{"id":410,"date":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=410"},"modified":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T01:11:00","slug":"in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism<\/a><\/p>\n

At one point, I asked Wiggo Dalmo why he was still working so hard to expand his company: Why not just have a nice life\u2014especially given that the authorities would take a hefty chunk of whatever additional money he made? “For me personally, building something to change the world is the kick,” he says. “The worst thing to me is people who chose the easiest path. We should use our wonderful years to do something on this earth.”<\/p>\n

When I got back to the United States, I had a beer with Bj\u00f8rn Holte, the CEO of bMenu, whom I’d first met in Oslo. It was early November\u2014days after the congressional elections\u2014and Holte had just arrived in New York City, where he is opening a new office. We talked about the commercial real estate market, the amazing cultural diversity in a city that has twice as many people as his entire country, and the current debate in the United States about the role of government. Holte was fascinated by this last topic, particularly the angry opposition to President Obama’s health care reform package. “It makes me laugh,” he says. “Americans don’t understand that you can’t have a functioning economy if people aren’t healthy.”<\/p>\n

Holte’s American subsidiary pays annual health care premiums that make his head spin\u2014more than $23,000 per employee for a family plan\u2014and that make the cost of employing a software developer in the United States substantially higher than it is in Norway, even after taxes. (For a full breakdown, see “Making Payroll.”) Holte is no pinko\u2014he finds many aspects of Norwegian socialism problematic, particularly regulations about hiring and firing\u2014but when he looks at the costs and benefits of taxes in each country, he sees no contest. Norway is worth the cost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This issue of Inc. ended up in my mailbox instead of my subscribing neighbor’s. Divine providence, clearly.<\/p>\n

You will be shocked, I know, that there are hard working people who are not Americans and that there are other health systems that don’t hobble businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism At one point, I asked Wiggo Dalmo why he was still working so hard to expand his company: Why not just have a … Continue reading “In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contrarian-economics"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}