or “protector” of France, but he had become alienated from the French people, and the victorious allies would not tolerate another soldier in charge of French affairs

Charles John conducted an efficient and almost bloodless campaign, and in August the Norwegians signed the Convention of Moss, whereby they accepted Charles XIII as king

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), Austria and the French Bourbons were hostile to the upstart prince, and the son of the deposed Gustav was a potential pretender to the throne. But, thanks to Russian and British support, the status of the new dynasty was undisturbed

Upon the death of Charles XIII on Feb. 5, 1818, Charles John became king of Sweden and Norway, and the former republican and revolutionary general became a conservative ruler.

His foreign policy inaugurated a long and favourable period of peace, based on good relations with Russia and Great Britain

On Thursday, the agency said that it considered the vaccine safe, although it would continue to watch for any connections to blood disorders.

“Right now we are examining whether this is the exact same disease picture with multiple blood clots, a low count of platelets and hemorrhages,” Tanja Erichsen, a director at the Danish Medicines Agency

This is the second death in Denmark after a person was given the AstraZeneca vaccine. Norway is examining the deaths of two people who received the vaccine.

Some of the continuing caution has been driven by preliminary findings from medical experts in Norway and Germany that suggested a possible link between the vaccine and the extremely rare blood disorders.

Dr. James Bussel, an expert on platelet disorders and a professor emeritus at Weill Cornell Medicine, said the occurrence of abnormal clotting and low platelets in people under 50 is uncommon.

Researchers in both Germany and Norway will continue investigating and in Germany, where the vaccine is again being administered, doctors are now warning anyone receiving an AstraZeneca shot to see a doctor immediately if they have headaches, dizziness or blurred vision more than three days afterward.

the workers compensated are not allowed to work in the period. Workers staying with the company do not receive the 75 percent compensation.

The philosophy here is that the government wants companies to preserve their relationship with their workers. It’s going to be harder to have a strong recovery if companies have to spend time hiring back workers that have been fired. The plan will last for three months, after which point they hope things come back to normal.

he U.S. faces the sharpest economic downturn in a century, and statistics that seem impossibly pessimistic one moment look positively optimistic hours later. In weeks—even days—Denmark’s aggressive response could be a blueprint for how the world can avoid another Great Depression

In the German plan, the government and the employer share the cost of paying for work. Here, the government is paying companies for employees who are going home and not working. These workers are being paid a wage to do nothing.

You’re saying: We know that all these people won’t be able to work for the next few months. It’s inevitable. Rather than do rounds of firing followed by rounds of hiring, which will delay the recovery, let’s throw the whole economy into a deep freezer, and when the virus winds down we can thaw it out and almost everybody will still be with the company they worked for in January.

Thompson: It sounds like 10 years ago, there was a debate about stimulus. But today, everybody agrees that you just have to save the economy.Larsen: Yes. They just want to save the economy. The philosophy is, if we don’t do it now, it will be more expensive to save the economy late

Larsen: I have to say that the decision-making process in Denmark has been very extraordinary. We have 10 parties in Parliament. From the very left-wing to the really, really right-wing. And they all agree. There is nearly 100 percent consensus about this. And that’s really amazing. People are convinced that it’s wise to do this now.

cases involving the U.K. variant are growing exponentially in Denmark. British studies have estimated that the strain is 30 to 70 percent more contagious than the original.

he British variant is spreading so quickly that Danish authorities project it will be the dominant strain of the virus in their country as early as mid-February.

Danish officials, crunching similar data slightly differently, estimate that it is about 20 to 50 percent more contagious than the original in their country, although they say their numbers are still so small that estimates may be inexact.

Danish officials say that at this stage, they are in a race to vaccinate as many people as possible before the British variant takes hold.

About 82 percent of the Zillionaire Giveaway goes to those earning more than $1 million a year, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. Of those beneficiaries earning more than $1 million annually, the average benefit is $1.6 million.

In other words, a single mom juggling two jobs gets a maximum $1,200 stimulus check — and then pays taxes so that a real estate mogul can receive $1.6 million.

polls suggest that they don’t appreciate the degree to which Trump and Congress also bungled the economic response — or manipulated it to benefit those who least need help.

The United States simply accepted that the pandemic would cause vast numbers of workers to be laid off — and then it provided unemployment benefits. But Germany, France, Britain, Denmark and other countries took the smarter path of paying companies to keep workers on their payrolls, thus preventing layoffs in the first place

So the unemployment rate in Germany and Denmark is forecast to reach about 5 percent while in the United States it may already be about 20 percent, depending on how you count it.

The United States did a little bit of this, but far less than Europe — yet the United States in some cases spent a larger share of G.D.P. on the bailout than Europe did.

t’s not fair to viruses to blame our unemployment crisis simply on the pandemic. It’s also our national choice.

At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that money intended to rescue small businesses has often gone not to those with the greatest need but rather to those with the most shameless lawyers.

For-profit colleges, which are better known for exploiting students than educating them, have raked in $1.1 billion.

AutoNation, a Fortune 500 company, received $77 million in small business funds

One provision in the rescue package provides a tax break that benefits only companies with more than $25 million in gross receipts

A new study determined that in the two months since March 18, roughly the start of the economic crisis, America’s billionaires saw their wealth collectively grow by 15 percent. And another 16 Americans became billionaires in that period.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a significant factor that led the government to call a referendum, and that the vote was an important value-based decision and a way to signal support for a stronger EU. The government has spent several weeks campaigning for a "yes" vote.

"It looks like after 30 years, Danes have decided it's time to get rid of the opt-out, and build a closer cooperation in Europe," said Soren Pape Poulsen, leader of the Danish Conservative Party, noting that close cooperation with Denmark's allies has not been more important since the Cold War.

The move to join the pact is another important symbolic shift in defense policy for European states

"This is the right decision for our future. We are facing an era with even more uncertainty than what we see now, and we need to stand together," Frederiksen said.

"The political significance will outweigh the military contribution," Kristensen told Reuters.

Among the key concerns expressed by political opponents and the public was the deployment of Danish soldiers, although any major decisions, including military participation, would still need approval by the Danish parliament.

The EU has no plans to establish a supranational army within the bloc, but it has decided to form a rapid deployment force consisting of up to 5,000 soldiers.

In 1564 the Spanish Ambassador in London, de Silva, reported to Philip II that ‘the leading men in Scotland’ had been bought by Elizabeth for eight thousand crowns

Two years later, when the English raided the Border town of Langton, the authorities in Edinburgh begged the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, to appoint a nobleman ‘to have the cure and charge’ of the city, asking as their first preference for Bothwell.

The rebels sent a punitive expedition, led by Moray, in search of him, and Bothwell, in hiding nearby, had to watch while they sacked his castle at Crichton. The enmity lasted for the rest of his life, and ended by destroying both him and Mary

Bothwell now set out to see Mary in France, and took Anna with him as far as Flanders

In 1563 Anna, too, went to Scotland, using a passport from Mary which allowed her to live there and to enter and leave the country at will

Without trial, Bothwell was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle; but, knowing that he was likely to be murdered, he twisted back the bars of his cell window, climbed down the precipitous Castle Rock in darkness, made his way to the coast and set sail for France

He was, in fact, given six hundred crowns and the salary of a gentleman of the King’s chamber

Bothwell was recalled by the Queen’s pardon and urgent summons, for her marriage the month before to the treacherous Darnley threatened to spark off civil war with the Protestants, led by Moray and once again financed by the English

There followed a series of intrigues by Darnley, which he was too indiscreet to conceal, against a number of the rebels, including Moray

Bothwell dealt with both difficulties with his customary decision. In April, two months after Darnley’s murder, he assembled a force of 800 men a few miles west of Edinburgh and abducted Mary as she returned from a visit to her ten-month-old son at Stirling. Mary offered no resistance, and it was widely believed that Bothwell compelled her acquiescence in the marriage by rape; but Mary herself, in a letter to the Bishop of Dunblane, said that it was the best course she could take

It happened that Rosenkrands was a kinsman of Anna Throndsen, and that she was living not far away, being known as ‘the Scottish lady’ on account of her stay in Scotland

Bothwell sent a man aboard the Bjorn to explain that they were Scottish gentlemen who wished to serve the Danish king, Frederick II, in his prolonged war against Sweden, and that the only authority in Scotland who could provide papers was in prison.

It was now essential for Bothwell to conceal the fact that he was a fugitive and an outlaw. Asked for his passport, he blustered, and asked contemptuously who could give him one, since he was himself the highest authority in Scotland and the husband of the Queen; and he was inconsistent about the purpose of his voyage: sometimes he wanted to go to Denmark, sometimes to Holland, sometimes to France.

There can be little doubt that they were determined to arrest Bothwell and execute him. Mary rejected their demand with indignation, and the two armies, which together numbered perhaps 8,000 men, faced each other for the rest of the day, each uncertain how to proceed

Bothwell was unable to extricate himself in face of such evidence, and could do no more than offer her a pension of £100 a year from Scotland and the smaller of his two ships. Anna accepted, not knowing that his property in Scotland had been confiscated when he was declared an outlaw and that the ship was not his to give

By now Bothwell’s detention was known in Scotland, having been reported by the merchants in Bergen; and Moray, who had established himself as Regent for James VI sought his extradition on a charge of regicide - the beginning of his protracted efforts to put Bothwell out of the way for ever

he was able to reply to Frederick with truth that he had been acquitted of the charge by a Scottish court, that the acquittal had been confirmed by the Scottish Parliament, that Mary was a prisoner, and that his accusers were guilty of treason

Frederick now came under pressure from another quarter. In December 1567 the Scottish Parliament formally condemned Bothwell to forfeiture of ‘nobility, honours, life and possessions’, and Moray sought the help of Elizabeth and of Charles IX in Paris in obtaining his extradition

When Frederick declined this gambit, Moray sent a further request, this time in the name of the infant King James, that Clerk should be allowed to execute Bothwell in Denmark and take his head back to Scotland for public exhibition ‘in the place where his crime was committed’; for there was, he said, ‘a great clamour’ in Scotland against Bothwell

Most declined to offer advice, pointing out with irony that Frederick and his Council were well equipped to take their own decisions; a few suggested, as Frederick himself had done the year before, that Bothwell should be tried in Denmark; and others counselled him to temporize without offending either England or Scotland

On condition that his surrender of Bothwell would never be held against him, that Elizabeth and Lennox would reciprocate if the need should ever arise, and that Bothwell would receive a fair trial, Frederick half-agreed to the extradition; but Charles IX, alerted by Dangay, his Ambassador in Copenhagen, and by his Minister in London, ordered Dangay to take decisive action to prevent it

For Bothwell it would have been better had Charles not intervened, for Frederick’s attitude towards him soon changed abruptly. It has been suggested that the Massacre of St Bartholomew diminished sympathy for the Catholic Mary and hence Frederick’s sympathy for her consort.

More probably it had become clear that since Mary was now in the hands of the English and her faction in Scotland had been largely destroyed by Morton, who succeeded to the Regency on the murder of Lennox, Bothwell had ceased to have any value for Frederick in his complex political manoeuvres

The Danes treated him with greater consideration in death, and gave him a modest burial in a nearby village

By the time this program had been brought to success and Stanisław Leszczyński elected king of Poland—Augustus being forced to accept the settlement by a Swedish invasion of Saxony in September 1706—Charles XII had matured both as a general and as a statesman.

After negotiations for Charles’s marriage to a Danish cousin, the daughter of Christian V, were begun on Denmark’s initiative, Charles’s advisers held back until the outcome of Danish negotiations with other powers was known. These negotiations led in fact to a coalition between Denmark, Saxony, and Russia that, by attacking Sweden in the spring of 1700, began the Great Northern War. The speedy success hoped for by the three allied powers did not materialize, and rumours of rebellion by the Swedish nobility against the absolutist monarchy, in case of war, proved false.

Most significant of these personal decisions was that to fight Augustus II in Poland and to transform Poland from a divided country, where Augustus had both partisans and opponents, into an ally and a base for the final campaign against Russia.

His first necessity in 1706, however, was to secure Sweden’s position in relation to Russia, which, under Peter I the Great, had from 1703 onward made good use of Charles XII’s campaigns in Poland to train its army and undertake a piecemeal conquest of the Swedish east Baltic provinces.

He became the object of Turkish intrigues and in February 1713 had to fight a regular battle, the kalabalik of Bender (modern Bendery, Moldova), to avoid a plot to deliver him into the hands of Augustus of Saxony, now restored in Poland. The closing of the Turko-Habsburg frontier due to the plague, and the determination of the anti-French alliance in the War of the Spanish Succession to prevent Sweden from using its bases in Germany to attack its enemies further circumscribed Charles XII’s freedom of action in these years. The Swedish council, virtually in charge of affairs at home during his absence, was preoccupied with threats to Sweden from Denmark.

Charles XII was not the simple and uneducated soldier-king he has often been made out to be. His intellectual pursuits were many and varied. He became increasingly occupied with new ideas in administration, and many of his administrative reforms were far ahead of their time. He demanded considerable sacrifices of those classes in Sweden who were lukewarm about the war effort once the years of bad fortune set in after 1709.

Erik’s acquisitions in Estonia alarmed Frederick II, king of Denmark and Norway, who allied with Lübeck and Poland and declared war in 1563, initiating the Seven Years’ War of the North.

Duke John (later King John III), who was liberated in 1567, joined with his brother, the future Charles IX, and deposed Erik in 1568. Erik died in prison.

The report did not name any of the 35 world leaders that were allegedly on in the list. However, few months after the initial reports, the German government publicly said it had information that suggested the US might have monitored Merkel's cell phone.

Denmark's independent public service broadcaster, DR, published a report on Sunday saying that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE) had launched an internal investigation in 2014 over whether the NSA used its partnership with FE, and Danish internet cables in and out of Denmark, to spy on senior European officials, according to Reuters.

Merkel on Monday said she agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron's assertion that wiretapping between allies was unacceptable. "Nothing has changed in our stance to the clarification given by the predecessor at the time," Merkel said, referencing the initial claims raised in 2013.

The DR report also found that the NSA spied on Germany's then-foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is now the country's president, and the former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück, Reuters reported.

DR reported that the intelligence was gathered through an analysis of software known as Xkeyscore, developed by the NSA. Reuters reported that the agency "intercepted both calls, texts and chat messages to and from telephones of officials in the neighbouring countries," citing the DR report.