Arne O. Holm says Making Money in the North Was Possible After All
Lego is one of the companies in the Nordic region that, according to the Economist, is doing better than competitors in other countries. (Screenshot from Lego's website)
Comment: It is said to be impossible to both earn money and build a solid business sector in the High North. This gloomy message is shared by both tax refugees in Switzerland and retired politicians. However, statistics in the Economist tell a different story.
This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. The comment expresses the writer's opinions.
Reversing
I read the article while the cries for help from Switzerland drowned out Christmas carols and the New Year's fireworks.
A former McKinsey consultant, Martin Bech Holt, has written a whole book about how our politicians "no longer care about the values created in the business sector," according to the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.
There are good reasons to question public spending—very good reasons, even when the advice comes from a politician who served in a government that spent mind-boggling sums reversing adopted policies rather than reforming them.
Will reverse rather than reform.
However, the criticism does not only apply to a state that is swelling out and is increasingly forcing itself on our lives. It is also about how it is supposedly impossible to earn money in Norway, among other places, due to the tax levels.
Impossible to become rich
One might ask how true this is. After DNB's last count, they found 500 Norwegians in Switzerland with a cash balance of more than NOK 25 million, in addition to what they might own of material goods. And all of it was earned in a country where it is supposedly impossible to become rich.
In addition to the international economy journal that has done a detailed calculation of the profitability of the European business sector, the finance sector is left out. It concludes that the Nordics are almost incomprehensibly successful.
Only 0,3 percent of the world population lives in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, while the countries account for one percent of the world GDP. The journal continues to list one successful Nordic business after the other.
The criteria for reaching this conclusion are too many to list here, but an example is that the profits of the 20 largest companies in the Nordic region are significantly higher than comparable businesses in other countries. The same is true of dividends to shareholders.
Acts like Trump monkeys.
International
One of the most important explanations for this Nordic superiority is that small countries must always think internationally. The domestic market is vanishingly small.
At the same time, the business sector's export reliance will be the biggest challenge in the future. More and more countries are acting like Trump monkeys and want to close the borders for international trade or pour state subsidies to compete with private businesses in other places in the world.
When Nordic state leaders try the same act without having the expertise, labor, or market with them, things often go wrong, like the giant bankruptcy of Northvolt in Sweden.
We are not in a position to compete with American protectionism anyway.
With an enormous national debt and 770,000 homeless, an increase of about 18 percent, according to Reuters, it is impossible to compete with an American president who does not burn a single calorie on thinking about anyone but himself.
Whatever the refugees might think.
The image becomes even gloomier with the world's richest man, Elon Musk, as his foremost advisor.
Standing strong
It is correct that Europe is lagging behind economically, and new economies indeed grow out of poverty, competing with a Europe that, in the future, will spend an increasingly large share of its state revenues on defense and the military industry.
But it must be permissible, at the beginning of a new year, to rejoice that four Arctic states are standing strong, if not very strong, in international competition.
Regardless of what the tax refugees may think.
