Why politics sucks

[Elliott]

21 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Business demand for workers is not infinite.

Only in a recession, otherwise, there's always business trying to hire, effectively infinite.

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

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 😂

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, Elliott said:

Only in a recession, otherwise, there's always business hiring, effectively infinite.

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

Edited September 1 by Carl-Richard

[Elliott]

43 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

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

Sounds like Norway is in a hostage situation, and conservatives want to keep bending over to the businesses that only care about exploiting the nation. The tax is only on wealth, meaning they only pay if they're getting wealthy there.

[Carl-Richard]

13 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Sounds like Norway is in a hostage situation, and conservatives want to keep bending over to the businesses that only care about exploiting the nation. The tax is only on wealth, meaning they only pay if they're getting wealthy there.

What does exploiting the nation mean?

[Elliott]

37 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What does exploiting the nation mean?

A nation is a group of people working together, exploiting would be only trying to take from the nation and not caring about the nation other than for that. Parasites, taking from the nation.

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Elliott said:

A nation is a group of people working together, exploiting would be only trying to take from the nation and not caring about the nation other than for that. Parasites, taking from the nation.

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.

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

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.

You said they will move the business, that's more than just not wanting to pay a tax. Why would you want businesses that don't value the country, to be profiting from your country, a business that will up and leave at the slightest whiff of a better exploit, that's unstable for a country, that's a lack of principles that typically result in a terrible company that people prefer to not work for, a company holding the place in the market from a more principled company, likely only existing by other means of exploitation of your country, and would be displaced in the market by a principled company if there was an even playing field.

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

54 minutes ago, Elliott said:

You said they will move the business, that's more than just not wanting to pay a tax.

It can be if the tax is severe enough.

 

57 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Why would you want businesses that don't value the country, to be profiting from your country, a business that will up and leave at the slightest whiff of a better exploit, that's unstable for a country, that's a lack of principles that typically result in a terrible company that people prefer to not work for, a company holding the place in the market from a more principled company, likely only existing by other means of exploitation of your country, and would be displaced in the market by a principled company if there was an even playing field.

These are just loaded words. Exploitation, principled. If it was impossible to run a business some place, you would move.

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

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.

It's a tax on wealth not revenue, meaning you only pay if there's profit, meaning you only pay if you get wealthy off the business. You pay nothing if the business operates at cost where ypu only earn a salary.

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

9 minutes ago, Elliott said:

It's a tax on wealth not revenue, meaning you only pay if there's profit, meaning you only pay if you get wealthy off the business. You pay nothing if the business operates at cost where ypu only earn a salary.

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

[Elliott]

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

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

Ya, at the liquidatable rate. Companies hide income that way.

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

These are just loaded words. Exploitation, principled. 

Not true, your argument is based on the monopoly these corporations have on your country, and the hostage effect they're eliciting from it, therefore a logical person would want businesses that don't threaten a hostage crisis.

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

13 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Not true, your argument is based on the monopoly these corporations have on your country, and the hostage effect they're eliciting from it, therefore a logical person would want businesses that don't threaten a hostage crisis.

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?

Edited September 1 by Carl-Richard

[Elliott]

24 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

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?

Ya, my argument is that you don't want those companies jobs. It's not a zero sum game.

 

"Sweden has a significantly higher unemployment rate than Norway, with Sweden's rate around 8.3% to 8.5% as of July-August 2025, while Norway's rate fell to 4.5% in July 2025. "

Edited September 1 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

3 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Ya, my argument is that you don't want those companies jobs.

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 🙂).

 

5 minutes ago, Elliott said:

"Sweden has a significantly higher unemployment rate than Norway, with Sweden's rate around 8.3% to 8.5% as of July-August 2025, while Norway's rate fell to 4.5% in July 2025. "

Sweden has 2x the employment fees 😆

[Elliott]

16 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

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 🙂).

There's no limit on wealth. Actually, they're likely to get more wealthy because of the tax system and government programs.

[Elliott]

28 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Sweden has 2x the employment fees 😆

"Sweden: income and payroll taxes) for a single worker at the average wage was 42.6%.

Norway: The tax wedge for the same single average-wage earner was 36.0% "

 

"Norway collected corporate tax revenue equal to 9.7% of GDP in 2021. This is largely because it charges a much higher tax rate on oil and gas extraction, with an effective corporate income tax rate of 78% on these activities.

Sweden collected much less from corporate taxes, with revenue equal to 3.0% of GDP in 2021. "

 

"Sweden does not have a wealth tax, and double the unemployment rate." 

Norway has low unemployment.

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

14 minutes ago, Elliott said:

"Sweden: income and payroll taxes) for a single worker at the average wage was 42.6%.

Norway: The tax wedge for the same single average-wage earner was 36.0% "

 

"Norway collected corporate tax revenue equal to 9.7% of GDP in 2021. This is largely because it charges a much higher tax rate on oil and gas extraction, with an effective corporate income tax rate of 78% on these activities.

Sweden collected much less from corporate taxes, with revenue equal to 3.0% of GDP in 2021. "

 

"Sweden does not have a wealth tax, and double the unemployment rate." 

Norway has low unemployment.

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.

Edited September 2 by Carl-Richard

[Elliott]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

That 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.

No you're not, you're arguing that the conservatives false premise about job loss is true when it's not. The wealth tax exists, unemployment is low......