Why Countries Like Norway

[BlueRaiderFan]

Have such strong economies with high salaries and national healthcare. Skip to around the 7:30 second mark and listen for a minute or two... They help their system by keeping most production local, or at least the more lucrative things. You see, the right would like you to think that if we open up our economy, like we basically have now, we will prosper via cheaper goods. That's true to an extent, however, for much of our economy, keeping production local keeps salaries high, relative to other countries and that makes things less expensive when they are imported. Keep in mind, I'm not saying we should close our borders to all products. I am saying that there is a reason why the people of Norway are generally prosperous. Video:

 

[BlueRaiderFan]

And before any of you start, yes they have money from oil reserves. It amounts to about $200k per person in total. So, no, that's not the key to their wealth and prosperity.

 

[Blueraider_Mike]

Norway is an amazing country...of 5 million people with enormous wealth. They have $1 Trillion in there reserve from oil invested in the long term, I think that is more than $200 per person (think its closer to $200K per person). This would be the equivelant to the US having a fund of over $60 Trillion. Meanwhile this fund transferred $27 Billion to the govt last year. To put this in perspective, this would like a fund in the US transferring $1.7 trillion into our budget - gee, I wonder what we could do with that much money after we easily balanced our budget.

While I think Norway and the US are apples and oranges, I think what we can do is copy some of there ideas, like invest into our natural resources...imagine the left touting investing in Big oil (too funny). We do have the largest oil reserves in the world.

Yeah, Norway with no oil? Probably the GDP of Greece. Not poor, but not uber rich.

So yeah, I think Oil is the reason why they are wealthy.

 

[BlueRaiderFan]

Yep, left off the k after the 200. It's not controlled and spent by the citizens themselves and I agree, there's plenty we could do similar to then, for one thing hold off on so much globalization. What we gain in reduced cost of goods, we lose as much or more in salary. It helps the wealthy far more than it helps the average citizen. Not a fan.