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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
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Quote:
Originally Posted by djmilf
North Sea oil.
From the linked article - "Norway is a major oil producer, and it has plowed its energy earnings into the fund in order to fund pensions and other government expenses."
Back when oil was first discovered offshore, the government of Norway acted on the belief that the mineral wealth of the nation should benefit its citizens.
It wouldn't have happened without the oil.
But it also wouldn't have happened without the social democratic culture of Norway.
It wouldn't have happened if Norway wasted lots of $$$ trying to police the world and build other countries.
The US = a big heterogeneous nation - Has two parties in the parliament who both represent the top 1%
Norway = a small mostly homogeneous nation - Has nine parties in the parliament which I could guess represent at least 50% of the populace
Any questions?
Quote:
Originally Posted by InformedConsent
You have to include ALL the taxes, not just income tax. It is indeed 70% or higher.
They ARE all the taxes for a salary taker except your feared VAT. Ok if you own property it's like $100-200 extra a year, and the dividend tax is flat something rate. Around 25-32%.
If the oil is such a big deal, why don't take Finland and Sweden with no oil?
Do they also have a Trillion dollar trust fund.......thought not.
Finland and Sweden are mostly lilly white countries that our leftists like because they are more socialists than the US but so is Venezuela which has much more similar racial demographics than the US but they don't offer them up as the ideal even though they are a better model of what socialism in the US would look like.
Yes I think Finland and Sweden are marvelous countries that I would have zero desire to live in or to visit.
From the linked article - "Norway is a major oil producer, and it has plowed its energy earnings into the fund in order to fund pensions and other government expenses."
Back when oil was first discovered offshore, the government of Norway acted on the belief that the mineral wealth of the nation should benefit its citizens.
It wouldn't have happened without the oil.
But it also wouldn't have happened without the social democratic culture of Norway.
This.
I cannot believe it took 6 posts to state the bloody obvious.
It wouldn't have happened if Norway wasted lots of $$$ trying to police the world and build other countries.
Bad argument. The US military is an enormous overkill against everything else but the Death Star. Instead of giving endless money to the military-industrial complex you could pay for free college for a whole cohort of Americans. Even if the defence budget was $1 for the next 10 years, you could still blast anyone on earth into the stone age. Russia would blast you too, but that's a different story.
I rather have the US as the world police than Russia or China, no argument there, but the military-industrial complex has the congress in a leach (among other corporations). You pay trillions upon trillions on defence you don't need.
Oh, and Norway contributed in the development of the F-35 and the purchase of these aircraft probably covers all the money Norway has defaulted on the 2% of GDP in defence for the past decade.
It wouldn't have happened if Norway wasted lots of $$$ trying to police the world and build other countries.
We do agree on that.
I'm working in the Middle East and one of my young engineers from Netherlands is going back in January to the land of 52% taxes. Here's the rundown for him compared to a US engineer:
- Engineer salaries in US are 50% higher than Netherlands (same company and grade)
- Taxes are 50% of income in Netherlands and about 20% in US
- take home pay after taxes in US is more than double
- He bought a Mazda CX-9 in ME for $42K...if he buys that in Netherlands, he pays a carbon tax of $45K (US zero), road use tax I think several thou per year, plus gas costs twice as much in the USA.
So the net result is he is dying to be sent to work at one of our US engineering offices and would do almost anything to get that.
By the way, I bought a Charger Hellcat a few days ago with 707 HP....I bet the carbon tax and VAT tax on that thing would be $200K+ in Netherlands.
Norway's pension fund now owns and average of 1.3% of all companies in the world. Norway's pension system is now so ludicrously wealthy that it'd equate to over $190,000 per person in the country. And here I thought countries with more socialized forms of health care, education, and taxation systems were doomed to utter failure?
Norway's goverment doesn't rob or steal from the pension's and pay what is owed ,unlike the US goverment.
Because it's a small homogeneous Nordic country where everyone looks, thinks and acts alike and trusts each other. Less people live in Norway than live in South Carolina. Norway has 5 million people, we have 350 million people.
Less people live in Norway that live in my county (Harris County, TX).
From the linked article - "Norway is a major oil producer, and it has plowed its energy earnings into the fund in order to fund pensions and other government expenses."
Back when oil was first discovered offshore, the government of Norway acted on the belief that the mineral wealth of the nation should benefit its citizens.
It wouldn't have happened without the oil.
But it also wouldn't have happened without the social democratic culture of Norway.
It wouldn't have happened without the culture of Norway, period. Look at all the 2nd and 3rd world countries with nationalized oil companies, and how they horde the money and don't share it with their citizens. Mexico is one. Why make their people's lives better when it's so much easier to encourage them to invade the United States? They get even more money that way because of remittances.
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