You can share salary data with your peers if you wish to do so and you think its in your best interest. Norway is largely a socialist society and they accept being heavily taxed and publicly sharing salary data. Taxes are on par with Denmark, Sweeden and maybe Finland. English/US culture is different and more capitalist. It encourages individuals to do better for themselves, it encourages competition, just like in nature.
They have the highest millionaire rate per inhabitant mainly because it doesn't have many inhabitants and it's an oil rich country.
Where the vast vast majority of creatures are either predated or die of hunger.
Arguments that depends on replicating evolution, socially, are either naive or highly morally dubious. Eugenics would, of course, lead to more populations with more 'desirable' traits: healthier and more productive, on average. That doesn't stop it being repugnant. Economic eugenics in the service of higher GDP is no better.
Sometimes I feel that every place with even minimal welfare is bound to be defined a socialist country, eventually. By that logic, Trump could be a fascist, Renzi is a commie, and so on.
I think basic welfare and good free healthcare are basic human rights. But tax-wise, Norway is about as bad as it gets. And I am obviously aware those services need to be paid for, but a lot of it has to do with policy as well.
It's probably a decent tradeoff for the average Norwegian, but not for anyone who wishes to (eventually) live off of investment and/or (semi) passive income.
A lot of these taxes don't serve any purpose (and generate very little revenue) and merely exist to stop or limit certain behaviors. Why are luxury cars taxed a lot? They don't want people to drive a Porsche or an Aston Martin, because some people would feel bad they can't afford those cars. Why is alcohol taxed excessively? They don't want people to drink (too much). Why is there a wealth tax? They don't want people to focus on getting rich. Etc
One simple example is a wealth tax: hard to verify whether people are reporting their true net worth, hard to enforce (takes a lot of manpower to check everything), and it brings in very little. In France, the wealth tax barely covers the cost of enforcing it. That's a policy decision, i.e. we want wealthy people to pay X% of extra tax. But it's not a sane decision.
As a Norwegian that aspires to eventually live off investments and passive income, you do have some salient points. We could probably have a significantly cheaper public sector; hiring for the public sector during the last decade has been ridiculous. Counter-cyclical spending during times of economic crisis should not be performed by hiring people for permanent positions with some of the strongest labor protections in the world; you'll never get rid of the expense when the cycle turns back.
And don't get me started on the wealth tax; it's a good and probably necessary idea in the long-term, but here it's both (1) too high; at 1% p.a. it's in effect an extra 25% capital gains tax on top of the 29% which is taxed directly, and (2) assets that "everyone" own (real estate) are only taxed at 25% of their market value. And debt is deducted at its full value! Buy a million dollar home borrowing $250k, and you pay no wealth tax at all! So you are allowed to be a real estate millionaire (and receive tax-free income on rent from your primary residence), but not a stock fund millionaire.
To everyone's big surprise, real estate has appreciated much faster than other assets (20% in Oslo last year), mostly evening out the post-tax advantage over other assets.
The tax on investment income was recently reduced by three percentage points to make the system more similar to other parts of the EEC, but a multiplicative factor was introduced when calculating the "taxable value" for stocks and funds, in effect increasing the tax by two percentage points. I never quite understood this move.
I am proud of our universal healthcare system and our welfare system -- in effect it's a means-tested basic income system; no one starves or freezes -- but some tax policies feel really oppressive if you are trying to do something ambitious.
Very nice example, and you can clearly see how market distorting the wealth tax is. In a post below you wrote it triggers from $175k, but the value of a property is only counted at 25%.
Purchasing property is essentially a tax avoidance mechanism to avoid the wealth tax on cash, and in turn leads to a massive property bubble (probably because the wealth tax cap is relatively low, and it hits a lot of people / families).
Even if you don't really want to invest in property, it makes sense to do so, because otherwise you'd just be paying wealth tax. Add to that that you can probably lever it up easily (e.g. buy something with 20% down) and.. you get a recipe for disaster at some point.
I wouldn't drive a Porsche or Aston Martin in Norway during winter. I'd drive it in Monte Carlo.
Alcohol is probably taxed because during a six month winter with 16 hours of darkness just about anyone and their mothers would develop chronic alcoholism.
Of course a wealth tax brings very little because anyone wealthy enough would move their assets to other countries with lower wealth taxes. Tax the rich is just an excuse to tax everyone else.
This is literally false. Socialism entails worker ownership of the means of production. Norway is a social democracy, not a Socialist society. It's worth remembering that in Marx's time, Socialism and Communism were synonymous.
It is socialism to the extent that the means of production is in fact largely publicly owned- or rather than owned, the fruits thereof is publicly redistributed via taxation.
This definition would fit nearly all so call capitalist economies too, which shows wr have VERY FEW purely capitalistic as well as purely socialist economies, although thr latter do exist more frequently in history and a few crazy places.
It's actually the amount of state control vs. free market forces that defines if a country/society is more socialist or rather more capitalist. Look at France and the UK for instance.
The US is not such a good example because big companies and lobby groups are actually in control, just like the state is in China.
> It's actually the amount of state control vs. free market forces that defines if a country/society is more socialist or rather more capitalist. Look at France and the UK for instance.
Are you suggesting that the UK is or is not socialist?
Are taxes in general anti-capitalist? Is publishing salaries anti-capitalist? When I think of anti-capitalism, I think of government owned entities, government backed (directly, or via regulation) industries, and things like tariffs. I know Norway qualifies as socialist for other reasons, but i don't see high income taxes as a stand-alone reason. Is that a reasonable argument?
> It encourages individuals to do better for themselves, it encourages competition, just like in nature.
Nature is savage and cruel. I think there are better arguments to be had in favor of capitalism.
>It encourages individuals to do better for themselves, it encourages competition, just like in nature.
Oscar Wilde argued that Socialism is what would push individuals to do better for themselves individually.
Further, if you're interested in the "nature" argument, Russian anarchist philosopher Kropotkin has written about it in The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid, in which he dismisses these ad natura arguments.
Yes and so does in capitalism. Some forms of cooperation are having a distribution chain for your products; other forms are called price fixing. The difference is that in capitalism cooperation occurs naturaly while in socialist societies it's largely state regulated.
Is there any evidence for this? Some prominent Socialists would disagree with you, especially anarchist ones, such as Bakunin, Kropotkin and probably even Marx and Engels themselves.
They have the highest millionaire rate per inhabitant mainly because it doesn't have many inhabitants and it's an oil rich country.