Bad guess. My first startup had a successful exit; I'm not at liberty to discuss the numbers, but let's just say that it was for a satisfying amount with the appropriate number of zeroes.

Everyone is in it for the money. Money means freedom. Freedom from governments and your boss. If you aren't in it for the money, start a non-profit.

I'm not purely in it for the money; I'm in it for the quality of life. After a certain point, each additional dollar/kroner fails to significantly impact the quality of life. Similarly, there are plenty of things I absolutely won't do for money.

Having health insurance to fall back on does help with starting a company. But once you get the company established, the amount of taxes you will be required to pay for employees and other things will outweigh any benefits you received initially.

Again, wrong. I also received some very generous innovation grants from the Norwegian government. The benefits were plentiful.

No, everybody is not "in it for the money". You said it yourself, actually: most people are in it for the things that money allows them to do. That is a very important difference, and it's one that a lot of people forget about.

Here in the US, a lot of the things from which we'd like to be "free" from (living in fear of health care-related bankruptcy, having to beg a boss for an extra week of vacation, being limited to absurdly short and unpaid (ma|pa)ternity leave periods, etc.) come with a hefty price tag, and as such are associated with (and often thought of as proxies for) having a lot of money.

In a place like Norway, many of the things that that we Americans see as perks afforded to only the wealthiest of individuals are instead thought of as baseline facts of life.

Is it so surprising, then, that people whose world-views are shaped by such a system don't have the same difficulties at disentangling financial cause and effect that we Americans have? They say that "past a certain point, money's just a way of keeping score," and it sounds to me as though that point is a lot lower in a place like Norway than it is here in the US.

As an experiment, let's try formulating it (semi)-logically (it's been a while since I had logic, so if I'm getting this wrong, please let me know):

    if (has lots of money) -> (freedom from financial catastrophe, and lots of social perks)

    not (has lots of money) -> not (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks, etc.)

    if (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks) -> (has lots of money)

In Norway, however, the system is different, and it doesn't sound like the aforementioned inverse relationship between money and freedom is true: since you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe, a decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons of money. Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians have arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?

You need money though. So directly or indirectly, money is always a factor.

"since you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe, a decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons of money."

Well, you had that money, it just went to the government instead of your pocket. The choices you could have made with that money are now gone. Once you are an established company in the US, you could afford those benefits yourself (which is more efficient because rather than paying for all healthcare, you can figure out what will work for your company).

For many non-web related business, it will make it that much more difficult. If you need to spend money on physical goods and your profit margin is razor thin, huge taxes aren't going to make it easier. If you have a business that doesn't scale well with one person (IE: a tech business where you need to hire more employees quickly), the increased employee taxes and requirements might make it an impossibility to continue (if you have no funding).

So, it might help with web businesses that can scale well with one employee or ones that are funded by VC. I wonder how many people are actually bootstrapping a company there.

"Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians have arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?"

Norwegians now have a sense of entitlement. It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the US.

I still have to wonder. If this was such a great system, why aren't more people starting companies? There is no risk, right? Why isn't Norway the center for startups?

It is a center, per capita. From the full version of the article, http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say...:

"Rates of start-up creation here are among the highest in the developed world, and Norway has more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States, according to the latest report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a Boston-based research consortium."

You don't hear about it as much because Norway is a relatively small country relatively far away from the U.S. (both geographically and culturally). The lack of Silicon Valley-like echo chamber is also a factor.

-50% alone to the federal government. -1% of your total net worth, which is means you may have to pay taxes, even when you have no profits coming in. -Anytime he purchases something, he is charged VAT -They mentioned 25% payroll taxes -This doesn't include local city/state taxes -There are tons of other taxes that aren't even mentioned (property, luxury, etc)

After all this, there isn't much left over. At that point, it's almost state capitalism. The state pretty much owns every company.

Even better, you can figure out exactly how much anyone makes through the government website.

More gems from the article:

"When you start buying expensive stuff, people start to talk," says Dalmo. "I have to be careful, because some of the people who are judging are my potential customers."

I don't know about you, but I would rather have the added risk of health care than having the government in full control of my business.

The unemployment rate is also misleading. Does Norway consider people that are getting government assistance unemployed?

"Between workers who do the same job at a given com pany, salaries vary little, if at all. At Wiggo Dalmo's company, everyone doing the same job makes the same salary."

Interesting, so I guess skill set doesn't really matter in Norway. A guy with 6 months of experience will be paid the same rate as a guy with 4 years.

Some people are alleging that Norway isn't socialist. They are more socialist than I ever thought.

"firing an employee for cause typically takes months, and employers generally end up paying at least three months' severance. "

More proof that starting a company may be easy, but having a long-term business will be tough. If you are bootstrapping a company, how can you possibly afford this?

"The three things we as Americans worry about—education, retirement, and medical expenses—are things that Norwegians don't worry about,"

Norwegians are putting all of their eggs in one basket, which is riskier than anything in my mind. They are under the impression that their government will be around to pay for all of their medical expenses in 30-40 years when they want to finally retire. What happens if the system collapses during that time? Since the majority of your money is going into the system, you won't nearly have enough to pay out of your pocket.

"Even if Nordlaks made no profits, paid no dividends, and paid its owner no salary, Berg would owe the Norwegian government a third of a million dollars a year. "Every year, I have to take a dividend, just to pay the tax," he says, sounding genuinely angry."

I'm amazed that people actually put up with this. I would have left that county asap.

You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a "sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens (in exchange for taxes, etc.).

It sounds like Norwegians have a different idea of where that baseline should be.

> It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the US.

OK, fair enough, but again- remember why it is that you care one way or the other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there a point to accumulating more than that? From the article, and from what other posters on this thread have said, it sure sounds like the "limited" potential income level in Norway is still quite high, by any rational standard, so what does it matter? After five or six million dollars per year, would an increase actually impact your life in a noticeable way?

By the way, I'm speaking from a strictly pragmatic standpoint here, not an idealogical one- some people see this as a moral issue, and that's not where I'm going here. I'm basically saying, "if my income is X millions of dollars, why do I care if the government takes half of that and I only have .5X?" Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more? And if you do, will it make you happy?

Of course, I should point out that this is all very easy for me to say, seeing as I never have and probably never will earn enough to face this question personally. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were rich, who knows.

As I understand it, he fundamentally believes he should be the one making the decision what to do with X dollars he earns -- including potentially distributing it as charity -- rather than a government. I don't agree with this position, but it's fairly consistent.

I agree with you 100%. I also think that it's an area that people (and countries) can and do have reasonable disagreements regarding where that balance point should be.

> I also enjoy the freedom. It's something you seem to have trouble understanding.

No, believe me, I understand; I think that you and I place different value on that level of freedom. For me, the freedom isn't necessarily an end in and of itself- it's one of many different means to an end. In other words, the freedom isn't valuable; it's what that freedom allows us to do, and how it allows us to live our lives, that's important.

Furthermore, I think of freedom as a vector, not a scalar- there are multiple dimensions to it. Simply talking about "more" or "less" freedom isn't very meaningful. Sometimes, trading one kind of freedom for another makes sense. For example, I generally try and follow traffic laws when driving. This is a constraint on my freedom to drive as fast as I want, wherever I want. However, by accepting this constraint, I experience a net gain in total freedom (i.e., the magnitude of my freedom vector increases overall), since by buying into the system of traffic laws, I get to enjoy a traffic and road system that lets us all have cars and use them to go wherever we want to go without having to worry (too much) about somebody driving the wrong way down our lane of traffic, and so on. I value that quite a bit- enough to follow rules that are sometimes suboptimal, or downright annoying.

Personally, I would feel a lot more free and happy if I knew that my friends all had health insurance, and there have been times in my life when it would have been very nice to be able to find a different job without worrying about what the effects would be on my partner's access to health care. I also feel like the overall societal benefits to everybody's friends having health insurance and what-not would result in a net increase in the magnitude of my personal freedom vector, to the extent that I'm willing to accept a hit to one or another of my vector's dimensions in terms of paying higher taxes, etc.. Obviously, you disagree with me on this count, and that's fine- but let's make sure we understand precisely what it is that we're disagreeing about.

It seems to me that one way to think about our difference of opinion is that, when you and I calculate the magnitude our freedom vector, we're placing different weights on the various dimensions--- in other words, some dimensions are more important to you than others. Heck, we might even be calculating our freedom vectors in entirely different spaces- our dimensions themselves might be different, which would make it very hard to compare how you think about and value these things to how I think about and value them. Can you tell I'm in the final throes of dissertation writing? :-)

> Why does it matter to you? It's my money. 5 or 6 million per year really isn't that much anymore.

Well, it actually doesn't matter to me personally; I just have a hard time getting my head around the concept that, past that point, another million would have any net effect on my personal happiness level. However, as I said before, this could totally be an artifact of the fact that I'm not in that position. Maybe if I were, I'd feel differently. Note that the exact amount isn't really so important- just the idea that there's a point past which it doesn't matter. Maybe the real point is 10 million, maybe it's only 1 or 2. Obviously, it'll be different for everybody, but I don't think it'll differ by all that much, once all is said and done.

BTW, I disagree that 5 or 6 million/year "isn't that much anymore." First of all, in most of the world, that's such a fantastical amount that you might as well as be talking about being paid in unicorn horns; however, we're not talking about living in Botswana- we're talking about living somewhere like the US. So, here in the US, 5/6 m/year is way more than enough to live in incredibly decadent luxury in any city in the country. I suppose it might not enough to actually own and operate a private jet, but it's certainly enough for NetJets; it's probably not enough to buy one's own island, but short of that sort of thing, I'm having a hard time imagining something I'd like to do that I couldn't do easily on that kind of income.[1] Again, maybe my imagination is too limited, here, but I kind of don't think so- I've certainly got a taste for creature comforts, and enjoy luxuries as much as anybody else. Remember, I'm not saying that people shouldn't earn tons of money- just that, after a point, what does it matter? And, if it doesn't matter, why not use it supporting a system that efficiently makes life comfortable for people that don't have as much as you do?

> The US already has Medicade and Medicare. Over 70% of people are covered in some way or another by their employer.

First of all, that still leaves 30% of the country that isn't covered, which is way too damn many. Second of all, what most people call "Medicaid" is actually a patchwork of different programs that vary widely in terms of coverage requirements and services from state to state, and is far from an ideal system, although it is better than nothing. As to the fact that most people who are covered are covered through their employers, doesn't that strike you as a major dent in their freedom? How many potential entrepreneurs do you think don't bother simply because they can't risk losing their (or their family's) health insurance? In my mind, this represents a major hit to personal liberty, and as such seems like exactly the sort of thing that a system intent on maximizing individual freedom would be attempting to fix.

> You haven't talked about the negative effects of a socialized healthcare system and you are trying to use sympathy to get me to agree with you.

Well, I haven't talked about it, because I didn't see it as relevant to the discussion- most of the rest of the world's countries employ some form of government-funded universal healthcare, and even though there certainly are negatives, I gotta say- I've traveled a fair bit, and due to my work, wherever I go I end up talking to people about healthcare. I've never- not once- heard somebody tell me that they'd rather have the US's system than their own country's, even if they've spent the last half-hour enumerating their system's problems. That says something, in my mind. Furthermore, there are a lot of different kinds of "socialized healthcare systems." Some of them have usage limits, etc.; some are surprisingly market-driven (e.g., Switzerland). That's not really what we're talking about, though. No system is going to be perfect; the question is whether a government-run system that guarantees a certain level of coverage to all citizens would be better or worse than our current system (or lack of system).

> Healthcare is a finite resource. We need some way to limit usage. There needs to be a hybrid system in place that limits total visits per year (and charges fees after that) or it will eventually collapse. Unlimited anything is a bad idea.

All 100% true points. "Rationing" is a really dirty word when it comes to health care, but it's an absolute necessity, if for no other reason than resources are ultimately finite. Right now, one of the ways we limit usage is by limiting access, which I personally view as unjust. If everybody had equal access, maybe we could figure out a better way (not bloody likely, IMHO, but it can't be worse than what we've got now). Note that I'm personally extremely pessimistic about health care in the US, even if we somehow were able to get a better system into place, but I don't think that means that we shouldn't try.

At any rate, this is all kind of off-topic from our original discussion.

[1]: Exception: massive-scale philanthropy, along the lines of the Gates Foundation.

This tax system is really only taking a large chunk if you have a lot to begin with, so I don't think you are going to lose your freedom because of it.

The tax system will prevent everyone from getting a large amount and taking a large chunk from the people making a large amount.

Even if you have money just sitting in a bank account with 0% interest, you are still taxed every year on that money (IE: your net worth, which is explained in the article).

It has created entire generations of people reliant on government services. I just hope the same system is around in 30 or 40 years or all that money will be gone (and since so much is taken from your paycheck, most people won't have enough by then for medical/living expenses). This is the long-term risk nobody is talking about because they are only concentrating on the short-term.

It reminds me of all the people that invested their entire lives into big companies like General Motors thinking they would be around forever and that they would have a pension when they retired. Now they are getting more and more of their benefits taken away. A government is no different.

When the majority of your money is being pumped into the system, it becomes almost impossible to diversify your risks, which is scary. I'm just surprised that so many people here can't see this.

If money motivates you, become a day trader, hedge fund manager, bank executive. Work with money. At the kind of shear stress you get at these levels, you need the edge that comes from doing something you want. Just trudging in day after day for the money just won't cut it.

Number one on that list is the 36th on the Fortune Global 500- probably not /that/ pitiful.

I would still prefer to live here in Norway.

No human being needs 1 billion dollar to live correctly, and even in indecent luxury. Some people also value well begin of other and not only their own. (It might still be partly egoistic in a sens that this makes them feels better and it's probably very cool to live in an environment where people are happier, but i don't thing that invalidate the whole idea...)