The "Nordic model" refers to the socioeconomics common in Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), not just to Norway.
It's about how you approach commons and common wealth. Any commons will do. It does not rely on oil resources per se.
Let's say for the sake of argument it does depend on oil wealth, though.
The US currently has something like 30x the proven oil reserves that Norway does (>200 billion barrels vs ~7 billion). It has already produced at least 200billion barrels since the 1850s. What if the US had treated the wealth from past oil production the way Norway has? What if it treated the next 200 billion that way?
And oil is only one of many commons resources to choose from.
> See Bernie Sanders!
Yes, I addressed Sanders proposal in my earlier comment: "single digit taxes on hyperwealth which might not have impact beyond stabilizing it and certainly wouldn’t make anyone not-wealthy."
A single digit wealth tax is unlikely to fully offset even conventional yearly returns, hence the "might not have impact beyond stabilizing" the wealth of those subject to it.
Even if we assume no yearly returns though -- simply a 5% bite out of net worth -- a wealth tax will not make anyone in that economic strata unwealthy (there's a billions-floor beneath which it wouldn't apply, leaving the worst case still radically prosperous).
There's no reasonable basis to characterize that as "evisceration."
But repeating loaded terms like that as part of an ideological rosary is a common religious and rhetorical strategy.
> Also, if you die in Washington State, your estate is taxed at 75% (40% federal, 35% state).
My understanding is that estate taxes generally have thresholds that have to be met before they kick in. Federal threshold is on the order of 10million, WA is 3 million.
Having dynastic wealth flows limited over a few million dollars is also not reasonably described as "evisceration" (especially with all the other vehicles for transferring wealth).
May as well complain to God that you can't take it with you as that you might have to loosen your grasp at death to render unto caeser.
> The US currently has something like 30x the proven oil reserves that Norway does
And 60x the population. And defends the world with defense expenditures.
> simply a 5% bite out of net worth
Once that door is open, there will be no end to it. Washington state enacted a 7% capital gains tax, and the next year raised it to 9.9%. Now they're close to enacting a 9.9% income tax.
> My understanding is that estate taxes generally have thresholds that have to be met before they kick in. Federal threshold is on the order of 10million, WA is 3 million.
If your estate is $1 billion, your estate tax will be:
35% of $997,000,000 + 40% of $990,000,000 = 74.5% effective tax rate.
> Sanders
said many times that billionaires should not exist
> that you can't take it with you as that you might have to loosen your grasp at death to render unto caeser.
You could take all the money from billionaires and it won't raise the general standard of living. You will also never have companies like SpaceX.
$100 million. He's also founded many other companies. Jeff Bezos has invested an estimated $10 billion to over $14.6 billion into Blue Origin as of early 2025.
OK, let's assume that oil is the only relevant resource, and population is the other relevant factor, and there's no efficiencies of scale or exceptional American ingenuity that can be discovered. 30x the resources combined with 60 times the population would mean we should be able to provide at least half the floor that Norway does, right?
Does that mean if we discover another resource the US has, or efficiencies of scale, or an exceptionally ingenious solution, we can revise that number up?
What if we'd behaved differently in the past when our oil to population ratio was similar to Norway's (or better)? And when's the 2nd best time to start?
Or is this more of a shrug we're nothing compared to those fortunate Scandinavians and that's why we just can't have nice things that they have no matter how nice it would be to have those things, stiff upper lip chaps, greatest country in the world situation?
> And defends the world with defense expenditures.
This is the "I have to wash my hair that night" of excuses -- plausibly true at some level yet studiedly ignoring such a wide latitude of optionality involved that it's clearly covering a refusal.
> Once that door is open, there will be no end to it.
Slippery slope fallacy. Tax rates move, but not monotonically.
For average US households effective income tax rates are more or less flat for the last generation or three. For high eaners? To say that the trend is downward doesn't cover it, it's a dramatic drop compared to midcentury era rates.
Wealth taxes in the countries that have them don't seem to demand an ever larger share.
If your strongest example is washington state a capital gains tax rate change within the same order of magnitude (that's still well below average effective income tax rates) you don't have much of a case.
Lots of unevisceratedly wealthy people live in states where the highest income tax bracket has rates over 10%. I'm sure the people with over a million a year in income will remain prosperous.
> If your estate is $1 billion, your estate tax will be:
Also you'll be dead and as such won't have continued control over any of your previous assets. Hence the earlier comment to the effect that one may as well complain to God about having to loosen ones grasp on them at death as rail against rendering unto caeser.
The natural "tax rate" on assets at death is 100%. Any smaller number than that is an affordance from the cooperation of society.
> said many times that billionaires should not exist
Perhaps he's right and it's hard to draw a solid straight line between that scale of personal profit and input. Perhaps he's wrong.
Still, as discussed, the most extreme concrete policy that Sanders has proposed is a wealth tax of 5%, and we've discussed why the dynamics of that are not existential threats to the wealth of anyone, much less worthy of the term "evisceration."
No one is proposing taking all the money from even the billionares. Most likely outcome of a 5% tax rate is stabilization.
> it won't raise the general standard of living.
And yet other societies have managed to produce better general standards of living (and higher rates of entrepreneurial success) via various policies including some different tax rates.
> You will also never have companies like SpaceX.
Companies exist to broadly source capital to bring to bear on an enterprise. So it stands to reason that companies like Space X will exist whether the capital comes from a wide pool of investors whose upside is limited somewhere below hyperwealth, or a contribution from a narrower set of investors with a higher concentration, at least as long as there's a credible upside.
That's an interesting question. And to the extent that we're shifting discussion from "taxes are terrible mistreatment of the hyperwealthy" to "taxes might make national business/economic development less robust", OK.
Worth noting that GDP per capita of Norway and Iceland are pretty close to the US:
Denmark's on the same order and Sweden isn't too far behind (and still has a handful of their own recognized global successes).
Using general stats like that helps avoid sharpshooter fallacies that could be hazards in picking a list of high profile successes.
Still, let's talk about those successes. What are the conditions that gave rise to SpaceX, Amazon, Google, and Walmart? Whatever they are, none of their stories seems path-dependent anyone's personal billions. SpaceX owes as much or more to government decisions to privately source launch capability (not to mention path dependence on public programs supporting a certain related company). Google was famously founded by not particularly wealthy PhD students with initial capital well under a million dollars. Walmart wasn't founded with millions let alone billions. Bezos was probably the wealthiest founder when it comes to your list -- maybe had a six figure net worth, possibly seven, certainly good networks for raising capital -- but the bootstrapping capital that went into it didn't require anyone to be a billionaire.
Whatever the US does right as far as positive business environment goes, it doesn't require personal billions, so it's pretty unlikely to stop with additional taxes on billionaire concentrations of wealth. Taxes which, again, at the level of any proposed rate, would most likely not even un-billionaire anyone.
It's about how you approach commons and common wealth. Any commons will do. It does not rely on oil resources per se.
Let's say for the sake of argument it does depend on oil wealth, though.
The US currently has something like 30x the proven oil reserves that Norway does (>200 billion barrels vs ~7 billion). It has already produced at least 200billion barrels since the 1850s. What if the US had treated the wealth from past oil production the way Norway has? What if it treated the next 200 billion that way?
And oil is only one of many commons resources to choose from.
> See Bernie Sanders!
Yes, I addressed Sanders proposal in my earlier comment: "single digit taxes on hyperwealth which might not have impact beyond stabilizing it and certainly wouldn’t make anyone not-wealthy."
A single digit wealth tax is unlikely to fully offset even conventional yearly returns, hence the "might not have impact beyond stabilizing" the wealth of those subject to it.
Even if we assume no yearly returns though -- simply a 5% bite out of net worth -- a wealth tax will not make anyone in that economic strata unwealthy (there's a billions-floor beneath which it wouldn't apply, leaving the worst case still radically prosperous).
There's no reasonable basis to characterize that as "evisceration."
But repeating loaded terms like that as part of an ideological rosary is a common religious and rhetorical strategy.
> Also, if you die in Washington State, your estate is taxed at 75% (40% federal, 35% state).
My understanding is that estate taxes generally have thresholds that have to be met before they kick in. Federal threshold is on the order of 10million, WA is 3 million.
Having dynastic wealth flows limited over a few million dollars is also not reasonably described as "evisceration" (especially with all the other vehicles for transferring wealth).
May as well complain to God that you can't take it with you as that you might have to loosen your grasp at death to render unto caeser.