{"id":643095,"date":"2026-07-29T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=643095"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:30:00","slug":"free-stuff-in-norway-still-costs-half-of-average-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=643095","title":{"rendered":"‘Free Stuff’ In Norway Still Costs Half Of Average Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Free Stuff’ In Norway Still Costs Half Of Average Pay<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Joakim Book via TheDailyEconomy.org,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Every few years, Americans rediscover Scandinavia.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Someone visits Norway or Denmark, returns dazzled and envious of parental leave and universal childcare, and asks why America refuses to copy what obviously works. On the day dedicated to celebrating America,\u00a0Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote for\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that America is so great that, in fact, it should be more like Norway. If American companies can pay high wages and generous benefits to workers there, Kristof observed, they could do so in New York, too.<\/p>\n

If only America were willing to embrace a little more social democracy and bigger government, this popular and recurring story goes, perhaps it could enjoy the same prosperity and flourishing that Norway does \u2014 and have its population also routinely rank among the\u00a0happiest<\/a>\u00a0on the planet.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was born and raised in one Nordic country, have worked in another, and for the last six years have lived in a third, so I\u2019m fairly familiar with our way of life. I\u2019ve also spent much time in America, stunned and enamored of the way things are in the vast, diverse, and unruly union of states. Europeans are simultaneously\u00a0fascinated and bewildered<\/a>\u00a0by America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plenty of things are amazing about these United States, and quite a few things awful about the Nordics; I suspect American intellectuals, dreaming about Norway without understanding its nature and tradeoffs, overlook both.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou Want Security, Health Care and the American Dream? Look to Scandinavia\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Norwegian workers certainly have\u00a0higher wages<\/a>\u00a0than those in many European countries, including those of its fellow Scandinavians. Hotel cleaners, retail clerks, and construction workers often earn salaries that surprise visiting Americans. Thanks to\u00a0Baumol\u2019s cost disease<\/a>, decades of\u00a0well-managed<\/a>\u00a0petroleum wealth have pushed up industrial and service wages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first thing an American professional moving to Norway would notice isn\u2019t the generous\u00a0parental leave<\/a>, but the great loss of\u00a0disposable income<\/a>\u00a0and material well-being. <\/strong>Norwegians households average 30 percent less disposable income than those the US, and the cost of everyday items is\u00a0much higher<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Scandinavian bargain might look like free services, but it as tradeoff: more public goods, fewer private goods.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When American politicians or intellectuals promise Nordic welfare states, most people imagine this happening automatically or by\u00a0taxing the rich<\/a>, and everybody benefits. That\u2019s not the case. The real\u00a0Nordic model<\/a>\u00a0taxes earners more (45 percent in Denmark, 40 in Norway, 41 in Sweden, compared to 25 percent in the United States) and charging\u00a0flat value added tax<\/a>\u00a0(VAT). Broad welfare states require broad tax bases; Nordic welfare states are financed not by billionaires but by ordinary workers. The \u201cfree\u201d benefits are bought with invasive and regressive\u00a0consumption taxes<\/a>\u00a0(up to 25 percent),\u00a0payroll taxes<\/a>, and\u00a0income taxes that reach well<\/a>\u00a0that begin after just $10,000 (the first $16,000 is tax free in the US).\u00a0<\/p>\n

An American professional, pocketing the\u00a0median<\/em>\u00a0earnings<\/a>\u00a0of about\u00a0$65,000<\/a>, would pay over\u00a0$17,000 in Norwegian income taxes<\/a>\u00a0(compared to about\u00a0$5,000 per the IRS<\/a>\u00a0calculator, <\/strong>naturally subject to state taxes and various deductions), with the employer forced to chip in\u00a0another<\/em>\u00a0$9,200 for the privilege of merely hiring her. From what\u2019s left over, she faces a high cost of living and sales taxes between 11 percent and 25 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Were she in Sweden, a much poorer country with wages well below Norway\u2019s, our middle-of-the-road American professional would land herself in the\u00a0top 20 percent<\/a>\u00a0of earners \u2014 though not yet triggering the top\u00a053 percent (or 64 percent) marginal tax rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the Tax Foundation, Cristina Enach\u00a0summarized<\/a>, \u201cIn 2024, Denmark\u2019s tax-to-GDP ratio was 45.2 percent, Norway\u2019s was 40.2 percent, and Sweden\u2019s was 41.4 percent. This compares to a ratio of 25.6 percent in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of that difference is accounted for by healthcare spending (private, not government) and pension contributions (401(k)<\/a>\u00a0or other retirement accounts) and other personalized options. The Nordics give you\u00a0one\u00a0<\/em>option: the state.<\/p>\n

In return, yes, our hypothetical expat would receive subsidized childcare, education, paid time off, and health care. Those services would be of\u00a0 dubious quality, with\u00a0waiting times<\/a>\u00a0stretching into months even for life-threatening conditions. For some, that\u2019s a trade worth making, but it\u2019s\u00a0not obviously superior<\/a>, as economist Noah Smith\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0in his comparison a few months ago.<\/p>\n

Inequality is indeed lower in Norway, where a person in the top 10 percent earns just\u00a0three times<\/a>\u00a0as much as a person in the bottom 10 percent. That means there\u2019s less reason to strive, less room to grow.<\/strong> Looking to the future, investments in\u00a0growth<\/a>,\u00a0employment<\/a>, and\u00a0AI-fueled opportunities<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0far\u00a0<\/em>more attractive stateside than in stagnating Scandinavia.\u00a0Suppressing growth at the top has suppressed everyone\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian Story Isn\u2019t the Nordic Story<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The gap between the average person\u2019s wellbeing in America and that of almost all European countries has widened dramatically over the past three decades.<\/strong> In income per capita, the United States has\u00a0steadily pulled away<\/a>\u00a0from Europe over the last thirty years. The United States\u2019 average income now exceeds every EU member except Luxembourg and Ireland. Citizens of\u00a0fourteen EU nations<\/a>\u00a0earn less on average than residents of even the poorest state: Mississippi, and the EU as a whole ranks between Oklahoma and Maine.<\/p>\n

Joseph Sternberg\u2019s\u00a0opinion piece<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0earlier this year is illustrative: both Americans\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Europeans are shocked when they learn how much materially better off America is. \u201cPolitically, bliss is ignorance,\u201d concluded Sternberg. \u201cEuropean welfare states, by creating relatively comfortable lives for voters, conceal the full extent of Europe\u2019s prosperity gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norway is an affluent country by European standards, but only average compared to America as a whole.<\/strong>\u00a0Rough figures<\/a>\u00a0indicate that Americans, on average, enjoy material economic abundance on par with\u00a0Iceland and Norway<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>but are 20 percent to 60 percent better off than the other Nordics. (The difference between the economic outliers and the other Nordics is the difference between\u00a0New York State and Michigan<\/a>.) While there are nuances in life, politics, and economics between the five Nordic countries, it\u2019s not like the tax rates, labor economics, public schooling, the overall welfare state, or the generosity of parental leave are\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0different.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no accident that Kristof reported from\u00a0Norway<\/em>; had he run this comparison with Sweden or Finland, the economic outcome would have been\u00a0so unacceptably low<\/a>\u00a0that few Americans would be persuaded by the promise. People in the Norwegian and Icelandic success stories are significantly richer than the other Nordics. Even adjusting for purchasing-power-parity numbers via the University of Groningen-Penn World Table data for 2023, Americans are still a comfortable 15-20 percent richer than most Scandinavians.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Impossible Anyway, So Why Are We Dreaming?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The most immediate sticking point to inflated dreams about the Nordics is that\u00a0nobody has figured out a way to effectively translate and recreate social and economic institutions<\/em>\u00a0elsewhere<\/strong>. To say nothing about a population\u2019s values, behaviors, and traditions.<\/p>\n

Institutions emerge from particular and path-dependent histories. They\u2019re not IKEA furniture to merely ship across an ocean and assemble at home. Academic or political observers often make the mistake of thinking you can just isolate a few desirable behaviors or economic institutions, retrofit them onto America, and effortlessly create better lives here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus, America has long tolerated \u2014 indeed celebrated \u2014 a remarkable degree of eccentricity and ambition<\/strong>. Americans start improbable companies in\u00a0garages<\/a>, and they love their \u201cweirdos<\/a>.\u201d When they do things, they (over)do them\u00a0properly<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 SpaceX. College football. Time Square. Las Vegas. Whatever you\u2019re interested in or passionate about, some all-American oddball has built a community for that. It\u2019s a nation of\u00a0inventors<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0obsessive<\/a>\u00a0animal lovers<\/a>. They build\u00a0Burning Man<\/a>\u00a0in the desert and whole\u00a0cities at sea<\/a>. Their wide-open spaces connect a web of places-as peoples-as-philosophies: Hollywood, elite universities, Silicon Valley and Broadway, Nashville and Detroit, Amish meeting houses and evangelical megachurches,\u00a0Hindu temples<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Highland games<\/a>\u00a0from coast to coast. Our great hybrid culture thrives on liberty, not just lower taxes. Our cultural inheritance is the result of having astonishingly many different attempts thrown at the American wall to see what sticks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Nordics don\u2019t have that. With the recent exception of fintech and startup wonders (riding on an early, high-tech boom from the \u201890s), trying new, eccentric things in those cold lands isn\u2019t exactly welcome. The Scandinavian idea of\u00a0Jantelagen<\/em><\/a>, the expectation that nobody should think themselves special, results in a lack of opportunities and a disregard for novelty that most Americans see as both rude and discouraging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The political equilibrium keeping Scandinavia afloat was, until recently, a mostly\u00a0homogenous population<\/a>\u00a0on sparsely populated lands eerily willing to subjugate individual preferences and quirks to common, collective rules. <\/strong>America stands out in the exact opposite way: letting 15 times as many people pursue radically different lifestyles and individual ambitions with cheerful respect, but little regard for whether the neighbors approve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if it were possible to transplant Norwegian economic and political institutions onto America, how can we be confident we won\u2019t have a Swedish-level\u00a0economic debacle<\/a>\u00a0instead of the wealthy, comfortable Norway a social reformer might dream of?<\/p>\n

We can admire and learn from\u00a0Scandinavian countries<\/a>\u00a0using the \u201cNordic Model,\u201d which have achieved robust\u00a0social programs<\/a>\u00a0without sacrificing too much in the way of economic prosperity. That balance is fragile, and might not work forever:\u00a0immigration<\/a>\u00a0troubles<\/a>,\u00a0stagnating<\/a>\u00a0growth<\/a>, and an overbearing regulatory state are exposing the cracks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scandinavia has built wildly successful societies for a few million very similar-minded people. But the United States has built something more impressive: a vast, messy republic of economic and social flourishing where\u00a0hundreds of millions of people<\/em>\u00a0peacefully pursue wildly different visions of a good life.<\/p>\n

Becoming more like Norway means becoming less American, with less of the opportunity,\u00a0ingenuity<\/a>, and the entrepreneurship that made America great.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 07\/29\/2026 – 03:30<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Free Stuff’ In Norway Still Costs Half Of Average Pay Authored by Joakim Book via TheDailyEconomy.org, Every few years, Americans rediscover Scandinavia.\u00a0 Someone visits Norway or Denmark, returns dazzled and envious of parental leave and universal childcare, and asks why America refuses to copy what obviously works. On the day dedicated to celebrating America,\u00a0Nicholas Kristof,… Continue reading ‘Free Stuff’ In Norway Still Costs Half Of Average Pay<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":643096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-border-security","category-immigration","category-immigration-reform","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=643095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/643096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=643095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=643095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=643095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}