71–76 of 76 posts
Stupid use of funds for the most part, it's not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It's not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there's no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.
Their economy is going fantastically. It's clearly working out for them.
There's plenty to criticize about the Norwegian economy.
The taxation of the oil wealth is definitely a great success story, but how that money is used from year to year is very much a mixed bag. We have per-capita public expenditures approximately twice those of Sweden. Average household debt at 114% of income, third place globally. We don't build housing, same as California.
Oil money contributions to the national budget were approximately $6500 per capita in 2022, and on top of this we have a total taxation percentage on the order of 40% of income on average, if you do the honest calculation and look at all payments to the governments.
In addition we have an energy production infrastructure that's nominally almost 100% publicly owned, but now sell electricity to citizens at EU prices (~300% markup) with the surplus going into public budgets - this is additional taxation we're not talking about.
It could be worse and there are many things going right, but selling Norway as an unquestionable economic success story doesn't completely reflect reality.
Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting. My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being…
Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting. My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being…
Criticizing us for climate profiteering, or even war profiteering, as some European voices have done, is extremely intellectually dishonest coming from Sweden, which followed suit to Germany and shut down more than 1 GWh of nuclear energy generation capacity during an ongoing climate gas emission crisis.
Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting. My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being…
Norway's gas exports saved the EU from kneeling to Russia during 2021 and 2022. Our exports prevented Russia's invasion of Ukraine from becoming an unmitigated disaster to European autonomy. Now sitting at approximately 30% of total EU natural gas consumption. Criticizing us for climate profiteering, or even war profiteering, as some European voices have done, is extremely intellectually dishonest coming from Sweden,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Norway's gas exports saved the EU from kneeling to Russia during 2021 and 2022. Our exports prevented Russia's invasion of Ukraine from becoming an unmitigated disaster to European autonomy. Now sitting at approximately 30% of total EU natural gas consumption. Criticizing us for climate profiteering, or even war profiteering, as some European voices have done, is extremely intellectually dishonest coming from Sweden,…
I'm primarily criticizing Norway for hypocrisy. I don't think you missed that.