Norway Loony. Why the surprise?

[Woodbutcher]

You could live well on unskilled wages, and the employers were very keen to have you.

And now in the modern age there is relatively little need for people with no or low skills , thats just a fact of life. Basically if you don't have a degree ,are capable of wearing a suit and sitting in an office you are unlikely to have much prospects.

We need a few mechanics , a few plumbers , factory workers etc but not many. We do have a certain % of the population that are too low skilled (and probably untrainable) that is incapable of ever working. You can't teach an adult to sit still , not to swear regularly or raise their voice thats something you learn as a small kid.

The price to to them starving/rioting is the dole and its a price worth paying

Sorry, but more qualified tradesmen are needed everywhere, and those who are not afraid to get their hands dirty at work. The educational system is spewing out too many computer geeks as it is, because it lags behind the real workforce demand. In the 70's everybody was told to study computer tech, that is still prevalent here. Schools steer unruly students into trades to get rid of them, and while some of them can turn out OK, we don't need dumb fucking tradesmen, we need more smart ones. I know this personally, having had co-op students work with me. I'm a carpenter, 35 years in the trade. I also have a B.Sc in chemistry. That did not work out because everybody at the time had a degree. I went where I was needed, and have not regretted it one bit.

[Berthold]

Without immigration, this country would have a far lower population than it has, and it would be still falling.

And a higher proportion of people living on old age pension; paid for by whom?

[mistermack]

Without immigration, this country would have a far lower population than it has, and it would be still falling.

And a higher proportion of people living on old age pension; paid for by whom?

Do you think the young should be paying my pension? They should be paying in for their own pensions, not paying for the previous generation's.
If house prices were not so crazy, people would have more savings when they got older.

In Britain, people end up with a house worth a lot of money, but not much in savings. So you have the dilemma of selling your home, or not being able to touch your nest-egg.

[Seth]

I take the point that it may have been expected that Islamist radicals had a go at the twin towers... I'm more against the tone that suggests that Norway's walked into this. Mistermack, those who want to shut up the borders are not in majority in Norway... If that were the case and if they desperately felt we needed to change that, we'd have the Progress Party as the biggest party.

It's hardly unusual for idiots to be in the majority.

Secondly, I thought mistermack was American, but those examples were also what first came to mind. I just gave him other examples to see whether he adopted the same view of those atrocities.

Again, I ask you mistermack, how much is your finger on the Norwegian political and social pulse on these issues? Because saying them without much to base it on is bang out of order. It lays the blame at the feet of the Labour Party, and to the general political climate which has made us one of the most functional societies in the world. I won't necessarily say "THE" most functional, as the UN might... But that we're among them is without question.

I guess it depends on whether you are part of the tax-burdened productive class or the indolent dependent class as to what the definition of "functional" is.

Unskilled immigration might have every bit as much to do with our strong wages as well as our adhering to the EEC in order for us to be a part of the European market like any EU country.

Yup, socialists demand high wages and universal employment, but they do it without realizing (or caring) that this results directly in higher prices for goods, which reduces the value of the wages just as much as they were increased, if not more. It's called "inflation" by the way. Too much money (in the hands of workers as a result of excessive wages) chasing too few goods (caused by high costs of production that are the result of high labor costs).

It's a giant ponzi scheme and socialists as a class are simply too stupid, and to wound up in their egalitarian ideology to recognize hard economic facts. Supply and demand are going to bite the EU in the ass every time.

We're also strongly socialist in our foreign policy, which is why we give shelter to so many people from atrocious parts of the world.

See, I told you it's not unusual for idiots to be in charge. How many people from atrocious parts of the world can you fit in Norway? All of them? If not all of them, how do you justify picking and choosing among them? What makes one person, or one group, or one nationality more worthy than another? Aren't you being hypocritical by not bringing ALL people from atrocious parts of the world to Norway?

We do well to remember that where you're born is a fluke, and that there's a reason why people grow up to be the way they are...

You would do equally well to remember that Norway is not responsible for the conditions that other people are born into, nor can Norway save everyone from their fate, and that trying to do so just impoverishes Norway and doesn't really fix the systemic problems of poverty in the shit-holes of the world. To fix the shit-holes, people who were born in them need to stay there and work hard to clean them up and make them prosperous, not simply abandon their fellow shit-hole residents and flee to some socialist paradise that will soon enough be turned into the same sort of shit-hole they just came from through socialist idiocy and ineptness. To wit: Cuba.

But nevertheless I think we are in the right to give people a chance, and I work daily with young Afghan immigrants who have no family in this country...

Which people? What sort of chance? How do you choose? How about you GO TO AFGHANISTAN and help the people there to reform and rebuild THEIR COUNTRY, so that generations to come won't have to grow up in a shit-hole, rather than chancing turning your own country into a shit-hole by driving everyone into egalitarian poverty?

Some arrive completely illiterate, even in their own language, and everybody comes here with a poor education with regards to history, science, maths and the like. Still I've seen tremendous progress in the ones I've worked with, some of whom are currently working during the summer, and impressing the ones they work for.

They have a thing called "schools" in Afghanistan, you know. How about you pack up and head off to Afghanistan and teach Afghans to read, write and cipher in their own country, where they can then work towards educating others and building economic prosperity IN AFGHANISTAN?

Breivik and those who find legitimacy in his claims, if not his actions, want to put a halt to this and to leave the third world to its fate... I'm proud that we refuse to do that.

You don't have to leave the third world to its fate in order to effectuate your socialist ideals, you just have to have the courage to get up off your ass and go where you are needed and help the people where they live, so that future generations will not grow up in poverty and privation. For you to claim that helping Afghan immigrants in Norway is some selfless socialistic act is utter horseshit. You just don't want a bunch of ignorant, uneducated barbarians hanging around, you want them to become productive so that your taxes won't go up to support them and so that they will have YOUR political ideals when they become eligible to vote. It's all vested self interest you see.

If you really cared about the people of Afghanistan, you'd be IN Afghanistan helping to build infrastructure, schools and teach children (sort of like the US Army Corps of Engineers is doing right now with MY money). But that requires risk and sacrifice, doesn't it, whereas letting your government "help" those who have abandoned their country and their fellow Afghans takes no real sacrifice or risk on your part, does it? You help them, they become acculturated and turn into good socialist Norwegians and everybody's happy, right?

Well, evidently you don't know Afghans, and just as evidently you don't know Muslims, and you appear to misunderstand the extent to which their culture will keep them apart from you for their whole lives, by the express command of their Prophet. You will very likely find that they will take what they can from you while smiling ingratiating smiles, but they will maintain their tribal relationships and behavior, and they will cling to Islam and will band together with others of their belief system, and they will soon enough be agitating for greater and greater protections, benefits and influence for Islam in Norway, and the cancer will spread.

Sure, there are some "peaceful" Muslims, but damned few as compared to those who hold to Mohammed's literal words and the dictates of their Imams, which make you an infidel and their slave, to be subjugated and ruled by the Caliphate, and endured until the Caliphate comes to power. Islam is not a nice religion I'm afraid, it's fundamentally imperialist, racists, sexist and violent, by order of Mohammed.

Before you try to educate Muslims, perhaps you ought to educate yourself.

[Eriku]

I'll do that when you educate yourself on what it's like to live in Norway under our taxation and socialist safety net.

[GrahamH]

Yup, socialists demand high wages and universal employment, but they do it without realizing (or caring) that this results directly in higher prices for goods, which reduces the value of the wages just as much as they were increased, if not more. It's called "inflation" by the way. Too much money (in the hands of workers as a result of excessive wages) chasing too few goods (caused by high costs of production that are the result of high labor costs).

It's a giant ponzi scheme and socialists as a class are simply too stupid, and to wound up in their egalitarian ideology to recognize hard economic facts. Supply and demand are going to bite the EU in the ass every time.

Capitalism is a 'giant Ponzi scheme based on everlasting economic growth, which is impossible.
I don;t know of a better system of economics, or politics, but it isn't the socialists that fucked up the western economies this time, by trading default swaps on shit mortgages, which led to ever more recless lending to keep the Ponzi scheme rolling.

Which people? What sort of chance? How do you choose? How about you GO TO AFGHANISTAN and help the people there to reform and rebuild THEIR COUNTRY, so that generations to come won't have to grow up in a shit-hole, rather than chancing turning your own country into a shit-hole by driving everyone into egalitarian poverty?

Just for some perspective, when does an emigre become a native? Decades of paying tax? One generation, two, three...?

[Seth]

I'll do that when you educate yourself on what it's like to live in Norway under our taxation and socialist safety net.

Oh, it's a wonderful thing to take other people's money as your "safety net," no doubt about it. It's not nearly so nice to be the people the money is taken from I'm afraid.

Socialist safety nets breed indolence, sloth and dependent-class mentality. People don't work as hard because they know they won't end up living in a box under a bridge. And the productive class has to work ever harder as more and more people decide to take long lunches and six weeks of vacation and demand higher and higher wages, until eventually the OPM runs out, and the abundant natural resources run out, and then it all falls apart, just like it did in the Soviet Union.

Norway is only a prosperous socialist society because it has access to abundant natural resources (oil) with which to stuff the government coffers to pay for all the social entitlement spending. The hypocrisy of Norway is that it is utterly and completely dependent upon the capitalistic free market for oil for its prosperity. True socialist dogma would have Norway refusing to sell on the capitalist free market because it violates the principles that Marx and other socialists espouse about egalitarianism for all, even the oppressed in oil-using nations. Norway would be taking ALL that oil money and would be redistributing it to OTHER nations and other oppressed people.

But it's not, is it? Nope. Norway is only internally socialist, and it can only afford to be internally socialist because it has access to the capitalistic free market. Now, if Norway were like East Germany and the Soviet Union, and did not have access to western free markets for those natural resources, you'd all be eating oil burgers and oil soup and oil flambe for dinner because nobody would be buying it.

So, don't get too uppity about your socialist credentials, because if it weren't for capitalism and the free markets, you wouldn't have a pot to piss in and you'd be fighting over the last scraps of reindeer meat and whale blubber.

Socialism works fine until the OPM runs out, that much is true. But it absolutely sucks to be the productive class in a socialist society, because like vampires, the dependent class will suck you dry and then discard the wizened husk without a thought or a care.

[GrahamH]

Socialist safety nets breed indolence, sloth and dependent-class mentality. People don't work as hard because they know they won't end up living in a box under a bridge.

What proportion of a population living homeless under bridges is optimum incentive to productivity, do you think? What should be done about such a problem of homelessness?

Dependency culture is a problem, but I don't like your 'solution'.

Socialism works fine until the OPM runs out, that much is true. But it absolutely sucks to be the productive class in a socialist society, because like vampires, the dependent class will suck you dry and then discard the wizened husk without a thought or a care.

You obviously can't imagine a circumstance where you or anyone you care about might find themselves under a bridge. 'Us' and 'Them', huh?

[Eriku]

I work and pay my taxes, so don't make it sound like I'm scrounging off the social net.

And any other Norwegians on here, like normal, will state like me that I don't mind having higher taxes than most of the world, both off our salaries and in terms of taxing of commercial items.

And you can be socialist in a capitalist world, too... they aren't mutually exclusive. I never detracted from the global markets.

[Seth]

Yup, socialists demand high wages and universal employment, but they do it without realizing (or caring) that this results directly in higher prices for goods, which reduces the value of the wages just as much as they were increased, if not more. It's called "inflation" by the way. Too much money (in the hands of workers as a result of excessive wages) chasing too few goods (caused by high costs of production that are the result of high labor costs).

It's a giant ponzi scheme and socialists as a class are simply too stupid, and to wound up in their egalitarian ideology to recognize hard economic facts. Supply and demand are going to bite the EU in the ass every time.

Capitalism is a 'giant Ponzi scheme based on everlasting economic growth, which is impossible.

No, it's just cyclical, which every good capitalist knows full well, and plans for.

I don;t know of a better system of economics, or politics, but it isn't the socialists that fucked up the western economies this time, by trading default swaps on shit mortgages, which led to ever more recless lending to keep the Ponzi scheme rolling.

Actually, it was. It was Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who are as close to avowed socialists as it gets, who fucked up our economy by engaging in socialist redistributionist schemes under the Community Reinvestment Act. The mortgage market merely tried to cover it's collective ass with credit default swaps, and the FTC didn't catch on to the fact that the scheme was actually an insurance plan that, by law, was supposed to be fully funded, but wasn't.

But it was the "socialists" (progressives actually) in Congress who insisted that banks (on pain of dissolution through banking investigator harassment) lend money to people who had no business borrowing it in the first place. Absent the Frank and Dodd show and Carter's Community Reinvestment Act, banks NEVER would have made loans to unemployed or marginally employed people, and they would have remained what they always should have been: Renters.

[Seth]

Socialist safety nets breed indolence, sloth and dependent-class mentality. People don't work as hard because they know they won't end up living in a box under a bridge.

What proportion of a population living homeless under bridges is optimum incentive to productivity, do you think?

About five percent unemployment seems to be the optimal level. That leaves a pool of unemployed, but employable persons large enough to control wages and keep them down to what business can afford through keen competition for jobs.

What should be done about such a problem of homelessness?

Depends. The chronic, hard-core homeless like it that way, so nothing should be done other than to encourage communities to provide charitable support for food and temporary shelter during harsh weather.

Those who are homeless because they bought too much house and then got laid off should take the lesson and go back to renting within their means.

The number of people actually living under bridges is quite small, and mostly comprised of people who choose that lifestyle. Most workers who have been laid off have shelter which is provided by both government sources like unemployment insurance and private charity, and they live in adequate, if temporary rental accommodations, so they aren't really homeless. As the economy recovers from the effects of socialist redistributionist policies, they will get jobs, and hopefully they will learn their lesson and spend less than they earn.

Dependency culture is a problem, but I don't like your 'solution'.

Coddling the dependent class is simply a bad idea.

Socialism works fine until the OPM runs out, that much is true. But it absolutely sucks to be the productive class in a socialist society, because like vampires, the dependent class will suck you dry and then discard the wizened husk without a thought or a care.

You obviously can't imagine a circumstance where you or anyone you care about might find themselves under a bridge. 'Us' and 'Them', huh?

Sure I can. But helping those in need is the duty of the community, as a part of the natural instincts of charity and altruism and rational self interest, it's not the duty of the federal government to take from individuals and give it to others without their consent. That just perpetuates the evil.

[GrahamH]

Capitalism is a 'giant Ponzi scheme based on everlasting economic growth, which is impossible.

No, it's just cyclical, which every good capitalist knows full well, and plans for.

Sure there are cycles, but how does the spiral keep growing? How is endless economic growth possible?

Actually, it was. It was Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who are as close to avowed socialists as it gets, who fucked up our economy by engaging in socialist redistributionist schemes under the Community Reinvestment Act. The mortgage market merely tried to cover it's collective ass with credit default swaps, and the FTC didn't catch on to the fact that the scheme was actually an insurance plan that, by law, was supposed to be fully funded, but wasn't.

My info on this is limited to The Big Short, so I may be in error, but it seems that what you refer to was merely the seed. The real problems started when the market in CDOs took off and drove excessive lending to fuel gambling on AAA rated junk. Isn't that when responsible lending truly went down the pan to feed the Ponzi scheeme?

Absent the Frank and Dodd show and Carter's Community Reinvestment Act, banks NEVER would have made loans to unemployed or marginally employed people, and they would have remained what they always should have been: Renters.

The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation

The banks became reckless. Show we where they were commanded to be reckless.

The Federal Reserve, having examined the evidence, holds that empirical research has not validated any relationship between the CRA and the 2008 financial crisis.

[Eriku]

No, it's just cyclical, which every good capitalist knows full well, and plans for.

Just curious (genuinely), what about the recklessness that left a bunch of banks in need of a bail-out? Are you equally aggrieved about their demanding the people's money in order to keep them running?

[mistermack]

Don't get me wrong, I'm against large-scale immigration, not social or socialist policies.

I'm really complaining that the politicians in the centre or centre left parties seem to see it as their duty to enable immigration, in spite of the fact that the people don't want it. In Britain you would have to vote for a loony right-wing party, if you wanted to vote to stop immigration.

I would like to see a party that was centre left, but was determined to keep immigration to the minimum.
Immigration's got nothing do do with socialism as far as I'm concerned.

We should just pick and choose the rich, qualified, talented immigrants, of any colour or religion, and tell the rest to fuck off. Then you wouldn't have problems with assimilation or crime, because they would mostly be working in good jobs, and the numbers would be low.

[Feck]

Don't get me wrong, I'm against large-scale immigration, not social or socialist policies.

I'm really complaining that the politicians in the centre or centre left parties seem to see it as their duty to enable immigration, in spite of the fact that the people don't want it. In Britain you would have to vote for a loony right-wing party, if you wanted to vote to stop immigration.

I would like to see a party that was centre left, but was determined to keep immigration to the minimum.
Immigration's got nothing do do with socialism as far as I'm concerned.

We should just pick and choose the rich, qualified, talented immigrants, of any colour or religion, and tell the rest to fuck off. Then you wouldn't have problems with assimilation or crime, because they would mostly be working in good jobs, and the numbers would be low.

And then the people would be complaining that they are driving cars we can't afford buying all the good houses and putting the prices up and taking all the good jobs ?