Carl-Richard

I feel like I have a weird mental block against voting MDG, because my father has always voted for them (am I just copying my father?), people call it an unhinged party that wants to throw our oil in the toilet, and I don't particularly care much about personal environmental action unless it's activism or something that aims at large scale change.

I took the "Valgomat" (election quiz) made by our state TV channel and I got the Green Party (MDG) both for the general quiz and the more personalized quiz. I've also reviewed their party program and it's in line with my principled stances (when somebody uses the phrase "a society in ecological balance", I get Schmachtenberger vibes). Also, they're for EU membership and more international powerlines (I think more global is generally good, just as a principle). They're aiming to collab with the left-wing and they're one of the more left-wing of those parties. So the wealth tax will stay. I think with the wealth tax, you can of course try to review all the arguments that exist like we're doing here right now, but as a heuristic, if something smells fishy (removing tax from the richest), it probably is. Outside public subsidies, the right-wing parties are also of course funded primarily by rich millionaires (the left are funded mostly by worker unions). Coincidentally, if MDG reaches 4% of votes (it's a small party), it gets a large amount of seats in the parliament, and it's said to be what could dictate a left-wing victory, so some people who want to continue seeing Støre as prime minister (the Labour Party) think it's smart to tactically vote for MDG. But it will be a huge coalition government with Labour Party, Socialist Left Party, Red Party (commies), Centre Party and MDG.

Low compared to a cross-sectional slice of another country. The unemployment rate rose steadily from 3.2% in 2022, one year into Støre's period, to 4.6% in july 2025. He increased the wealth tax during that period, multiple times, especially for higher brackets. Again, you can always tell a story. I don't settle with just one story, I want many.

It was apparently clarified so well that any pushback was not needed.

Some ChatGPT-5 Thinking magic: It's not unexpected that burning one plant will be similarly as bad for you as burning another plant. But even if it was "good" for you (anticarcinogenic), hallucinogens in public spaces is the issue.

That was the basis for the two examples of the "you can always tell a story" in my original post (remember I mentioned wealth tax and contrasted it with employment fees; that contrast pointed to Sweden). What I'm essentially asking for is a holistic review of both poles — no wealth tax vs wealth tax — preferably a big "in principle" or highly abstract systemic argument, but simply a lot of facts will do too. So we're moving in that direction here, but we're still on a very "small story basis". But then again, we have the scientific issue of comparing apples to oranges (Sweden to Norway), but if that difference can be quantified or specified somehow, that would also help.

You don't want their jobs because they want more money than comrade Støre allows them is what I'm hearing (I love Støre btw 🙂). Sweden has 2x the employment fees 😆

I didn't say they smoke more, as if that matters anyway. Smoke is smoke. Burnt vegetable is burnt vegetable. Feel free to dig up the cancer rates from weed smoke.

Those are just more loaded words, honestly 😂 My argument (which I'm advocating for as devil's advocate) is that businesses leaving a place negatively affects that place, be it only in the short-medium term. But this is again not the interesting argument. Even if I grant that argument, I'm more interested if that argument weighs more than the arguments for the wealth tax. Even if businesses are leaving, to what degree does the wealth tax make up for it?

The way the wealth tax is calculated in Norway is it includes materials and assets in the company you own.

*Mentions placebo* 😆 Had it been any road, maybe, but this was not a normal road. It was effectively a tunnel. That you even should have to think about whether you're getting high due to secondhand smoke in any scenario is a right you should have as a citizen to not be subjected to unwillingly. There are laws against smoking (tobacco) in public spaces already. I think those laws should be tightened when legalization comes. Weed is a psychedelic hallucinogen, it's not a joke like tobacco which just sharpens your focus a bit.

It can be if the tax is severe enough. These are just loaded words. Exploitation, principled. If it was impossible to run a business some place, you would move.

Such loaded words don't carry any weight for me. I would just describe them as not wanting to pay wealth tax. They still pay other taxes.

What does exploiting the nation mean?

In the short-medium term, I don't think so, but anyways.

Lol I'm going to stop playing devil's advocate and just listen to debates instead because I don't think it's smart to get used to the activity of arguing for something I have no clue about 😂

Business demand for workers is not infinite, and even if they can scale up operations, that takes time, and that means workers are stuck without a job for some time, which is time they could've spent working, which leads to state expenditures.

But you're not making an argument for why that's better.

You either don't because you can't afford it, or you do by lowering wages. It doesn't matter if the rate they expand at is slower than the rate businesses leave at. And the more they expand, the more profitable it becomes leaving the country. They could move the business to other countries. Switzerland is just often mentioned because the owners tend to move their residency there to avoid the wealth tax but keep their business where it's at. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Cmon, nazis (exaggerating) are taking over my country and none of you have any good arguments against them? 🙉

Uh, yes? Can other businesses just hire new people endlessly, and do big businesses just spawn out of nowhere?

Who cares about that when it means less businesses and less jobs, etc.?

The argument the Righties in Norway use for eliminating the wealth tax is that all the big business owners move to Switzerland so they avoid wealth tax anyway (except now there is also an exit tax), and that it makes investing in Norwegian businesses less profitable compared to other countries for international actors, and that over time, big businesses generally pull out of the country so that there will be thousands of fewer jobs.

So which is better: wealth tax or no wealth tax?

"Existence is sounds, colors, shapes" and then calling this absolute, and then saying that any alternative statement is not absolute, is a clear and blatant conflation of the relative and the absolute. Just like physical reality, atoms, quantum fields are not absolute, these things are not absolute. They are relative things. "Absolute Solipsism" is as ridiculous as "Absolute Materialism". You take concepts and ideas as absolute reality, things that have nothing to do with absolute reality. The only reason you prefer solipsism over materialism is you have a corrupted idea of "direct experience". You take a conceptual idea, like colors, and you project it onto reality, and because you don't see that this projection is happening, you call this conceptual entity absolute. What you call direct experience is a conceptual interpretation of limited phenomena. If you remove the concepts, stop projecting them onto reality, you see absolute reality is simply what is. Nothing need be said about it, other than it's whole, it's One, it's Absolute. Only retrospectively, after seeing it's One, can you take the conceptual projections and treat them as an aspect of absolute reality, because the projections are part of the whole. But that involves all conceptual projections. It does not favor one over any other; it does not favor solipsism over materialism. The absolute reality in itself precedes, goes beyond, and transcends any limited interpretation, be it solipsistic or materialistic.