[marvin]

21% of working-age population on various forms of welfare, 33% working in the public sector and a whooping 33% working in the private sector. Taxation rates among the highest in the world.

There's plenty to criticize about the Norwegian economy.

The taxation of the oil wealth is definitely a great success story, but how that money is used from year to year is very much a mixed bag. We have per-capita public expenditures approximately twice those of Sweden. Average household debt at 114% of income, third place globally. We don't build housing, same as California.

Oil money contributions to the national budget were approximately $6500 per capita in 2022, and on top of this we have a total taxation percentage on the order of 40% of income on average, if you do the honest calculation and look at all payments to the governments.

In addition we have an energy production infrastructure that's nominally almost 100% publicly owned, but now sell electricity to citizens at EU prices (~300% markup) with the surplus going into public budgets - this is additional taxation we're not talking about.

It could be worse and there are many things going right, but selling Norway as an unquestionable economic success story doesn't completely reflect reality.