If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.
Thus having the government take care of basic welfare and health care benefits frees people to be entrepreneurial, in a sense.
Compare to the US, where people are tied to a job based on the benefits they have through that job, and before the health care legislation's removal of preexisting conditions clauses, if you had a medical condition and lost your job, you could very easily end up in financial distress.
Personally, I would have transitioned to being independent a full year earlier if it wasn't for health care coverage issues.
I paid $60 a month for catastrophic healthcare from State Farm when I ran a ramen profitable startup. My deductible was $1500. When I nearly cut my toe off walking on a beach, I had surgery, $1000 worth of antibiotics and two follow up visits. I paid a grand total of $1500 for everything. I know I'm a healthy young man, but that seemed like a pretty fair deal to me.
Amazingly this plan will soon become illegal for being too minimalist under the new healthcare laws. I get that there are real problems with healthcare in the US. But entrepreneurs are mostly healthy young men, and it doesn't cost much to insure healthy young men.
I don't know what constitutes "basic welfare" in Norway, but were the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to reimburse the health care premiums of anyone starting a new business, up to 100 weeks, I believe you would see a marked increase in the creation of new businesses in this country.
If anything, it would grease the rails to becoming "ramen profitable."
Perhaps this is why startups are always filled with 20-somethings. Imagine how much would be done if those who happened to have families could also easily make the leap.
I agree, it would be nice if the government could help alleviate things such as basic welfare and health care benefits. Unfortunately for the USA, we are in such a massive amount of debt that it would be impossible* for the government to do such a thing. And between health care and the military spending, we're pretty much diving deeper and deeper.
* We could do it, but I doubt that any legislators would go for such a thing.
> If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.
Completely disagree, social security has rather a negative on the willingness of the population to take risks. In countries with high social securities, such as Switzerland or Germany there are less startups founded on average. People instead are in a kind of security thinking and take the most safe jobs, get an insurance for everything, etc..
Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.
So do Denmark (where I am from) and Sweden.
Yes the taxes are higher (up to 60% in Denmark with a progressive tax system) and about the same I believe in Norway.
But it's not like everyone walks around an love it. In fact there is great opposition to the level that taxation have gone to. In Denmark it's an election year and several social welfare benefits plus income tax is being discussed as the main theme.
But all this doesn't really matter cause the US have something that neither of the Scandinavian countries nor any other European nations have.
They have a big ass market and one language.
Europe is a huge market (around +400 Million no?) but most countries (unlike Scandinavia) don't do well with english so there is no unifying factors that allow for the kind of scalable business that can be created in the US (at least not as easily)
There are many problems with the kind of social welfare models and lack of aspiration is actually one of them. People don't try as hard and because they pay high taxes they come to expect A LOT from the government.
I have lived in the US for enough years to know that there are many things that the US should envy from the Scandinavian countries. But the start-up environment is not one of them.
Thanks for setting the record straight on this. I'm Norwegian, and this is exactly what I would say about this. There are many things we do in Scandinavia that should be copied in the US, but start-up culture and small business is not helped along by the tax system and social services/benefits. In fact, the progressive taxation alone incentivizes everyone to _not_ earn more than about 100000 USD a year (if you work harder to earn more, taxation is about 45% on the marginal income).
There are "official" (state-sponsored) investment companies, but they are incredibly risk-averse and never invest in anything halfway radical. Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent.
I concur–the US has a big market and a big advantage culturally in terms of startups.
Switzerland has the opposite problem, people are very ambitious, expect to earn a lot of money, and so are unwilling to take the pay cut to go to startups. I have run into many who think creating a successful startup involves having an idea and throwing money at outsourcers to program it. There's so much money thrown around that the idea of a MVP is out the window, a few companies I know have runways of 6+ years....
It's also partly about catching the bug and reaching the critical mass. If you have many friends making amazing things it's hard not to be inspired to try to join in. I don't think the cultural problem is by any means inherent in socialism, but those are just my 50 kroner...
>Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.
But they do say yes to what most people in the US would call "socialism". When it comes to politics the words the US uses don't match what the rest of the world uses.
I thought this line was particularly telling: "Although America remains near the top of the world in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations - that is, the percentage of people who want to start new things-in terms of actual start-up activity, our country has fallen behind not just Norway but also Canada, Denmark and Switzerland."
Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM
QUIGGIN: After I wrote the book, I saw the movie "Zombieland," and rule number two is double tap. You always have to hit them twice. I talk about the trickle down theory, that when you help the rich that helps everybody. I think a theory so convenient to powerful people is never going to be cured permanently.
RYSSDAL: And the theory about trickle-down economics is in some way coming back to the United States in this debate we're having about the Bush era tax cuts.
QUIGGIN: Absolutely. It's suggesting that keeping on giving tax cuts to the top 1 or 5 percent of the population is going to help everybody else. The evidence is very clear that that's not the case. That the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.
> Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM
I don't understand this. Just because some Americans consider "socialism" to be a poor fit for their country, doesn't mean we shouldn't accept it when other countries self-describe their actions as "socialism". To do so, would be to adapt language to pander to the American world view (e.g. we think something is good, so avoid calling it socialism so Americans may adopt it without bias) rather than retain concise accuracy in discussion.
Please stop pointing to successful market economies and calling them socialist.
In some ways Switzerland is a libertarian tax haven and really makes the US look socialist.
Switzerland, Canada and Denmark are more economically free than the US according to this: http://www.heritage.org/index/
Just because there are some very rich people in the US, it doesn't mean the average person would be better off in a socialist country such North Korea or Cuba.
Switzerland is by no means socialist and is rather an example of many libertarian ideals. Taxes are done by canton (city/state) and in some one can pay as little as no income tax. Health care is required, decoupled from employment and well regulated, but private. I've lived in all of the aforementioned countries and prefer the socialist model, but Switzerland is another example of there being many ways to reach the same ideal. I only hope the US can make it there too one day so that I could feel comfortable living in it.
This article rings true to me. I've lived and worked in Norway for a successful startup (FAST Search, later bought by Microsoft) above the Arctic circle. It's a lovely country, the startup did feel like a family (in fact, many brought their kids to work), we worked and played hard, etc. I paid 50% tax and $15 for beers and was more than happy to do so as well–the taxes were well used and having an entire population, rather than a small circle of friends with a high standard of living was so much more fun.
It's all in how you define a term, but traditionally Norway is a very socialist country - The major businesses were owned by the state, and while that has changed, the government does still hold large stakes in telecom, oil, and transportation companies. Private businesses also generally have a much flatter hierarchy than you find in the US, and income distribution is much more equally. And, of course, the member parties of the ruling coalition consider themselves to be socialist parties.
The first thing I learned is that Norwegians don't think about taxes the way we do. Whereas most Americans see taxes as a burden, Norwegian entrepreneurs tend to see them as a purchase, an exchange of cash for services. "I look at it as a lifelong investment," says Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm[...].
Norway would have a lot more trouble saying "ja" to socialism if it didn't have so much oil. That's what makes the whole thing seem like such a good deal - you're getting more than you're paying in.
Aw come on, Norway has oil and it is small, but was social-democratic long before any oil, and both Denmark and Sweden have built successful welfare safety nets without relying so much on a natural-resources windfall.
Of course Norway's way of doing things could work in the United States - if the typical American had the underlying culture, beliefs, and attitudes of the typical Norwegian.
Since they don't, and cultural change is the sort of thing that happens incrementally over a generation or more, there's no plan of action to be gained from such articles - they're valuable because they teach us a bit about other cultures, but trying to use them to make political points is silly.
Bloody good on Norway. Now if you want Norwegian taxes or the Norwegian government, move to Norway. I'll take the American moral view on taxation, and fight taxation tooth-and-nail until I die, regardless of the pragmatics of it. It's about choice, and freedom, not the actual dollars and cents.
Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.
The article implies that most people in Norway believe that individual rights are less important than the average welfare of all individuals taken together and that personal lives are less important than the well-being of the collective. This is quite logical, because it is the acceptance of this view of the world that makes their system possible.
A similar view is at the root of most governments around the world today and it certainly underpinned the socialist/communist block in the 20th century, though to a different degree. The United States has been a notable exception.
But let's focus on Norway and the idea that it can serve as a model. To take a small example, who believes that a skilled doctor is genuinely happy to have half of his income taken away by law and given to the janitor of his hospital, so that the latter receives the roughly same pay? Well, the surveys say that the level of happiness in Norway are very high, so the doctor must be happy. Happiness measures aside, does that make sense? Is the doctor genuinely happy or has he been told by generations of intellectuals what he should feel happy about and what he should feel guilty about? This is a question that everyone who nominates Norway as a model for the US should answer logically.
A bit of anecdotal evidence from a Norwegian citizen to counter your "doctor vs janitor" argument: I'm more than well aquainted with a doctor and she is more than happy to pay her taxes, in order to benefit the rest of society.
You should also know that even though the tax system in Norway works to even the footing of different posed people financially, it does not wipe out the class difference between a janitor and a doctor. Their net income will still differ by quite a bit (up to 400% at least).
The benefit here is that someone who is considered poor, and would perhaps be forced to live in the street, and only serve to increase the crime rate, will instead recieve help. And the doctor can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the police is out protecting. The hospital emergency staff is ready to recieve the next cardiac arrest patient, the road will be cleared from that heavy snow fall during the night, the list goes on.
In my view the philosophy of the Norwegian tax models is less worries == more happiness, and that is exactly what this model offers for everyone included.
On the other hand its very easy to paint a rosy picture of Norway in a case like this. Mostly becasue US is so easy to outcompete on many of the issues directly involved. Crime rates, mortality rates, helthcare and so on. Norway does of course, like any country, suffer from several political problems. Spending, immigration and government control is perhaps the most fleeting issues right now. But they diminish substantially compared to the issues the US has to face the next decade. And perhaps even worse is it, that the political environment in the US seems allmost hopeless. With the country polarized into two extremes. In Norway the debate is still very much alive around all of these issues. In the US you can quickly get yourself into a place you dont want to be by just shifting your perspective slightly.
Doctors are an extremly well-educated, mobile workforce. Few chose to leave the country, there are more coming in.
There is more happiness in being well-off in a rich country, than being rich in a poor or troubled one.
Especially if you have a family.
People don't measure themselves against the superrich of other countries anyway. A doctor in Norway has a high-status job and among the best wages in the country. Changing from being in the top in a rich country to being somewhat further from the top in a more trobled one is not a winning proposition. Even if it does mean more number in the bank.
Also, it is undeniable that there are more freedom under the Norwegian system than the US one. Health care, vacation time, education, personal development....I cannot imagine what freedoms the US could measure up in.
You're getting into interesting ground here with questioning happiness. How is happiness defined? Can you truly distinguish between someone who is happy on their own and someone who is happy because their society tells them they should be? Does any happiness not stem from generations of people shaping perceptions of what individuals in their society should feel happy about?
Norway is successful because of the oil and gas resources here. This makes the economy boom, and is why the welfare state and social democracy works so well. I still think the US has a far more competitive start-up environment. I'm from Norway, by the way.
One swallow does not make a summer, and one happy entrepreneur does not equal a system which produces a lot of new companies.
Norway is a nice place and the culture and beliefs of the people mean that they have decided as a country to opt for a high social safety net and associated high taxes.
But trying to extract a hypothesis that somehow high taxes and social safety nets are somehow good for starting up a business is, well, stretching it somewhat.
Perhaps one of the reasons this guy found success is that so many of his countrymen can't be bothered because the extra effort isn't worth it. He clearly is motivated by more than money, so high taxation doesn't affect him much. So you could say Norways taxation system encourages people to build family style companies, and only suits entrepreneurs who aren't money-driven. That's an equally valid conclusion to draw from the article if you ask me.
The fact that Norway, followed by Denmark, has the highest rate of strtups in the world, according to the article, would seem to argue against the "one swallow" theory, and indicate full summer.
And it is not reasonable to assume that his countrymen can't be bothered when they are the most prolific in the world.
The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of production and distribution". Some interpret this to be state or public ownership, but others see worker co-operatives, collectives and federations to be socialist formations which can operate within a market. Syndicalists, market socialists, etc. would fall under this definition.
The real problem is the high cost of health care. This article argues persuasively that it's government interference in the sector that has caused the enormous costs:
My God, where to begin on this unnecessarily provocative link-bait fuckup of a story.
"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government services are among the
highest in the world."
>Of course, the country has some of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in Nepal.
"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones."
> Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.
"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish"
> What?
"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar bears."
There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on arctic island owned by Norway.
"The food isn't great."
> The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.
"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey"
> Define happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates.
"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home."
> Alligators, heat-waves, and death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home.
"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world."
> Thanks to how Norway actually measures unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.
"There are no private schools in Norway"
> Incorrect, there are many private kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in Norway.
"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead
researcher for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway."
> I included this statement because it's TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview an expert.
"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk, regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good schools."
> Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its schools are mediocre at best.
So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry-pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y, it also may have a downside Z".
Let's also not forget the fact that Norway is a very oil-rich country which brings a huge degree of wealth into the economy, and this skews the image considerably. You might have noticed that the guy the article talks about got rich selling stuff to -- guess who? -- the Norwegian oil industry.
The number of startups in a given community doesn't causate a great entrepreneurship scene. By that metric Norway could just give every team that's interested 50k dollars from their oil, call them a startup and automatically have a more vibrant startup scene than Silicon Valley. Troll economics, anyone?
People also overestimate the degree to which the US is capitalistic. Government spending in the US is now around 40%, with the free-market days of the pre-WWII era long replaced by a heavy-handed state that has never shrunk meaningfully. Maybe we Scandinavians run our bloated government bureaucracies more efficiently in our comparatively small, historically homogenous societies, but they're certainly not the reason we're rich. We're rich because we've been relatively free and capitalistic for a long time, also historically enjoying relatively low political corruption and a strong rule of law. At least that's the picture as I see it, being an Icelander that has lived and worked in Denmark I feel I grok the way these relatively small communities of my kinsmen work on a gut level.
One more thing: New Hampshire is one of the richest states in the USA, has about the same population as Norway and has a higher GDP per capita. If we're going to compare the US to Norway (one of the richest European countries) while excluding other much poorer countries from the equation, we should also compare New Hampshire to Europe to put things in proper perspective.
"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish" > What?
I think the author means that you're told that smell is "drying fish" (I assume for eating), but to an outsider it just smells like rotting fish. Sarcastic humor.
Very true. Many refuse to think logically and accept whatever happens to be the fashionable idea of the day.
My family and I also had to witness a similar experiment. I join you in your wishes.
That was inadvertent, not clever. The person who sent me the link did it via mobile phone, so he used the mobile link, and I didn't see it when it was posted previously.
[+] [-] zdw|15 years ago|reply
Thus having the government take care of basic welfare and health care benefits frees people to be entrepreneurial, in a sense.
Compare to the US, where people are tied to a job based on the benefits they have through that job, and before the health care legislation's removal of preexisting conditions clauses, if you had a medical condition and lost your job, you could very easily end up in financial distress.
Personally, I would have transitioned to being independent a full year earlier if it wasn't for health care coverage issues.
[+] [-] uuilly|15 years ago|reply
Amazingly this plan will soon become illegal for being too minimalist under the new healthcare laws. I get that there are real problems with healthcare in the US. But entrepreneurs are mostly healthy young men, and it doesn't cost much to insure healthy young men.
[+] [-] johnohara|15 years ago|reply
If anything, it would grease the rails to becoming "ramen profitable."
[+] [-] beoba|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidwparker|15 years ago|reply
* We could do it, but I doubt that any legislators would go for such a thing.
[+] [-] bobo99|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightlifelover|15 years ago|reply
Completely disagree, social security has rather a negative on the willingness of the population to take risks. In countries with high social securities, such as Switzerland or Germany there are less startups founded on average. People instead are in a kind of security thinking and take the most safe jobs, get an insurance for everything, etc..
[+] [-] ThomPete|15 years ago|reply
Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.
So do Denmark (where I am from) and Sweden.
Yes the taxes are higher (up to 60% in Denmark with a progressive tax system) and about the same I believe in Norway.
But it's not like everyone walks around an love it. In fact there is great opposition to the level that taxation have gone to. In Denmark it's an election year and several social welfare benefits plus income tax is being discussed as the main theme.
But all this doesn't really matter cause the US have something that neither of the Scandinavian countries nor any other European nations have.
They have a big ass market and one language.
Europe is a huge market (around +400 Million no?) but most countries (unlike Scandinavia) don't do well with english so there is no unifying factors that allow for the kind of scalable business that can be created in the US (at least not as easily)
There are many problems with the kind of social welfare models and lack of aspiration is actually one of them. People don't try as hard and because they pay high taxes they come to expect A LOT from the government.
I have lived in the US for enough years to know that there are many things that the US should envy from the Scandinavian countries. But the start-up environment is not one of them.
[+] [-] marvin|15 years ago|reply
There are "official" (state-sponsored) investment companies, but they are incredibly risk-averse and never invest in anything halfway radical. Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent.
[+] [-] _corbett|15 years ago|reply
Switzerland has the opposite problem, people are very ambitious, expect to earn a lot of money, and so are unwilling to take the pay cut to go to startups. I have run into many who think creating a successful startup involves having an idea and throwing money at outsourcers to program it. There's so much money thrown around that the idea of a MVP is out the window, a few companies I know have runways of 6+ years....
It's also partly about catching the bug and reaching the critical mass. If you have many friends making amazing things it's hard not to be inspired to try to join in. I don't think the cultural problem is by any means inherent in socialism, but those are just my 50 kroner...
[+] [-] Symmetry|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loewenskind|15 years ago|reply
But they do say yes to what most people in the US would call "socialism". When it comes to politics the words the US uses don't match what the rest of the world uses.
[+] [-] beoba|15 years ago|reply
Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM
-
Reading this also reminded me of an interview I'd heard a few months ago: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm...
QUIGGIN: After I wrote the book, I saw the movie "Zombieland," and rule number two is double tap. You always have to hit them twice. I talk about the trickle down theory, that when you help the rich that helps everybody. I think a theory so convenient to powerful people is never going to be cured permanently.
RYSSDAL: And the theory about trickle-down economics is in some way coming back to the United States in this debate we're having about the Bush era tax cuts.
QUIGGIN: Absolutely. It's suggesting that keeping on giving tax cuts to the top 1 or 5 percent of the population is going to help everybody else. The evidence is very clear that that's not the case. That the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.
-
Moral of the story?: We've been had.
[+] [-] true_religion|15 years ago|reply
I don't understand this. Just because some Americans consider "socialism" to be a poor fit for their country, doesn't mean we shouldn't accept it when other countries self-describe their actions as "socialism". To do so, would be to adapt language to pander to the American world view (e.g. we think something is good, so avoid calling it socialism so Americans may adopt it without bias) rather than retain concise accuracy in discussion.
[+] [-] laut|15 years ago|reply
In some ways Switzerland is a libertarian tax haven and really makes the US look socialist.
Switzerland, Canada and Denmark are more economically free than the US according to this: http://www.heritage.org/index/
Just because there are some very rich people in the US, it doesn't mean the average person would be better off in a socialist country such North Korea or Cuba.
[+] [-] _corbett|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _corbett|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cromulent|15 years ago|reply
Social democracy != socialism.
[+] [-] tallanvor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beoba|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsotha|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anghyflawn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Norse|15 years ago|reply
Much like the case is with Sweden, Denmark, Finland...who run the same system without oil, and gets similar results.
[+] [-] gyardley|15 years ago|reply
Since they don't, and cultural change is the sort of thing that happens incrementally over a generation or more, there's no plan of action to be gained from such articles - they're valuable because they teach us a bit about other cultures, but trying to use them to make political points is silly.
[+] [-] loewenskind|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|15 years ago|reply
Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.
[+] [-] relic17|15 years ago|reply
A similar view is at the root of most governments around the world today and it certainly underpinned the socialist/communist block in the 20th century, though to a different degree. The United States has been a notable exception.
But let's focus on Norway and the idea that it can serve as a model. To take a small example, who believes that a skilled doctor is genuinely happy to have half of his income taken away by law and given to the janitor of his hospital, so that the latter receives the roughly same pay? Well, the surveys say that the level of happiness in Norway are very high, so the doctor must be happy. Happiness measures aside, does that make sense? Is the doctor genuinely happy or has he been told by generations of intellectuals what he should feel happy about and what he should feel guilty about? This is a question that everyone who nominates Norway as a model for the US should answer logically.
[+] [-] GoogleMeElmo|15 years ago|reply
You should also know that even though the tax system in Norway works to even the footing of different posed people financially, it does not wipe out the class difference between a janitor and a doctor. Their net income will still differ by quite a bit (up to 400% at least).
The benefit here is that someone who is considered poor, and would perhaps be forced to live in the street, and only serve to increase the crime rate, will instead recieve help. And the doctor can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the police is out protecting. The hospital emergency staff is ready to recieve the next cardiac arrest patient, the road will be cleared from that heavy snow fall during the night, the list goes on.
In my view the philosophy of the Norwegian tax models is less worries == more happiness, and that is exactly what this model offers for everyone included.
On the other hand its very easy to paint a rosy picture of Norway in a case like this. Mostly becasue US is so easy to outcompete on many of the issues directly involved. Crime rates, mortality rates, helthcare and so on. Norway does of course, like any country, suffer from several political problems. Spending, immigration and government control is perhaps the most fleeting issues right now. But they diminish substantially compared to the issues the US has to face the next decade. And perhaps even worse is it, that the political environment in the US seems allmost hopeless. With the country polarized into two extremes. In Norway the debate is still very much alive around all of these issues. In the US you can quickly get yourself into a place you dont want to be by just shifting your perspective slightly.
Ok now i gotta stop. Let the bashing commence. :P
[+] [-] Norse|15 years ago|reply
There is more happiness in being well-off in a rich country, than being rich in a poor or troubled one.
Especially if you have a family.
People don't measure themselves against the superrich of other countries anyway. A doctor in Norway has a high-status job and among the best wages in the country. Changing from being in the top in a rich country to being somewhat further from the top in a more trobled one is not a winning proposition. Even if it does mean more number in the bank.
Also, it is undeniable that there are more freedom under the Norwegian system than the US one. Health care, vacation time, education, personal development....I cannot imagine what freedoms the US could measure up in.
[+] [-] jarek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roschdal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Norse|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brc|15 years ago|reply
Norway is a nice place and the culture and beliefs of the people mean that they have decided as a country to opt for a high social safety net and associated high taxes.
But trying to extract a hypothesis that somehow high taxes and social safety nets are somehow good for starting up a business is, well, stretching it somewhat.
Perhaps one of the reasons this guy found success is that so many of his countrymen can't be bothered because the extra effort isn't worth it. He clearly is motivated by more than money, so high taxation doesn't affect him much. So you could say Norways taxation system encourages people to build family style companies, and only suits entrepreneurs who aren't money-driven. That's an equally valid conclusion to draw from the article if you ask me.
[+] [-] Norse|15 years ago|reply
And it is not reasonable to assume that his countrymen can't be bothered when they are the most prolific in the world.
[+] [-] laut|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelchisari|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hmottestad|15 years ago|reply
And there are many degrees of socialism.
In Norway there is socialism (to some extent) and start-ups.
[+] [-] WalterBright|15 years ago|reply
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-amer...
[+] [-] sbt|15 years ago|reply
"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government services are among the highest in the world." >Of course, the country has some of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in Nepal.
"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones." > Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.
"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish" > What?
"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar bears." There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on arctic island owned by Norway.
"The food isn't great." > The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.
"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey" > Define happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates.
"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home." > Alligators, heat-waves, and death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home.
"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world." > Thanks to how Norway actually measures unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.
"There are no private schools in Norway" > Incorrect, there are many private kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in Norway.
"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead researcher for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway." > I included this statement because it's TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview an expert.
"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk, regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good schools." > Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its schools are mediocre at best.
So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry-pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y, it also may have a downside Z".
[+] [-] ths|15 years ago|reply
The number of startups in a given community doesn't causate a great entrepreneurship scene. By that metric Norway could just give every team that's interested 50k dollars from their oil, call them a startup and automatically have a more vibrant startup scene than Silicon Valley. Troll economics, anyone?
People also overestimate the degree to which the US is capitalistic. Government spending in the US is now around 40%, with the free-market days of the pre-WWII era long replaced by a heavy-handed state that has never shrunk meaningfully. Maybe we Scandinavians run our bloated government bureaucracies more efficiently in our comparatively small, historically homogenous societies, but they're certainly not the reason we're rich. We're rich because we've been relatively free and capitalistic for a long time, also historically enjoying relatively low political corruption and a strong rule of law. At least that's the picture as I see it, being an Icelander that has lived and worked in Denmark I feel I grok the way these relatively small communities of my kinsmen work on a gut level.
One more thing: New Hampshire is one of the richest states in the USA, has about the same population as Norway and has a higher GDP per capita. If we're going to compare the US to Norway (one of the richest European countries) while excluding other much poorer countries from the equation, we should also compare New Hampshire to Europe to put things in proper perspective.
[+] [-] forza|15 years ago|reply
I wouldn't really call 36th "one of the highest", this is a myth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
[+] [-] RK|15 years ago|reply
I think the author means that you're told that smell is "drying fish" (I assume for eating), but to an outsider it just smells like rotting fish. Sarcastic humor.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kunley|15 years ago|reply
As someone who lived half of a life in a country which was an experiment on socialism, I wish them luck. And I wish they regain their senses. Quickly.
[+] [-] relic17|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] svlla|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lawfulfalafel|15 years ago|reply
I do congratulate you on linking to the mobile site to bypass the url conflict, that is pretty smart.
[+] [-] michael_dorfman|15 years ago|reply