Sovereign Subsidies Fuel Norwegian Tesla Registrations

Not really. We just got lucky and found oil.

Quick Google search: "And yes, Norway is one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world with a total tax burden of roughly 45% of GDP– almost 4x Hong Kong and nearly twice the US. VAT here is a whopping 25%. Personal income tax rates border 55%." No thanks.

@Zykotec Norway found oil. That doesn't explain how well governed the rest of Scandinavia is, or even Norway's success before the North Sea oil was exploited.

@Master Baiter Better educated, healthier babies, happier and longer lived. You don't want any part of that?

I've met a few Scandinavians who would beg to differ. Life is good if you're part of the state-managed economy, either administering it or receiving handouts from it (like tax-free cars). But if you want to chart your own course, you can expect to be squished quite promptly. This dual-track society breeds corruption, as some rebels feel obliged to profess loyalty to the oppressive social democratic party line while covertly operating outside it. Scandinavia, like Japan, enjoys presenting a homogenous face to the outside world. We in the chaotic, heterogenous English-speaking world devour their myths, thinking that if we could just abandon our culture we could be happy, prosperous and oh-so-organized just like the Vikings and Samurai warriors.

@VoGo I'm better educated than most Norwegians. Healthier too, despite their almost pathological obsession with oneupping one another at anything from the bicycle commute to work to a cross country ski trip. Spending your whole life at gunpoint being told government is somehow a useful institution, while being forcefed cod liver oil and barred from eating anything deemed less healthy, makes for a very impressive showing in the "Progressive dronelings of the year" contest. As far as a life goes, it still kind of sucks, though.

@stuki Enterprising. I've never seen anyone hate on Norway before.

@stuki When was the last time you visited a Scandinavian country? Care to share your educational credentials, too?

More like: The 1)smaller and 2)more homogenous the country, the less wrong government will generally do. 1)If the Norwegian oppressors got too frisky, you can just bolt for Sweden. Ditto for Denmark and Finland. 2)As long as all Norwegians were cloned from the same cell, and were raised the same, there will be a fairly high degree of agreement about what needs to be done. Even absent government, the Norwegian concept of "Dugnad", or people just getting together and doing something voluntarily, popularized around the world by the Norwegian founded Brunstad Christian Church; just doesn't work to well unless there is a very large degree of uniformity of goals and aspirations. Other tiny Euro nations tend to look good in "quality of government" statistics as well. Because their small size puts external constraints on how bad government can get. And those constraints seem to, in practice, have worked better at constraining, than any bunch of documents written by Dead White Guys. Anyway, the solution is simple. Thousand Nations.

@VoGo "Better educated, healthier babies, happier and longer lived. You don’t want any part of that?" I have a master's degree, five healthy kids and people in my demo live to over 80. I don't judge America by how some guy living in a Kenmore box under an overpass lives. Of course, he'd be better off in Norway. Not me.

@stuki Most people wait till later in the day to get hammered. But then, who knows what time zone you're in?