Danish Assignment...

Before learning about the differences between Denmark and The United States we as a class created a scenario where a mother named Jill with a 3 year old daughter named Imani would survive in times like this. After calculating how much rent,maintenance,child care and more would cost we figured out that Jill would need to make at least $28,000 a year to have just enough for her basic necessities. If $28,000 is barely enough what is the actual poverty line for a family of two? The poverty line in the United States is actually $14,00. If a person makes anything below $14,000 they are considered poor and can seek government help. being worthy of welfare is when you have tried or you are trying to make a living and need a little help because you are below the poverty line. Being unworthy is when you are just collecting money and not showing you are trying to improve your situation. There are endless options for Jill at this point because of her income. She can choose charity and receive those benefits out of pity or she can choose solidarity which is a bunch of people who are in the same situation working together for benefits.

In addition Jill will need to pay taxes and we all know that is not the greatest thing in the world. The three different types of taxes spoken about in class is progressive tax, flat tax and regressive tax. Progress tax is when the rich people pay more taxes than the poor unlike regressive tax where for the rich paying taxes is nothing but for the poor it is a lot which makes them pay more. Flat tax is where everyone pays the same amount of taxes. Effective taxes is all the tax brackets included.

To compare the United States to the Denmark there are many differences and similarities. The Danish taught us a lot about their welfare system and by hearing it, I felt like everything they said sounded better than here. A similarity between the two is that they also have to pay taxes but on a different scale. The Danish teens were telling us Americans that if you make less than $6,000 you don't have to pay taxes and it all depends if your rich or poor. If though the Danish people pay way higher taxes than Americans they also have benefits that come with it. They receive free health care and child care even for the different classes. I think that we should use some of the techniques that the Danish people use so that there would not be as many people in poverty or needing assistance. I think that if we do change somethings here and switch them for what the danish do we will see many people improving their situation and feel great.