1) See to it, that most of the people read at least one daily newspaper, giving the electorate a good knowledge of political and social issues, business and a global outlook.
2) Make the journalists compete to reveal crime and corruption in business and politics.
3) See to it, that the voters elect honest, hardworking politicians, taking wise decisions for local and central government.
4) Make the government sector transparent, so, though honest, nobody is tempted to be dishonest or behave corruptly.
5) Create good relations to all your neighbor countries, even Swedes and Russians.
6) Take good care of all your citizens.
7) See to it, that almost everybody has a job.
8) Continue like that for at least 100 years.

Apart from the fact that Norway only spends a fraction of its oil income on the present budget – as Saadjad correctly highlighted above, AND the actual article if we’re being picky – the country had already achieved a high standard of living together with social support structures before the discovery of its oil in 1969.

As a foreigner that has lived in Norway for close on two years, I have to say that the conception (in other OECD countries especially) of what constitutes “Scandinavian Socialism” is often so misguided as to be all but useless. I don’t agree with everything that I have experienced here, and would be cautious for suggesting how replicable their system is. However, I will say that their mixed-economy structure works for them, if nothing else, for the simple reason that everyone buys into it.

The Inc. article describes an example that was particularly striking to me as well… You can freely view the full salary and tax contributions of any and every Norwegian citizen (your neighbor, priest, date for next Friday night… even members of the Royal family) on public websites*. You can only imagine the cries of “privacy invasion!” if you tried to implement that kind of system in other parts of the world and yet it appears perfectly consistent with the Norwegian view of how a transparent and fair society should be run.

* E.g. http://skattelister.no/

Also 3,000 is the headline figure without all the accounting fiddling the Labour Gov was famous for.

Dollared, yet weirdly start-ups hire their first ten employees all the time in the US and in far east countries with no social safety net at all. Or are you stating that all US companies magically formed as if from Zeus head?

Reading this article was the worst waste of my time today.

Between the insurance premiums deducted from my paycheck and my companies contribution, my family of 4 spends $12,000 for a policy with a $5000 deductable… so even to a republican distrustful of all things goverment… that $3,000/person dosen’t look all that bad.

By far the hardest part of the whole healthcare debate is getting everyone to be honest with themselves about rationing. It already happens to some extent now. Medicare generally won’t pay for an organ transplant for anyone over 70… it’s just not a defensable expendature of the money or the organ.

You can argue that’s it’s unfair that Steve Jobs gets to be in the 4% of people that survive with Pancreatic Cancer for more than 5 years while your average Joe get’s told to spend the next 3 months with his family…

but hey… Jobs did change the world and lead 2 fortune 500 companies to tremendous success, paid tens of millions in taxes, and so he can afford the best of everything including healthcare. That might sicken some but it seems imminently fair to me… (and my uncle died of P/C)

[…an industrial mechanic with a high-school education who chafed under his bosses, set up his own shop, and is now running a $44 million company with 150 employees. That’s the kind of story which should be common in the US but is in fact rare.] BHO: what? you can’t be serious, this happens all the time in the US [But ask yourself: in the US, how much would such a person be paying in taxes? Dalmo paid $102,970 in PERSONAL taxes on his income and wealth last year, which is probably lower, not higher, than the CEO of a $44 million company would pay in taxes in the US]

Ok, how much did he PERSONALLY make? If I have to make up numbers to get answers to obvious questions it’s not a well written article unless concealment is part of the game – Felix aren’t incomes public record? Point being is that people pay themselves in the most tax efficient manner.

He most likely is paying himself a low income knowing that his corporation is worth millions not unlike Warren “lets raise taxes” Buffett bc Norway’s wealth tax has a laughable 1.1% max rate.

Norway is also a very expensive place to live. Oslo, the nation’s capital, has consistently placed in the top five most expensive cities. I paid over $10 on the streets of Oslo for a burger in 2005. http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/art icle/109909/
the-worlds-most-expensive-cities-2010

Most likely the results of a VAT. And as mentioned by previous posts, petro is a huge part of the economy… from wiki: “Norway is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its Gross domestic product”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway hmmm….

“You can’t just treat them like machines,” he says. “If you do, they’ll be gone.”

How is that any different than the US or any non-communist nation?

To those who mention “Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, Iraq, Iran” who profit from oil I think its pretty clear none of these nations (besides Brazil – who’s economy is booming) are well run. Ps Brazil receives only 12% GDP from oil ~ The Economist. A stable region and government are contributing factors to Norway’s oil driven success.

Also consider the size (expense) of the US military compared to whatever Norway has. I acknowledge this is a tangent, but someone someday will have to stop the next global terror (China, Russia, whoever) from whatever atrocities they choose to commit. Norway and all of Scandinavia (and even some socialist European countries) have opted out of that equation.

We are effectively debating the success of socialism here are we not? How many socialist societies are functioning well today or have survived for that matter?

Here’s the thing: entrepreneurs may be all hot to trot, but they need senior engineering, marketing and sales leadership to create successful businesses. Without a social safety net, entrepreneurs can’t hire employees 3-10. If you get past that hump, then you get VC funding, a health care plan, and you can hire senior people. But how do you get the VC funding if you don’t have the key leadership positions filled?

The COO joined Facebook in 2008 some 4 or 5 years after it started – which once upon a time would have been considered a startup, especially given it’s relatively low income in those days. I only picked her because of your claim no one would ever leave their safe jobs at Google or Cisco for these riskier jobs. Oh and what “global investment bank” invested 500m prior to her joining?

As for 500bn USD, the UK spends over 3,000USD per person on the NHS which would come to around double what you are claiming the US can do it for.

Going out on your own is high risk. A former boss of mine, who had the highest score in the country on the computer science GRE the year he took it, was one of the first 20 hires at a major tech company. He went out on his own, lost his money on a startup, got cancer (in his 30′s), had no insurance, went a million dollars in debt, then committed suicide. He could not face going bankrupt. In Norway he’d probably be a serial startup founder. Not dead. What a stupid system.