Life in Nanny Norway

Bruce Bawer writes in Front Page Magazine that Norway is always at top of lists for standard of living, healthcare and high life expectancy. Thirteen years straight for Business Insider. He maintains life expectancy is a matter of fact while the rest is debatable. Healthcare is fine unless you need an operation that government decides is too expensive or if there is a waiting list, and incomes are high, yes, but so are taxes.

Bawer says Norway is the exemplar of statism. That when he first moved there government intrusion into every aspect of life was a very real and palpable feeling. The feeling of being less an individual and more a part of a collective.

Even with a supposedly non-socialist government led by conservative party. The non-socalist label is deceptive because conservatives never do anything to reverse Norwegian statism.

He says that statism is the same thing as living in someone else's house and bidden to live by their house rules. The way he puts it, Nanny Norway doesn't think that it's good for you to drink so she doesn't allow anyone other than herself to sell liquor and she makes buying it as costly and problematic as possible. In his town of 12,000  there is only one state-owned liquor store and with limited hours and 300% tax and beer is more than twice as expensive as anywhere else on earth.

Another odd example, Nanny Norway thinks it's best for you to eat at home so going out to dinner is also pricy. Nobody goes out to lunch. Everybody packs their own lunch, usually a sandwich wrapped in wax paper that all Norwegians take to work no matter their socioeconomic level. Bruce Bawer wrote an article about this for NYT that was reran in Norway's largest daily, VG, and he received hundreds of emails and texts savaging him for insulting their beloved national tradition, including death threats.

He mentions other traditions. "Dugnad" the concept of renting a space in a building owned by somebody else that makes upkeep the responsibility of the renters not the owners. The renters all get together to share duties such as raking leaves and shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, and washing the stairs. The renter actually work for the guy he pays rent to.

See? Their depravations regarded as cherished traditions.

Bruce Bower continues with other examples. High gasoline tax even though Norway is a leading oil producer. Because the powers that be regard gasoline use undesirable. They pay the hightest gas prices on the planet.

They have laws about weird things you wouldn't imagine. Bruce Bower inquired about having his cat declawed and the veterinarian looked at him disgustedly. It's illegal. Yet the same vet will put your cat down without blinking an eye and with no questions. And it's okay to keep the ashes of your cremated pet but not the ashes of a human loved one. They must be buried in a cemetery. But if there are no relatives around in twenty-five years to renew the fee then the remains will be dug up and discarded.

Running a small business is even harder in Norway than it is in the United States. It's regarded as a strike for independence which makes statists very uncomfortable so they make it very difficult by piling on rules and paperwork and taxes.

Bruce Bower writes more about life in Norway. He backpedals a bit by pointing out the good things about them and their culture.

Overwhelmingly, Norwegians are civilized, decent, honest, patriotic, down-to-earth, responsible-minded, and family-oriented. The landscape is spectacular, the air salubrious, the tap water excellent, and the products of Norwegian farms reliably tasty and wholesome. The country has a proud armed forces, manufactures cutting-edge defense systems, and pays more per capita on military expenses than any other NATO member.

Well, that makes up for everything.

Comments to this post over there on Front Page Magazine are good too.  Everyone has insights on life in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany.

*  I was so stoked to visit Walmart. The assortment in Norwegian stores is bland, small and very expensive. They also close at 11pm the latest, and there’s an own term for Norwegians travelling to Sweden to buy food because it’s so expensive in Norway. We travelled to one of those giant stores and I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. So much food! 1 gallon of chocolate milk for $3? I pay $3 for 5 deciliters at home. $1.50 for cake mix? I pay $7. The amount of ready-made cookie dough, cinnamon rolls and fast food was also almost unsettling. I had… fun, as you can imagine. 

www quora com/What-is-your-biggest-%E2%80%9Conly-in-the-USA%E2%80%9D-moment/answer/Mia-Kristine-Martinussen 

*  Norwegians are not free and most of them don't even know it. Their evil nanny of a government uses taxation, regulation, and indoctrination to determine how they live every aspect of their lives.

*  "A few especially favored writers even receive a taxpayer-funded annual income, comparable to a respectable professional salary."

It is the same in the States; we just call them "university professors."

*  Thanks, I spent some time in Scandinavia as a child, interesting to hear how things are developing. Compared to USA, it was statist even back then, to a surprising degree, which Americans probably can't imagine through words, have to experience it first hand. I remember when some relatives visited USA, they had trouble grasping the fact that the price of Coca-Cola varied from store to store, that you might be able to get a better price by going to a different store.

About quality of life, I wouldn't want to live there because of the cold.

Also good point about the thinness of population density, we took long trips by ship to visit various small coastal towns, with their huge and magnificent fjords, I don't think Americans can imagine how thinly the country was populated.

*  Are the Norwegians enjoying their Muslim brothers and sisters that have been moving in?

    **  They do. They don't really seem to like them but as long as the Arabs hate Jews and say it... The hatred for Jews in Norway is worse than back in 1933 in NS Germany. But the most interesting thing is - the country is practically "judenrein."

      ***  Really? I wasn't aware of how bad the Norwegian people disliked Jews.

Well, maybe they enjoy having their women raped and paying higher taxes for welfare to support the Muslims.

*  Germany is very close to this without the views, tasty food and Norwegian honesty.

If you want to start a business in Germany, get ready to be audit within the first 6-8 months with the taxmen questioning each and every decision you made to inflate your tax bill (and there is no legal recourse because the single defining criterion for the arbitrary assessment is that it "has to be reasonable") and be treated like a convict guilty of steeling from the morally superior Leviathan welfare state.

The German health care used to be top notch, but the socialist "reforms" gradually applied to the system during the recent two decades coupled with a de facto total lack of doctors' accountability made it function a lot like a Russian roulette - you never know when your number is up. And if you are an employee, which is the case for the vast majority of Germans, you will only get the treatment that is not "too expensive" while paying triple the premium of a privately insured octogenarian. The waiting lists are months long and the doctors seem to be discouraged from offering any alternative treatment options otherwise available to privately insured individuals. The patient is expected to say that he or she is willing to pay extra to see the doctor much sooner.

But the worst thing is that this system has created millions of indifferent, emotionally detached underachievers.

And more.