How Norway Got So Insanely Rich

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I'm a Brit and lived in Norway for a year. Despite only having a basic unskilled job and only kind-of speaking the language, I felt more financially secure there than I ever have in the UK.

Well as a Norwegian with family in Brazil, my conclusion is that the low levels of corruption in Norway is the main driver behind its success. What people often forget is that corruption is much more than brown envelopes with cash going from corporate executives to polititicans. Corruption is for example hiring a friend for a vacancy instead of hiring the best qualified candidate. Part of Norways success can be atributed to our cultural heritage in where we are not relationship focused in our business relationships. We focus on the deal and the results, the relationships are important, but secondary. Foreigners can often regard us as "cold" or "distanced" due to this, but in fact we are not.

In India, we use Norway as a benchmark of growth while we grow, recently Norway helped India build a geo thermal plan in the Himalayas.

Norway is like a lottery winner than put most of its winnings in dividend stocks. Great leadership.

I am from India and living in Norway for 15 + yrs(now a Norwegian citizen). Norwegians are so inclusive and strong believes of equality and mostly don't care about religion or god. I think this is their strength. Feel so lucky and proud to live here.Jeg elsker dette landet🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴.

As i recall, Norway's doctrine for spending the newfound oil money was to do exactly the opposite of what the Netherlands did. The Netherlands' economy suffered greatly after excessive spending of their oil money, which was aptly named "The Dutch Desease". This happened a few years before Norway discovered its oil in the North sea, and after witnessing this cationary tale first hand, Norway would adopt a very careful approach to its spending. Instead, most of the surplus oil money would be stored in a fund to act as an insurance for when the oil reserves would eventually run out.

What a proud nation they must be for having leadership that thought of its people and country, Well done Norway and also for keeping your feet on the ground and head out of the clouds with ego etc. Bravo to its government

as a norwegian i'd just like to tell you how amazing this video is. thanks for educating other people, but also norwegians.

My great grandfather left Norway for America in 1906. My family in Norway was really poor, every extra dollar my great grandpa had was shipped back to Norway to support the family that stayed. In fact shipments of money, clothing and even candy was shipped to Norway in support of the family until the 1960’s at that point my great grandfather realized they weren’t so poor anymore after a visit.

Being Australian, I wonder how much better my country might be if our government took the same approach towards natural resources. We have a population of only 25 million and we have a significant percentage of the entire words ores and minerals. Unfortunately, we followed the American model and we let multi-national corporations take ownership over our resources and take all the profit.

Dude your videos are insanely good. Well-sourced, well-based, well-paced. I've read and seen documentaries about several of these topics for years and I was surprised about how many new things I've learned by watching your videos.

As a Norwegian, I'm impressed by the research you've done for this video.

I overheard a conversation between a customer and a guy working in my local grocery store in Oslo. The grocery store worker had just come back from holiday, and had spent two weeks traveling the French riviera. I've spent most of my adult life living in the US and the UK so I still find it really striking how people working those types of jobs can still afford relative luxuries like that.

From all of this, I think the best thing that happened to Norway was that it already had good governance, politically literate population, and a healthy dose of nationalism (idk the exact term but basically it's how politicians think for their country first and for themselves second), the things that many countries could only dream of.

One of the only videos that focuses on the groundwork before the oil boom. GDP before 1967 was similar to many other european counties that the time. Fishing and the shipping fleet were massive providers. Another important person is Farok al-kasim, a geologist that moved from Irak, and became on of the loudest speakers warning the government to not allow private companies to just pump and dump the sector. He was actually knightet by the king in 2012 for his efforts back then.

I worked in Norway on and off for 5 years, and I was told about this. At first I was sceptical about it. A country with no corporate or political corruption stripping its people of their assets, surely not? But as your excellent video explains, Norway got it right.

Interesting Fact: The picture you see at 7:21 was taken around the date of 20th of April which was the date that city was bombed and burned. The city is Namsos which is my home town and currently where I am. The city was bombed so badly British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used the Term "Namsosed" as a way to describe mass desturction, after the bombing there was pretty much nothing left except a few chimneys. After the defenders realised there was nothing left to defend they fled by sea in what would be known as Norways Dunkirk.

Norway is insanely rich because: 1. Norwegian culture frowns upon flaunting wealth. Thus rich people avoid driving Bentleys and Rolls Royce like in Gulf states. 2. A lot of Norwegian wealth is simply saved. E.g. Norway has a higher GDP per capita than the US, but Norway is saving a large chunk of generated wealth each year. 3. The rich simply are not as rich in Norway as in other comparably rich countries because the wealth is more evenly distributed. 4. Norway spend a lot of money on maintaining a spread population and maintaining its own agriculture. This is costly, but also means e.g. that food is very safe in Norway.

My dad once said "noway is so filled with hills, mountains, and valleys that if you'd somehow manage to flatten all that surface area like you do with a crumpled paper they would be one of the largest countries on earth"