I live in Austria, not Denmark or Sweden — but we have roughly the same system — after being born, raised, going to college and working in the US. You can’t have it all here, either. Social democracy leads to a much nicer standard of living than the predatory capitalism of the US, but you still can’t have everything here.

I’ve owned my own business for over 25 years. I’ve been successful, but I would have taken home a lot more money had I done the same thing in the US as here. Personal income tax here is higher (not massively). The big difference is the effective business tax rate. The result is that it very hard to get really rich here. The bonus it that is also very hard to get really poor here. It is really a great trade-off if you accept that you can’t have everything.