Norway is such an oddball country. They essentially live off of their oil money. Their people are some of the laziest and least productive in Europe. They call in sick an average of about 20 days per year. They get 4-weeks and a day of paid vacation guranteed by the government. When you throw in state holidays, you’re essentially looking at 2-months off per year. They work on average 600 less hours than your average American.
And yet they have this incredibly high GDP per capita as a result of their oil revenues (just as high as we have in the US). So they just redistribute that to the populace. In all honesty, I think socialism works okay in Norway, at least in the short term.
Sure, it promotes daliance. It’s gradually crippled their Christian heritage and sense of identity. And it’s definitely created an opening for Islamists.
That said, in the short term, pretty much everyone is living well and living easy. It’s not difficult to afford to travel. You’ve got plenty of time off to do it. Their populace remains fairly educated....
It’s not going to last forever, and a move to alternative fuels is going to send all of that spiralling. But for now, it works out pretty well.
Is this really something new?
My husband’s grandmother lived out the last 10-15 years of her life in a Norwegian residence for the elderly in the Canary Islands, courtesy of the government. I really can’t recall, but I think she passed away in the eighties.
I recall being told that the winters were just too hard in Norway for older folks.
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