Aslaug's Axe Shed

From the frying pan into the heart of the volcano

That’s what it feels like to be me, right now. Those of you who read my blog yesterday, about the visit from Daniel/Aramis and his sister Erika this weekend got a positive impression. An impression of me being happy and doing quite well. Things were still going to plan.

I wrote that yesterday morning, when Erika and Daniel had just left. Two hours later, my world began to come apart at the seams.

And that requires an explanation.

I have explained some of this before, but I’ll repeat it to refresh everyone’s memory, and for the benefit of new readers.

Denmark has two systems in place for getting money while you’re unemployed. Unemployment benefits, which is government funded, and which is time-limited. And welfare, which is paid out of the local municipalities’ pockets and which is not time limited.

To be eligible for unemployment benefits, you have to work a certain amount of regular hours in an actual job within a given time-frame to get the time-period renewed. In short, when you start on unemployment benefits, you have four years at a -reasonable- income. It’s not much, but it’s enough to live a reasonable life at least. But after those four years are up, if I haven’t accumulated enough actual work-hours in that four-year period from regular, ordinary, non-state-supported jobs, you will be transferred onto welfare. Welfare is about 60 percent of what you get on unemployment benefits and is SPECIFICALLY set to be the amount which is considered the bare minimum a single person needs to survive for a month. The bare minimum … in a country with a government which refuses to set a standard of poverty.

To put it in layman’s terms … welfare won’t even pay for my monthly expenses. Not frivolous things like hobbies or trips to the cinema, but rent, down payments on loans, my telephone and internet (and before anyone says this is frivolous, it is necessary for me to say that without them, finding a job is next to imppossible, as all communication with the relevant authorities takes place via telephone and Email), my membership in my unemployment agency (which I can’t unsubscribe to without losing the chance of getting unemployment benefits in the future). Once these things are paid, I have spent 200 kroner more every month than I would get on welfare.

I can then get another 1000 kroner on top of the welfare cheque every month, by being “activated”. Activation means I’ll be sent to do some menial, crap job for the municipality, and for this, I’d get an extra thousand every month. This would take me into the positive by 800 kroner. This, then, is the amount I’d have every month for unforeseen expenses, clothes and food. 800 kroner is roughly 8 pounds or a 130 dollars.

A month.

Why am I talking about welfare as if it’s what I get? Don’t I get unemployment benefits?

Not for much longer.

Halfway through Monday, a political bomb exploded. Two years ago, if you recall, I was agonizing over the possibility of the unemployment benefits-period being cut in half. But it was avoided, and the government solemnly vowed not to touch the unemployment benefits-period for the rest of this election term. However, yesterday, they broke this promise in the most horrendously blatant way imaginable. Denmark has been struck by the financial crisis like the rest of the world, but whereas countries like Germany and Sweden, two of our neighbors, are climbing back out of the crisis, we are still mired in it. Both Germany and Sweden have a long way to go yet, as do many other countries on the road to recovery, but they have all accomplished even getting onto that road by public spending. A universal rule of economics, is that when a crisis strikes, private spending stalls and eventually grinds to almost a complete halt. Those who have money to spend hang on to it for dear life, thereby making the crisis even worse.

Unless the state starts to spend to get people employed again.

The Danish government, however, takes its clue from Ronald Reagan’s school of economics. Give tax-cuts to the richest people, they say, and that will naturally ensure increased spending. Because giving the two or three richest percent of the population a tax cut of 2 percent means a LOT more than giving the ten or fifteen percent poorest the same tax cut. Because the top two percent have much more money than the bottom ten percent put together. But that is not how it works. When the poorest get more money, they spend it on things they couldn’t afford before, but needed. Like new clothes. A new appliance for their home. That kind of thing. Which is good for businesses, because they sell more. Which again means their profits go up. And so on.

When the richest get more money, they will spend it on what makes them rich. Investments … which would be great if those investments stayed in Denmark, where they could create jobs. But in reality, those investments are very often international. Money being spent on building a new holiday resort in Turkey, on American shares or on branching out their business to the Far East, where salaries are much lower … which means they can close their factories in Denmark instead. Making the problem of unemployment worse instead of helping it.

This, of course, is heretical talk if you’re a right wing supporter. But it is nonetheless a simple, undeniable FACT which has been proven again and again and again over the last twenty-odd years.

So now Denmark is in the middle of a crisis our current government is unable and unwilling to solve. But it also means Denmark has to somehow make cutbacks of 24 billion kroner over the next three years.

There is a simple solution to this: taxation. But our government has, since it came to power at the start of the decade, kept a socalled tax-stop in place, meaning no new taxes for almost ten years. The rich have been happy, but it has also meant that our financial system is ten years out of date. By now the tax-stop is finally dead, but for the government to simply start taxing multinational companies like for instance McDonalds or Coca-Cola (both companies pay zero taxes in Denmark AT ALL) is inconceivable. Instead, they choose to send their 24 billion kroner bill to the poor.

Not the rich. They get out of this without losing anything. Sure, certain tax-cuts have been postponed, but they will eventually get them. Not so fortunate are the rest of us.

So yesterday, it was announced that despite promises to the contrary, the government will now cut the unemployment benefits period in half.

Meaning I will be on welfare as soon as this law has been passed.

I will be out of my job too. It is, after all, a supported job, meaning I get unemployment benefits while I work at the museum. But if I no longer get unemployment benefits, the contract is terminated, and I’m out of work.

My finances will be shattered. There are no jobs to be found. The crisis is still raging here, and there are now WELL over 150.000 full-time unemployed. And every day, you can search the internet and see about 5.000 job-openings, mostly in HIGHLY specialized areas.

But according to the government, those 5.000 jobs are more than enough to justify dropping tens of thousands of people into poverty.

But as they refuse to acknowledge that the term “poverty” exists in Denmark (I’m not kidding either. They won’t institute a standard of poverty, because they know this would show that their financial policies have created a -massive- divide between the rich and the poor of this country), they see no problem with creating more poor people.

Because, after all, poor people don’t exist in Denmark. It’s a non-existent problem.

But I’ll be one of those non-existent poor people in a very short time.

If any of you need a new employee, let me know. If any of you have family who needs a new employee, let me know. I don’t care if it’s in a different country. I’ll move ANYWHERE to get a job.

But of course, that kind of plea won’t really help me.

I just don’t know what else to do anymore.

It would just be nice to get a break, by now …