Norway - Extras from Sicko

[Culverin]

This Country Beats France - YouTube

this seems like such freaking utopia

[Ronin]

Which is why they were so shocked by the shootings and bomb last year.

[Gridlock]

Yup. It's true.

Norway also has a large public interest in oil and gas reserves and a tax rate that would make most gasp in shock to pay for it all.

I don't want to live in a world where I need to pay for someone's car, or vacation, but thanks.

This shit ain't free Mike.

There is a happy medium where those that for whatever reason can't deal for themselves get some help, and those that can share some of the excess for them. I think Norway is too much on the helping others, and the US is WAY too much on the "do it for ourselves' side, and getting worse by each election as the plan is to further and further cut taxes.

But this is a problem of a heavily socialized system...when something goes away, such as tax base, or oil reserves and so on, they have a large population depending on the government and a government that can't afford to provide...kind of like the European debt crisis..shocker.

[bing]

Utopia? No thank you. Too socialist for my liking. I am not interested at all for funding other peoples entitlements to that extent. For a balance between the extremes of Norway and the US, I prefer Canada's approach, which is moderately socialist - however, even I find that a bit too much.

And yes, like Gridlock said, someone else has to pay for all that shit. Basically, people who have their act together are penalized for their ingenuity and hard work. I'd rather there be an ethos promoted that encourages people to be more innovative so that we would have better industries and jobs here and as a result higher wages.