<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Dante-Gabryell Monson</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dante.monson@gmail.com">dante.monson@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:35 AM<br>Subject: Fwd: [gang8] Re: Notes from a small, successful country... Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism<br>To: <a href="mailto:econowmix@googlegroups.com">econowmix@googlegroups.com</a><br>
<br><br><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html" target="_blank">http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html</a><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Arno Mong Daastoel</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amd@daastol.com" target="_blank">amd@daastol.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 9:12 PM<br>
Subject: [gang8] Re: Notes from a small, successful country... Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism<br>To: Kevin Tighe <<a href="mailto:tighea2z@gmail.com" target="_blank">tighea2z@gmail.com</a>><br>Cc: Frederick William Engdahl <<a href="mailto:engdahl@t-online.de" target="_blank">engdahl@t-online.de</a>>, "Robert Locke (E-mail)" <<a href="mailto:blocke@hawaii.edu" target="_blank">blocke@hawaii.edu</a>>, "<a href="mailto:gang8@yahoogroups.com" target="_blank">gang8@yahoogroups.com</a>" <<a href="mailto:gang8@yahoogroups.com" target="_blank">gang8@yahoogroups.com</a>>, Ursula Backhaus <<a href="mailto:ursula_backhaus@yahoo.de" target="_blank">ursula_backhaus@yahoo.de</a>><br>
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<span>�</span>
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<p>
Dear Kevin,<br>
<br>
Sounds great doesn't it.<br>
Well, people are just as fed up about politicians here as anywhere
else and we have the worst infrastructure in all of Europe including
Albania, statistics tell us.<br>
So there are many things the article did not mention.<br>
;-)<br>
<br>
We are very fond of being self-critical here, but I think this
article is correct and corresponds to more nuanced and researched
views over here (- also concerning poverty, relative to quite
similar countries)<br>
<br>
><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans;">With a strong social safety net,<b> the downside
to starting a company and failing is small. </b>As a result,
entrepreneurship isn�t a lottery, so much as a lifestyle choice</span><br>
<br>
And there is more to this:<br>
<br>
Whereas employees of the former USSR and the present USA are afraid
to take responsibility for fear of being sacked etc (I know from
talking with workers and researchers), a worker in Norway normally
has a strong union and employment law behind him, as well as social
security, a non-hierarchical organisation structure etc.<br>
<b>This enables the rank and file worker to use his independent
imagination and take responsibility </b>without fear of being
sacked.<br>
Economically this is very effective.<br>
<br>
The traditional high level of trust in Scandinavia is also
effective.<br>
<br>
There is more. In economic slopes, the government pays part of the
salary for the company in order to make the company able to keep its
source of competence (labour) intact - as in Germany and other parts
of Northwest Europe.<br>
<br>
But, there are many things the article did not mention.<br>
;-)<br>
Arno<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 24.03.2011 20:25, Kevin Tighe wrote:
</p><blockquote type="cite">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Contrast
this to the American </span><a href="http://model.It" target="_blank"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">model.It</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> seems to me to be a glaring
weakness in American
thinking amongst 'movers and shakers' that an approach
something like this
would never even be considered.. it would be branded as
'communist' and
immediately buried. Wonder why?</span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 24pt;">Norway, entrepreneurial paradise</span><span style="font-size: 24pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 7.5pt; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-transform: uppercase;">JAN 20, 2011 10:25
EST</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/tag/entrepreneurship" target="_blank"></span></b><b><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-transform: uppercase;">ENTREPRENEURSHIP</a><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">�|�</span><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/tag/small-business" target="_blank"></span></b><b><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-transform: uppercase;">SMALL BUSINESS</a><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; color: rgb(204, 204, 204);"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html" target="_blank"></span><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: rgb(0, 110, 151);">Max Chafkin</a><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">�has a
fantastic story in
Inc magazine about how to structure an economy so as to
encourage
entrepreneurship, full employment, and general happiness and
contentment, all
while drastically reducing inequality. It�s easy, in fact: all
you need to do
is become Norway.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">There�s loads of
great stuff in
this piece, and I�d encourage you to read the whole thing. But
a few things
stand out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Chafkin starts with
the tale of <u><span>Wiggo Dalmo, an industrial
mechanic</span></u> with a high-school education who
chafed under his bosses, <u><span>set up his own shop</span>,
and
is now running a $44 million company with 150 employees</u>.
That�s the kind of
story which should be common in the US but is in fact rare.
But ask yourself:
in the US, how much would such a person be paying in taxes? <u>Dalmo
paid
$102,970 in personal taxes on his income and wealth last
year</u>, <u>which is
probably<i>lowe</i></u><i>r</i>, not higher, than the CEO of
a $44 million
company would pay in <u>taxes in the US.</u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">The reason is that there�s much
less income inequality in Norway</span></u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">. <u>With a strong
social safety
net, the downside to starting a company and failing is
small.</u> As a result, <u>entrepreneurship
isn�t a lottery, so much as a lifestyle choice</u>. If you
succeed, you�ll get
to run a large and successful corporation. But you probably
won�t pay yourself
a monster income.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Why not? Well, for
one thing, <u>you
won�t�<i>need</i>�to pay yourself a monster income</u>,
since things
like <u>healthcare and college education</u> � even through
grad school, even
outside the country � are <u>covered by the state</u>.
Another part of the
reason is that income, in Norway, is a matter of public
record. And then there�s
the fact that <u>money which would otherwise be going to the
top of the pyramid
is instead going to the bottom</u>, where it does much more
good:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">In a country with
low
unemployment and generous unemployment benefits, <u>a
worker�s threat to quit
is more credible than it is in the United States, giving
workers more leverage</u>
over employers. And though Norway makes it <u>easy to lay off
workers in cases
of economic hardship</u>, firing an employee for cause
typically takes months,
and employers generally end up paying at least three months�
severance. �<u>You
have to be a much more democratic manager</u>,� says Bj�rn
Holte, founder and
CEO of bMenu, an Oslo-based start-up that makes mobile
versions of websites.
Holte pays himself $125,000 a year. His lowest-paid employee
makes more than
$60,000. �You <u>can�t just treat them like machines</u>,� he
says. �<u>If you
do, they�ll be gone</u>.�</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Incentives matter,
of course. But
<u>not all incentives are purely financial</u>. And there are
serious problems
with the US system where the incentives seem to be structured
so that a large
number of people are competing to become one of a very small
number of monster
success stories � multi-millionaire startup founders, or
sports stars, or CEOs.
Most of us, it turns out, have problems with the idea of
playing that kind of
lottery. As Chafkin reports:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">I also became
convinced of this
truth, which I<u> have observed in the smartest American and
the smartest
Norwegian entrepreneurs: It�s not about the mone</u>y.
Entrepreneurs are not
hedge fund managers, and they rarely operate like coldly
rational economic
entities. This theme runs through books like Bo Burlingham�s�<i>Small
Giants</i>, about <u>company owners who choose not to
maximize profits and
instead seek to make their companies great</u>; and it can
be found in the
countless stories, many of them told in this magazine, of
founders who leave
money on the table in favor of things they judge to be more
important.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">There�s a lot of
talk, in the US,
about how small businesses are the engine of employment
growth</span></u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> �
something we clearly
desperately need. And <u>it looks like Norway has cracked
this nut</u>: it
leads the world in the creation of small businesses, and it
has just <u>3.5%
unemployment</u>, not to mention essentially <u>zero
poverty</u>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Raising taxes on
small businesses
in and of itself won�t help the rate of small-business
creation � but it�s
actually unlikely to hurt it that much, either. (And
interestingly, <u>taxes
paid by an employer in New York are actually�</u></span><u><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/comparing-labor-costs-in-norway-and-new-york.html" target="_blank"></span></i><i><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: rgb(0, 110, 151);">higher</a></u><u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">�than those paid
in Norway</span></u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">.)
What�<i>would</i>�help
would be a much stronger social safety net, so that someone
who starts a
company doesn�t need to fear a life of poverty in the event
that she fails. <u>Encouraging
small businesses necessarily means encouraging failure</u> �
but the cost of
failure is very high, in the US. Instead, we spend far too
much time worrying
about tax rates on the successful.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">There is precious
little evidence
to suggest that our low taxes have done much for
entrepreneurs</span></u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">�or
even for the economy as a
whole. �<u><span>It�s actually
quite hard to say how tax policy affects the economy</span></u>,�
says Joel
Slemrod, a University of Michigan professor who served on the
Council of
Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan. Slemrod says there is
no statistical
evidence to prove that low taxes result in economic
prosperity. <u>Some of the
most prosperous countries</u>�for instance, Denmark, Sweden,
Belgium, and, yes,
Norway�<u>also have some of the highest taxes</u>. Norway,
which in 2009 had
the world�s highest per-capita income, avoided the brunt of
the financial
crisis: From 2006 to 2009, its economy grew nearly 3 percent.
The American
economy grew less than one-tenth of a percent during the same
period.
Meanwhile, countries with some of the lowest taxes in Europe,
like Ireland,
Iceland, and Estonia, have suffered profoundly. The first two
nearly went
bankrupt; Estonia, the darling of antitax groups like the Cato
Institute,
currently has an unemployment rate of 16 percent. Its economy
shrank 14 percent
in 2009.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">You can�t blame
all of Estonia�s
problems on its low taxes, of course </span></u><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">� the currency
issue (Norway�s kroner is floating,
while Estonia just joined the euro) is also huge. <u>And
Norway does have all
that oil revenue</u>, too. <u>But looking at Estonia�s</u>
housing bubble and
bust, one sees an economy where <u>people are striving to get
rich quick, in
contrast to Norway�s culture of simply trying to be as happy
and successful as
possible</u>. Which turns out to be extremely successful</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">�</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html" target="_blank">http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html</a></p>
<h1><span>In
Norway, Start-ups Say
Ja to Socialism</span></h1>
<p>We venture to the very heart of the hell that is
Scandinavian
socialism�and find out that it�s not so bad. Pricey, yes, but a
good place to
start and run a company.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By�<a href="http://www.inc.com/author/max-chafkin" target="_blank">Max
Chafkin</a>�|� <a href="http://www.twitter.com/chafkin" target="_blank">@chafkin</a>� �|�<span>Jan 20,
2011</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">��.</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
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