Norway Part 2 - Repost

As to be expected, when I got into an arugment with a leftist recently, the immediate knee-jerk reaction was that "Norway" rules.

You see, this is why this is an important post, because the left doesn't think. They don't research, they don't study, they just want free money and anything that maybe, sort of seems to support their cause, they will immediately herald as an example of "socialism" working.

So once again, I shall post this to remind all leftists that your darling children in Scandinavia, while impressive, are no rivals for the US. The only country that beats or rivals the US is Luxembourg and soon to be Ireland.

OK, closest we got was Doink looking up oil as a percent of Norway’s GDP for the latest year. Which was what I was trying to get at, but wanted a nice longitudinal chart which you’ll see below.

Going from practically nothing in 1971, oil now accounts for a full 24% of Norway’s GDP (although I speculate this high percentage has a lot to do with an increase in the price of oil recently and it’s traditionally more around 20%).

Regardless, what I did then was calculate Norway’s GDP per Capita going back to 1971 WITHOUT that evil capitalist abomination we all have learned to hate and which any good socialist would never associate themselves with or be proud of; oil.


And the results are what we’d largely expect. Norwegians only work about 75% as much as Americans, and thus when you take away their cash cow, they enjoy standards of living of roughly 75%.

This further confirmed something I’ve always suspected of Norway, and that’s if you took away the oil, they wouldn’t be materially different than any other Scandinavian country.



So aspiring and junior deputy economists, what’s the lesson to learn from all this?

That the next time you hear some leftist idiot start blathering on about how Norway has higher standards of living than the US and is proof positive that socialism works, you can once again, hit them upside the head with the truth and point out to them that, no in fact, Norway really doesn’t have higher standards of living and just happens to be lucky geologically…that and they should be ashamed for taking such joy in (GASP!) oil!