231–240 of 291 posts
Norway is the only oil economy that has managed to avoid the resource curse.
The U.S. might be another, no?
Norway is exporting $50+B/year worth of oil industry products with a population of 5 million people and this has been going on for a long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The U.S. might be another, no?
US was until recently a net importer of oil, so it's sort of a lite oil economy. Norway is exporting $50+B/year worth of oil industry products with a population of 5 million people and this has been going on for a long time.
It was a net exporter from the 1860s through 1950.
It had surplus extraction capacity until 1972.
And yet, no resource curse?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure many degree programs in the US are inflated, but it wasn't my experience in the US where engineering professors brag about how many students they failed that semester. "You only had 1/3rd your class drop? You must be getting soft." I had AP Calculus in High School (took school seriously) and had to give 110% to pass engineering school. I never partied and basically lived in study hall. Not everyone has to pu…
Grades really seemed arbitrary to me. People who got high grades didn’t mean they’d be more successful in life, it just they got good at gaming the final exams. Indian education has this huge obsession with grades, it’s nuts. Students commit suicides over grades, I believe it’s same with china. I’m glad my university had more focus on labs and hands on work. I pretty much aced all my labs and did okay on paper exams.…
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> That's true, but it feels like the HS curriculum has gotten easier, too, and that might be part of the reason that a high school diploma isn't valued by employers. Since the early 1990s, what was then a fairly advanced college prep track for math seems to have become the baseline standard, and graduation requirements have increased in other ways. Compared to comparably-named classes, grading or presentation may hav…
I'd have to disagree. My niece attends one of the top-rated high schools in the country. I recently perused her summer reading list and was astonished that the vast majority of them were books for children. Reading comprehension and writing proficiency are much, much lower than they were just a few decades ago, across all levels of schooling.
Norway is a very special case. A small country with lots of oil, fish, and a small population (just 5.2 million). They would have to go really wrong to be poor.
Colorado has a population of about 5.6mil and a GDP of ~300bil. Norway is 370bil. Although better than most other U.S. states, I don't have access to the services that Norwegians do. But my taxes are also very low here. We could have the same kind of services as Norway if we want to pay for it, but taxes would have to go up. Until Americans stop thinking of the word "tax" as evil, we'll always value it wrong.
CO State taxes are (roughly) 5% which puts it right in the middle of US states (between 0% in places like Florida and 10-ish percent at the (non CA/NY) high end).
Then factor in (roughly) 35% federal + local taxes ... let's call it 40%, give or take. Let's just forget property taxes for the sake of this discussion.
Why should I think of 40% as a "low" taxation rate ?
Why shouldn't I expect a high level of government services in return for 40% taxation ?
(FWIW, I live in CA so you can add 5-8 more percentage points for my own tax burden ... same questions apply ...)
Norway FTW Free public parking to Electric vehicles Govt distributes 1000 copies of every book published to libraries Police officers are trained in Higher Education for 3 years Tuition free education to everybody in the World
Wait what? If this is true, why is not everyone studying in Norway?
> At this point in time, the University of Oslo only offers bachelor studies where Norwegian language proficiency is a prerequisite to be qualified for admission. Applicants who can document that they are already proficient in the Norwegian language, may apply for bachelor programmes at the University of Oslo via NUCAS (Samordna opptak).
> — https://www.uio.no/english/studies/admission/bachelor-progra...
Ah! That's why. You need to know Norwegian before applying (at least at UiO).
I wish I knew about these international study programs when I was younger.
As the article points out, the economic miracle of Norway is fueled by oil and gas, just like Spain economic miracle was fueled by cheap industrial labour and construction decades ago. Unlike Spain, they have been wise enough to use their money to diversify their economy, aware that this won't last forever. Sadly there are few lessons we can learn and apply here to other countries, as not everyone has a tiny populati…
"the economic miracle of Norway is fueled by oil and gas" It can't be that simple. Plenty of other countries have lots of oil and gas (Russia, Venezuela, the US) and they aren't necessarily having economic miracles.
Affordable education is probably a big part of how they do this. In northern Europe it is a clear political decision to invest in education. You'll politicians argue that we can't afford not to educate our teenagers, as it would make the welfare state unsustainable. Also, huge credit to Norway for how it handled it's olie money :)
Either the community/state pays for it, or the student.
Someone has to.
In the case of Norway, it's you and I, i.e. Oil.
Do you know Kuwaitis go to school for free as well eh?
Norway's sovereign wealth fund is about 8% the size of the US economy, and also the size of the entire Canadian economy.
So it's hard to make comparisons with Norway on anything.
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Do you think AI will think by itself, invent new things, and write software in the next 50 years? I don't.
Writing software seems less intimidating than the millions of artists brute forcing for thousands of years the problem space of what humanity considers Art. I'm just slightly worried that STEM's problems are too close to their base of physics and math to be that hard for a computer compared to the layers of abstraction that go into the rest of our works.
Affordable education is probably a big part of how they do this. In northern Europe it is a clear political decision to invest in education. You'll politicians argue that we can't afford not to educate our teenagers, as it would make the welfare state unsustainable. Also, huge credit to Norway for how it handled it's olie money :)
In my not so humble opinion, it all comes down to a short- vs. farsighted culture and the resulting fundamental attitude towards kids. In the US, kids are seen at worst a nuisance and at best a personal luxury. In most of the northern/western EU, kids are seen as the future workers, decision makers and keepers of the whole economy 30 years into the future. All of the symptoms you are seeing, be it maternal / paternal…
To cherry pick literally the most successful of such systems is not representative. (Though you could still be essentially correct)
Also, Americans, on average, a much richer in the end.
The American problem could have to do with 'longer lifespan' meaning 'longer in school' meaning 'longer in debt with higher salaries afterwards' , i.e. the 'higher highs' and 'lower lows' exposing a social problem that was not apparent before.
I agree it's an issue though.