Why politics sucks

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Elliott said:

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......

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.

Edited September 2 by Carl-Richard

[Schizophonia]

For you do you vote if you don't mind 

[Carl-Richard]

58 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

For you do you vote if you don't mind 

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.

Edited September 2 by Carl-Richard

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

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.

You said the effect would be short or midterm, 3 years is into midterm.

 

"Jul 24, 2025 · Unemployment Rate in Norway averaged 4.07 percent from 1983 until 2025"

"https://www.dyingeconomy.com › what-is-a-good-unemployment-rate.html

What is a Good Unemployment Rate? - dyingeconomy.com

As a general rule of thumb, the natural rate of unemployment has tended to average around 5% in normal times, and this is a reasonable estimate of"

 

 

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[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.

Edited September 2 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

16 minutes ago, Elliott said:

You said the effect would be short or midterm, 3 years is into midterm.

 

"Jul 24, 2025 · Unemployment Rate in Norway averaged 4.07 percent from 1983 until 2025"

"https://www.dyingeconomy.com › what-is-a-good-unemployment-rate.html

What is a Good Unemployment Rate? - dyingeconomy.com

As a general rule of thumb, the natural rate of unemployment has tended to average around 5% in normal times, and this is a reasonable estimate of"

 

 

What's the story?

[Elliott]

18 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What's the story?

Unemployment in Norway is low, wasn't the big tax increase in 2022/2023? Can't find anything other than .85 to 1.1% increase then, you said there were multiple increases.

The un-named chart below is Norway.

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[Elliott]

 

 

"Norwegian economy increased in the first quarter – SSB

May 15, 2025 · Mainland Norway's GDP grew 1.0 per cent in the first quarter of 2025,"

 

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[Elliott]

@Carl-Richard I'm not familiar with Norwegian industry, I knew it was heavy in natural resources but through briefly reading it appears oil and the sovereign wealth fund are the largest generators of income in Norway. Wouldn't it make sense to tax wealth in the case where your country's revenues are primarily from your country's natural and collective resources? You're worried about oil and finance barrons moving, lol.

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[Carl-Richard]

@Elliott I just watched the news and it said while Sweden has twice the unemployment, Norway has 10.7% of people of working age on disability while Sweden only has 3.7%. So all in all, the total amount of working age people in the workforce is actually 80% in Norway, 81.9% in Sweden (Eurostat, 2024). In 2007, Sweden had 10% on disability, but they tightened the criteria for it over the years.

Edited September 2 by Carl-Richard

[Elliott]

37 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Elliott I just watched the news and it said while Sweden has twice the unemployment, Norway has 10.7% of people of working age on disability while Sweden only has 3.7%. So all in all, the total amount of working age people in the workforce is actually 80% in Norway, 81.9% in Sweden (Eurostat, 2024). In 2007, Sweden had 10% on disability, but they tightened the criteria for it over the years.

I think you're implying that the effective unemployment rate may be the same, I don't think you can.

So with disability, Norway is super Social compared to Sweden, and still has lower unemployment. Especially with near identical employment rates, kicking people off disability should put some back to work, I can't imagine Sweden is trying to get actual disabled people to do work they can't, Sweden's disability reform appears to have happened in 2008.

Curious what Norway's working rate is compared to the rest of Europe, because unemployment is relatively very low.

Edited September 2 by Elliott

[Scholar]

This is how modern politics works because of ease of information distribution:

Individuals have values, politicians appeal to those values to get elected. The solutions politicians propose are supposed to get them elected, so the solutions attempt to fit the values of the particular electorate.

But it's worse today because now you can appeal to people's values through advocating for problems that people will care about if they think it is a real problem. Trans-scare is an easy example. Virtually nobody is ever in contact with any trans person or negative effects of transitioning, yet people deeply care about it because conservatives know they can get people to care about and know they will care enough about it for them to elect them instead of progressives.

 

So the politicians job today is not just to tell the electorate what they want to hear, it is also to tell the electorate what they should care about. And that's how lobbying works most prevalently. Corporations don't have to buy politicians, they just have to convince the public that they should care about whatever is in their interest. The oil industry did this successfully through convincing the public that the regulations against the oil industry was to take peoples freedoms away.

It's just that today you don't just have corporate and political interests influencing what individuals should care about, but you also have individual actors, thanks to the ease of information distribution and monetization, who get people to care about simply because if they care about it they will listen to them more and generate profits that way.

 

Educated voters have always been rare, the issue today is that you can easily politically activate people who should never have engage in politics simply because they are too uneducated to even know what they want themselves, so they are just swept away by various propaganda forces.

[Elliott]

Politics are obviously a direct result of the society. Don't like the politics?, teach people, and support taxes for people to be taught.

Edited September 3 by Elliott

[Human Mint]

You may find this video interesting. It will explain Norway to you.

Why Norway is Becoming the World's Richest Country

What I find is for societies to excel in being a good society there needs to be: favorable geography and an equilibrium between free trade and government regulations. Just like the video explains, Norway government lets companies bring the technology and exploit the resources but they still have some degree of sovereignty over the business. They do not completely invade, monopolize and conquest the business nor they let companies run absolutely freely and unchecked.

Edited Sunday at 03:17 PM by Human Mint

[Basman]

The Scandinavian right is generally quiet libertarian in my opinion. They justification for cutting wealth taxes in text book trickle-down economics. Trickle-down economics is just a rationalization for widening the wealth gap. More resources to lower/middle-class people does in fact create a prosperous society overall. 

The thing is, being outwardly libertarian is political suicide in Scandinavia due to a legacy of economic/social solidarity and welfare. So what this libertarians do is that they adopt a socialist mask to not alarm voters too much, then they work to slowly erode the welfare state, boiling frog style. Prime example is with the Social democrats here in Denmark, who have recently been cutting on education (in a knowledge based economy).

Libertarians with a socialist mask. I can't think of a more obnoxious combo.

Edited yesterday at 05:16 PM by Basman

[Carl-Richard]

@Basman Good that Støre won then. Seems like many of the right-wing voters panicked when the far-right Progress Party were on route to taking the prime minister position had the right-wing won, so they voted Støre instead. So four more years with Labour Party but also with four smaller parties in coalition ("tutti frutti coaliation"), including MDG which I voted. MDG passed the 4% threshold for the first time which is big, as they get many more mandates that way. Also, all the smaller parties are big on green politics, so they might start moving things that way.

Edited 4 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Basman]

8 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Basman Good that Støre won then. Seems like many of the right-wing voters panicked when the far-right Progress Party were on route to taking the prime minister position had the right-wing won, so they voted Støre instead. So Four more years with Labour Party but also with four smaller parties in coalition ("tutti frutti coaliation"), including MDG which I voted. MDG passed the 4% threshold for the first time which is big, as they get many more mandates that way. Also, all the smaller parties are big on green politics, so they might start moving things that way.

Big day for the unemployed!

On a side note, by far the biggest source of pollution for Norway is export of oil and gas. It's so big that even if Norway itself where to be completely 100% green, it would be but a blip compared to how much pollution the export results in. Is there any viable solution to this (other happily ignoring it) besides pivoting to a different economy over time?