Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo
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It's of really limited value comparing Norway's economy and social situation with those of high-population countries. Partly because the economic and political language used in such discussions have very different meanings there, and partly because of their unique circumstances.
Norway's circumstances are really extremely unusual: it's a very large country with a very small population relatively diffusely spread out; they have their very unusual national "oil profits" fund to benefit the entire population; they mean something totally different by using the word "socialism" from its meaning anywhere else (even in other Scandinavian countries); opinion polls there show a huge majority of the population are supportive of a high-tax structure with all kinds of benefits and services nationalized, which are privately administrated and owned anywhere else; etc.
So many economic and social aspects of everyday life are so different there that comparisons tend, overall, to be more prejudicial than probative.
(It was rather amusing, during the "great Brexit debates" in the UK, a couple of years ago, how some of the "Remainers" feared what they regarded as a dreadful outcome ... "Oh no, it'll all be a disaster and we'll end up like Norway", many of them perhaps not quite appreciating that Norway's one of the wealthiest countries, per capita, in the world, and has one of the highest/best "average qualities of life", by whatever criteria you measure and define it.)
Norway's circumstances are really extremely unusual: it's a very large country with a very small population relatively diffusely spread out; they have their very unusual national "oil profits" fund to benefit the entire population; they mean something totally different by using the word "socialism" from its meaning anywhere else (even in other Scandinavian countries); opinion polls there show a huge majority of the population are supportive of a high-tax structure with all kinds of benefits and services nationalized, which are privately administrated and owned anywhere else; etc.
So many economic and social aspects of everyday life are so different there that comparisons tend, overall, to be more prejudicial than probative.
(It was rather amusing, during the "great Brexit debates" in the UK, a couple of years ago, how some of the "Remainers" feared what they regarded as a dreadful outcome ... "Oh no, it'll all be a disaster and we'll end up like Norway", many of them perhaps not quite appreciating that Norway's one of the wealthiest countries, per capita, in the world, and has one of the highest/best "average qualities of life", by whatever criteria you measure and define it.)
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Oh yea, nad UK is still searching for its geopolitical role without US, whereas Norway been doing awfully great for a long long time.Communism is inevitable.