Norwegian politician gives away her salary

[Dwarniel]

20 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

97000 USD is fucken nothing. That's poverty. 

But I guess in Europe, if you earn 200K a year, 102K probably goes to taxes, so you're left with 98K anyway

It's not poverty in scandinavia. Remember all the goods we get from the state. Like free healthcare. 

One time i got acute blood poisoning, had to have an ambulance, three nights in the hospital, lots of meds, i got food 3x a day. My bill afterwards was zero. (i didnt have insurance) 

I make 53k USD a year, tax about 36-40% of it, and live comfortably. I'm more than happy to tax a lot to make sure the less fortunate have a safety net. 

Edited March 8, 2020 by Dwarniel

[electroBeam]

@Dwarniel Sure it depends on living costs. Scandinavian cities are usually expensive. 53K a year might be fine if house prices, groceries and the like are also low. In Most Scandinavian cities, and even places like the UK, 53K a year would suck very badly. 50 to 70% would be eaten up by house loans. You can probably live above your means on 97K a year, but it doesn't sound too much over based on other countries in the region. The logic behind giving decent salaries to presidents and prime ministers is to ensure they don't get too corrupt. This is a serious consideration depending on the society you live in. Low salaries to politicians can cause harm and has in latin american and east asian countries. Whether it causes issues in a socialist democratic nation like Norway I'm not sure. 

I'm on over 97K USD and I live in Australia where healthcare is also free (to a point) and I would struggle on 53K a year due to living in a very expensive city. 

Edited March 8, 2020 by electroBeam

[Hansu]

1 hour ago, Roy said:

Reflect and consider your reaction might because you maybe don't liking her political leanings, therefore you dismiss it as just a "move" by her to get more votes.

 

My reaction comes from her wasting her time and effort on such a small and insignificant thing when she could use it on more important things.

As for the meme, thats my low effort answer to someone who thinks politics is easy money.

 

Edit: And fishing votes is not corruption, its populism.

Edited March 8, 2020 by Hansu

[roar]

1 hour ago, Hansu said:

Corruption is created when people in power DONT earn enough. Like I said, salaries in politics need to rival with the salaries in jobs of high education.

Corruption is created when corrupt people enter into politics.  One should be able to expect a certain level of morals and ethics towards people in position of power.  In the majority of cases you certainly can't, unfortunately.   

Tempting people with high wages will certainly not help.  At the moment, we have a lot of controversial cases in Norway where high paying politicians have been exposed in exploiting the very generous wages systems (when changing jobs), taking two and even three salaries at the same time.  Greedy people are attracted to these opportunities that politics give, and yes, it's very easy work compared to most other jobs if you're able to throw away your moral and ethics.

The main goal of Rødt, is to overthrow capitalism through peaceful democratic revolution.  I vote Rødt.

[roar]

11 minutes ago, Hansu said:

 

My reaction comes from her wasting her time and effort on such a small and insignificant thing when she could use it on more important things.

As for the meme, thats my low effort answer to someone who thinks politics is easy money.

In Norway, politics IS easy money, no matter what you believe.  And what a shame that we have politicians here that have morals of higher consciousness.. 

Edited March 8, 2020 by roar

[Hansu]

6 minutes ago, roar said:

At the moment, we have a lot of controversial cases in Norway where high paying politicians have been exposed in exploiting the very generous wages systems (when changing jobs), taking two and even three salaries at the same time.

Are you speaking of some kind of adaptation pension for politicians?

4 minutes ago, roar said:

In Norway, politics IS easy money, no matter what you believe..

Becoming one of the 169 chosen representatives and being able to hold that position is easy money?

[roar]

@Hansu

10 minutes ago, Hansu said:

Are you speaking of some kind of adaptation pension for politicians?

No.  When, for instance, a city major is recruited to a position in parliament or other political positions.   Or they can be members of some boards etc.  They have kept their salary from the major position for a time even when they get their salary from the new position.

 And even with their extreme salaries, they still get busted all the time with exploiting their very generous benefits for travel etc.  The pension rules they have are all legal, although very corrupt.  They make the laws, so they fixed it good for themselves.

 

10 minutes ago, Hansu said:

Becoming one of the 169 chosen representatives and being able to hold that position is easy money?

A quick search led me to the number of 10.772 paid politicians in Norway.  To be fair, they do not all get the salaries spoken off, but the number of people that do get them is way beyond 169.  Each one of those 169 have many people under them that receive same level of money, and then you have the state and city levels.

Edited March 8, 2020 by roar

[Dwarniel]

45 minutes ago, roar said:

 I vote Rødt.

?

[Hansu]

7 hours ago, roar said:

They have kept their salary from the major position for a time even when they get their salary from the new position.

 And even with their extreme salaries, they still get busted all the time with exploiting their very generous benefits for travel etc.  The pension rules they have are all legal, although very corrupt.  They make the laws, so they fixed it good for themselves.

Yeah that sounds shady as fuck

 

7 hours ago, roar said:

A quick search led me to the number of 10.772 paid politicians in Norway.  To be fair, they do not all get the salaries spoken off, but the number of people that do get them is way beyond 169.  Each one of those 169 have many people under them that receive same level of money, and then you have the state and city levels.

There has been a major misunderstanding on my part in this thread.

See, in my country when we speak of a politician, we exclusively speak of a representative of a party who is currently sitting in the parliament, so politician is almost a synonym to sitting representative of a party in my language. When we speak of someone who is say, representative of a municapility we always add it in front of the "politician" word, "municapility-politician"

So I didn't even think that when people here spoke of a politician, that they could have been speaking of say, mayor of a small town or someone working in a research work group for a representative or ministers assistant. I always assumed they were speaking of the sitting representatives of party.

I can definitely see how ministers assistant or member of a work group can be VERY easy job and a money grab and how many people could be seeking those positions just for the easy job and money since, for example, there is little pressure compared to the business world and its easy to just shit talk yourself into the "results" your workgroup "finds".

Apologies to anyone who might have revved up for my mistake

Edited March 8, 2020 by Hansu

[Dwarniel]

2 hours ago, Hansu said:

Yeah that sounds shady as fuck

 

There has been a major misunderstanding on my part in this thread.

See, in my country when we speak of a politician, we exclusively speak of a representative of a party who is currently sitting in the parliament, so politician is a synonym to sitting representative of a party in my language.

So I didn't even think that when people here spoke of a politician, that they could have been speaking of say, mayor of a small town or someone working in a research work group for a representative or ministers assistant. I always assumed they were speaking of the sitting representatives of party.

I can definitely see how ministers assistant or member of a work group can be VERY easy job and a money grab and how many people could be seeking those positions just for the easy job and money since, for example, there is little pressure compared to the business world and its easy to just shit talk yourself into the "results" your workgroup "finds".

Apologies to anyone who might have revved up for my mistake

 

Ohhh, your post make much more sense to me now haha. Language... ? Where are you from? 

7 hours ago, roar said:

 

 

[Applegarden]

8 hours ago, electroBeam said:

97000 USD is fucken nothing. That's poverty. 

But I guess in Europe, if you earn 200K a year, 102K probably goes to taxes, so you're left with 98K anyway

HAHAHA, in Latvia, aka, poor Europe, you are well of if you even make over 10k.

[Hansu]

1 hour ago, Dwarniel said:

 

Ohhh, your post make much more sense to me now haha. Language... ? Where are you from? 

 

Finland. Hello neighbour ?

[Dwarniel]

13 hours ago, Hansu said:

Finland. Hello neighbour ?

I remember reading about Finland testing out universal basic income-how did that whole thing go? 

[Hansu]

1 hour ago, Dwarniel said:

I remember reading about Finland testing out universal basic income-how did that whole thing go? 

There is good and bad. It really depends on how you look at it.

The subjects in the test were all long term unemployed. So no students, no people who work at the moment etc.

They found out that statistically there was no improvement in employment or income compared to control group.

There were good findings too, tho.

One is that the test just proves, that you cannot push people to work by reducing their welfare check. Extra money is not motivating help enough to get long term unemployees to join the workforce. I doubt this is what they were researching on, but its good thing to have confirmation regardless.

Other positive thing is that subjects estimation of their own health improved. Also stress levels improved.

Sadly the test is deemed a failure only because of the fact that it did not increase employment rates. I call this bullshit tho, because they only tested this on long term unemployed people. Not taking in students, short term unemployed and low income people was just a moronic move from the researchers.

There could be so many benefits to the latter groups on top of the long term unemployees becoming happier...

Edited March 9, 2020 by Hansu

[Roy]

On 3/8/2020 at 7:06 AM, Hansu said:

Edit: And fishing votes is not corruption, its populism.

Being dishonest about your motives and making a calculated and manipulative maneuver for more votes is a form of corruption. Corruption is a scale. The smallest bad thought is still a form of corruption. You can call it "populism". That's just another flavor of the same food.

"Attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed, that is." - Yoda

[electroBeam]

On 09/03/2020 at 6:11 AM, Applegarden said:

HAHAHA, in Latvia, aka, poor Europe, you are well of if you even make over 10k.

Yeah but that's probably because it costs 5K a year to live there hahahaha.

The average pay in the US is probably 80K, but it takes 200K to live comfortably. 

[Dwarniel]

On 3/9/2020 at 8:52 PM, Roy said:

Being dishonest about your motives and making a calculated and manipulative maneuver for more votes is a form of corruption. Corruption is a scale. The smallest bad thought is still a form of corruption. You can call it "populism". That's just another flavor of the same food.

This! 

[Dwarniel]

On 3/9/2020 at 11:47 AM, Hansu said:

Sadly the test is deemed a failure only because of the fact that it did not increase employment rates. I call this bullshit tho, because they only tested this on long term unemployed people. Not taking in students, short term unemployed and low income people was just a moronic move from the researchers.

There could be so many benefits to the latter groups on top of the long term unemployees becoming happier...

Ahh I see.. That's too bad. It would be interesting with some more in depth research on this topic

[w4read]

I think this in an exception to the rule. Most people would never give away their salary like that, even in the red party. 

It's kinda interesting because when you look at the norwegian system as a whole it looks very green from the outside, and it's tempting to believe that norwegians in general are at stage green. This I believe is far from the case. Actually what many norwegians value more than anything is independence, which is a very orange value. We are actually the people who value independence more than any other country in the world.

So what you basically have is a green system that is supposed to take care of everyone through welfare solutions like free hospital care and education, that contains within itself many independent individuals which are probably more at stage orange than anything else. Actually the system is created SO that people can be independent.

 

[Hansu]

12 minutes ago, w4read said:

We are actually the people who value independence more than any other country in the world.

Oddly enough, Finland is also very independently minded. Its normal that people here move out at age of 17-20. If you still live with your parents at age 21, then that seems really weird for many people (Even though its economically wiser to live longer at your parents)

Basically anyone here can move out of home at age of 18 and severe all ties to everyone they know without reprecussion. The welfare system will take care of you and quarantee that you wont starve or have to live in the streets

I wonder if the motivation behind building this system has in fact been to increase independency rather than increase wellbeing of the people? Or was the motivator wellness, and the possibility for high independence is just a side effect we got with the system?

Now that I think about it, Im taking the system for granted and I dont even know how it became what it has become. I need to do some research