> Norway is a relatively small country with a largely homogeneous population of 4.6 million and the advantages of being a major oil exporter.
This probably has more to do with their successes as a country than anything else. Smaller populations are easier to govern (New York's population is around 20mil), and being an energy exporter ensures that there's enough wealth to go around to provide it's citizens with a large social safety net.
Agreed. And some people are already saying that. From the article itself:
“We have become complacent,” Mr. Mork added. “More and more vacation houses are being built. We have more holidays than most countries and extremely generous benefits and sick leave policies. Some day the dream will end.”
"The dream" will end only if the oil runs out before the oil fund is large enough to offset the tax gap.
As it is, most oil revenue is set aside, and there wouldn't be a massive budget deficit if the oil revenue went away tomorrow. Doesn't mean there wouldn't need to be some adjustment if the oil revenue dried up, since it provides a lot of employment and the cost of dealing with increased unemployment could be significant, but Norway is surprisingly independent of the oil revenue, and becoming increasingly independent of it as the oil fund swells.
The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.
The have a huge surplus and are saving 11% of their governmnets bugdet. At some point their savings could probably fund all government spending at which point running out of oil would not be the end of the world. Granted government spending is only 40% of GDP but 30 years from now they could have 40% unemployment and still have a stable functioning society.
I suspect that homogeneity and culture explain why they didn't blow all of their oil money in boom times like other oil producing nations. I wish Americans could see the same type of restraint in their politicians.
Homogeneity makes it easier to build a governing consensus; people can believe there's an optimal policy benefiting everyone, "because we're all so alike", rather than a zero-sum contest between disparate groups.
Norway has gotten quite a lot of immigrants the last couple of decades and homogeneous might not be a key word anymore.
A couple of friends of mine are Bangladeshi academics. They are the nicest, "squarest" and most hard working nerds I've ever met. I had lots of fun sending them a reference to the news last year -- about problems in Oslo with Bangladeshi street gangs... :-)
But sure, the problems with planning and controlling a society isn't proportional to the population, more like the population squared.
It should also be less problems with fewer variables.
Yeah. And Denmark and Sweden aren't particularly bad places to live. There is broad sentiment in Norway that we would be living in caves if it wasn't for our oil reserves, but this obviously isn't the case.
There are downsides to having a very homogeneous culture, of course. If you are different, you will have a hard time finding a broad network of friends. Norwegian culture is pretty tolerant in the most important ways, but a total population of 1/4 that of any major world city is noticeable. In terms of land area, our country is larger than you would think. This isn't just some weird enclave.
But it is probably impossible to enforce harmonically coexisting, internally homogeneous cultures. And I'm not even sure that would be something we'd want. My most important personal value is freedom to, within reason, do and say and think whatever I want. Meeting different cultures first-hand is often necessary in order to be able to do this, since there is a broad range of behaviors and mindsets that are excluded within any particular culture. We create our own intellectual walls without even thinking about it.
being an energy exporter ensures that there's enough wealth to go around to provide its citizens with a large social safety net
This is a powerful strategic argument for proactively promoting carbon neutral energy in advance of the market. This is especially true for energy delivered in the form of electricity, due to the nature of its delivery infrastructure. Someone stands to benefit from first mover advantage here.
Your example of New York is a particularly funny one since there is a pretty big divide culturally and economically between NYC and the rest of the state. There are a lot of people in the western part of the state who feel they contribute just as much wealth yet do not benefit from the "large social safety net" you speak of.
In other words, Norway's lessons are very applicable to other energy exporting nations. But probably not many lessons that can be implemented by energy importing nations.
This probably has more to do with their successes as a country than anything else. Smaller populations are easier to govern (New York's population is around 20mil), and being an energy exporter ensures that there's enough wealth to go around to provide it's citizens with a large social safety net.