Comments on: Norway Cuts Taxes In Response To Oil Slowdown /norway-cuts-taxes-in-response-to-oil-slowdown/ All Things Norway, In English Sun, 01 Sep 2024 10:07:01 +0000 hourly 1 By: David /norway-cuts-taxes-in-response-to-oil-slowdown/#comment-495694 Fri, 09 Oct 2015 21:33:41 +0000 /?p=8391#comment-495694 It’s too late for Norway.
They should have invested their oil money in new industry like the Saudi’s did over the last 40 years, not horde it in a bank account. However, due to the country’s high taxes, poor exchange rates, and high cost of living, Norway developed an import economy, thereby precluding the creation of a strong industry exporting goods. It’s an artificial economy based solely on the premise of eternal cheap oil and gas.

30 years of socialism sedated the population with a false sense of security. But socialism can only exist for as long as a country has cheap resources and energy.

That Halcyon age is now over.

Miniscule tax cuts and micro tax hikes are just standard political sleight-of-hand to mask that fact that the government does not have the backbone to do what needs to be done. Even this conservative government is too timid to take decisive action, probably due to the inertia of socialist cultural mentality.

What will save this country is the increase in the price of oil. It will not stay low forever, because the big, rich oil speculators who manipulate this commodity market will want to sell off their cheaply accrued oil lakes at some point, and they will want to do it at 100-150 dollars per barrel.

Until then Norway’s suffering will be a downward spiral of misery as the knock-on effects of people getting laid off results in less spending, thereby triggering cost-cutting, resulting in more unemployment….

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