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I really liked this TED talk:

Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU

⬐ bluejekyll

Thanks for sharing that.

This all resonates well with my own beliefs, so I’m sure I’m biased. But good free education for everyone, automation to free up the lower rungs of the workforce and increase productivity, social safety net to make people less concerned about layoffs and work fluctuations.

If only the wealthy supported these policies, they would be more wealthy!

I'm in Oslo now. There is an active start-up scene here. I have lots of Norwegian friends who have started businesses or non-profits. I know of people who started a tech business in SV and then moved back home to Norway for the quality of life.

The safety-net gives you the ability to take risks, without risking your healthcare or your children's future.

There is very little poverty and crime here, compared to SF. Public services work. If you go to a shop or restaurant, it feels good knowing that the people working there are making a living wage with 5 weeks vacation, etc.

Norway has more $-millionaires per capita than the US: https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU

Well, it depends. This short tedxoslo had some nice points ("Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?" Hint: not the US): https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU

He's talking about social mobility from 8:30

I watched a very interesting TED talk related to this the other day. The premise is the question "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?". The answer won't surprise you if I tell you the answer will surprise you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU

⬐ wolco

Define rich.

⬐ StavrosK

He does.

⬐ starpilot

He says Scandinavia and uses number of wealthy per capita and social mobility rankings. He then comes up with a narrative supporting his theory in a pat me on the back tone.

> what about sharing it among the people who didn't have the same luck than you?

That's one big thing what taxes are for: To redistribute wealth. And I have employees which earn good money. I don't know what you expect from me.

> Some people can afford to take risks and earn even more while some simply cannot.

That's why a solid social system is so important. It gives us the room to take risks because we can be sure that we can get food, shelter and healthcare. See [1].

[1]: https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU

⬐ mockingbirdy

> Some people can afford to take risks and earn even more while some simply cannot.

I would like to know what you mean specifically. When you are jobless, the German system gives you enough to rent an apartment and eat something. It's not luxurious, but it's better than those anti-social systems like those in the US. You don't have to worry about getting enough food.

When these basic needs are met, you are free to open your mind. Most people don't - even those that have jobs - and I think that's pretty sad. Many people accept the pointless work and shitty environments because the fear of social decline is so big in their heads. I think most of those points you talk about can be changed on the psychological level. Money doesn't necessarily change this, it's a mindset.

⬐ antpls

When I talk about environment and legacy, I talk about your parents, your grand-parents and your grand-grand-parents.

If you are born Germans and your parents are Germans since generations, there are higher chances they teached you how the system works since the first day. It's probable they accumulated a social network of friendly lawyers, politicians, or any other persons the system already rewarded, and told you what to do to make sure you keep your privileges and protect the system.

Trusting the system when you are a foreigner is way more difficult, especially when you know no one.

You can't compare the lifestyle of someone who lives with $10k/month with someone who is clueless and, because of lack of information and ressources, cannot defend his/her own human rights.

We are not born equal, if your parents are richer than mines, you are probably privileged before we even proved our skills.

⬐ mockingbirdy

There are many assumptions in your comment - maybe I can provide some anecdata: My mother is from india (so I know what you mean with the problems for foreigners) and my parents were not wealthy for a long time. They still aren't extremely wealthy and I can make more money than my parents combined (but without that job security).

All they've told me was how important education is. But I've dropped out of college anyways. I wasn't very good in school. I didn't care.

I agree with you in general, but not everyone who's able to achieve something got it naturally. My father works 50-70 hours a week and he was the best in school because he had no other chance to study otherwise (he wasn't allowed to get a degree and needed the best grades to get an exception; GDR was a hostile place for intelligent people). My grandfather worked since he was 13 (this was shortly after the war; his father died).

I'm not the type of person who thinks that the world owes anyone anything.

I've learned about how the system works in economics classes in school (we had a very good teacher who showed us the BS in the world) and through psychology books.

There are many money-poor people who give their children the opportunity to grow. As I've said: Many times, it isn't about money and privilege. It's about attitude and mindset - a specific mindset can lead to privileges. Not taking anything for granted, for example. Not immerse oneself in self-pity.

- - -

I still agree with you in general, because the numbers are very clear about it: Social mobility is very low in Germany.

Most poor people have other problems holding them back e.g. some parents were abused in their childhood, so they're unable to give proper emotional support. Many are jealous of the opportunities their kids have (not because they're bad people, but because they never felt loved). Escaping those vicious cycles is extremely hard and we're currently not doing enough to change it. But I still think that our current system enables people who value education and have a certain mental health to move upwards - much better than the system in the US. You don't need to be rich to get good education here or accumulate big debt.

In these kinds of discussions I like to promote this interesting TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?"

Spoiler: the talk shows that statistically the Nordic countries lead the world in millionaires and billionaires / capita, and in rags-to-riches. The talker offers the opinion that this is because its of the strong social safety net, education and healthcare.

Living in Scandinavia of course I like to hear this ;)

⬐ kodablah

I've about given up on per-capita studies whose results rely on cultural differences too (but of course can't account for them). We have to accept places are different in more ways than population size. It's like saying where in the world is it easiest to have blonde hair.

⬐ None

None

⬐ fastball

Or maybe it's the very high resource/population ratio?

The petroleum sector accounts for 40% of Norway's exports.

Fishing is 10% (!) of Norwegian exports.

Both of these things have an incredibly high extraction efficiency in the modern era. It would be nice to believe it's the social safety net, but I don't think that hypothesis is backed up with much evidence. The much more obvious reason is staring Scandinavia in the face. I'm intrigued to see how Norway does when the rest of the world stops using petroleum and goes vegan.

⬐ willvarfar

Sweden, without oil and without much fishing, is also doing really well per-capita etc.

On the ground, the welfare state approach seems the plausible explanation.

And how will Norway do post-oil? Really rather well, it seems, because of its sovereign wealth approach which contrasts strongly with eg the Texas approach.

Here is an interesting related tedx talk about the proportion of rich people in Nordic socialist countries https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU

No.

Norway has extremely high salaries, and income tax that is pretty much equivalent to California (about 1/3 of your gross salary after deductions), in fact Norway is one of the easiest countries to become rich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU

You could argue that radical financial transparency is what causes this.

⬐ refurb

Income tax about what it is in CA? I'll take your word for it. What about all the other taxes? Car tax, VAT, etc?

From what I've seen purchasing power is much lower in Norway. $50K would go much further in US, Canada, UK than Norway.

⬐ marvin

Summarizing the most important Norwegian taxes, which are in aggregate higher than California's:

* 25% VAT on everything except food, which is 12%. Electric vehicles currently exempt

* 40% income tax on average including 8% public pension contribution. Highest marginal tax on income is 47%, which applies to incomes greater than $116k.

* Employer has to pay 14% of your salary as employment tax. Company profits are taxed at 24% (this is separate from the capital gains tax). Stock-based compensation is taxed as income, so no possibility of weaseling around the employment tax. You won't get stock-based compensation unless you're in a startup or a C-class executive at a (big) private company. The wealth tax does weird things to the valuation of stock options; they'll almost always be worthless unless your company is sold or goes public.

* Net assets above ~$175k are taxed at 0.85% p.a, primary residence contributes only 25% of its market value to net assets

* 29% capital gains tax, primary residence is exempt as is most tax income from renting out primary residence. Sell your home with $1 million profit? No tax.

* On average ~$10k tax on all new motor vehicles, electric vehicles currently exempt

* A tax of approximately 30% (~5 NOK per liter) is applied to gasoline, in addition to the 25% VAT. Annual tax of ~$1000 on all motor vehicles, increasing with how good the vehicle is. Electric vehicles currently exempt.

* Various taxes on alcohol, tobacco, air travel. Some municipalities have a property tax on the order of ~$500 p.a. for an average residence.

I've eyeballed most of the currency conversions.

⬐ fergie

Yes, cars, alcohol and food are _much_ more expensive in Norway, mostly due to taxation, and to a lesser degree the high cost of labour.

Norwegian income tax is subject to a lot of deductions, so in practice people will never pay the full whack. In fact the average income tax has been estimated to be under 30% http://www.smartepenger.no/skatt/653-skatteprosenter-pa-lonn... (Norwegian language article)

It was a tidbit that I ran across in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU which had some other interesting data points as well. Such as the fact that when you look at rich people per capita, it seems that social democracies like Canada, and Scandinavia create rich people more easily than the USA does.

For example if you look for people worth $30million+ per million people, Canada has 186 while the USA has 126. That's about a third more per capita.

And watching the video, you find that 42% of the children of the bottom 20% in the USA wind up in the bottom 20%. Very little of Canada does anything like that poorly.

⬐ refurb

Whoa, wait a second, now it's better if Canada has more people per capita with >$30M in wealth? That would suggest less income equality, not more?

⬐ None

None

⬐ eastWestMath

Not really, a lot of the income inequality comes from having a large underclass stuck in a cycle of generational poverty for various reasons (often/mostly related to structural racism).

Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?

https://youtu.be/A9UmdY0E8hU

⬐ fastball

This guy makes claims with 0 evidence. Points he makes:

1. Nordic countries have more über wealthy per capita.

2. Nordic countries are social democracies.

Then he draws the conclusion, with no corroborating evidence, that these two things are inextricably linked. No data to link these two points at all. Nordic countries in general have a high GDP PPP, and that is probably not solely (or at all) due to being social democracies. Scandinavian systems need to be efficient due the nature of their environment, e.g. they have a lot of land and not a lot of population, and fairly harsh climate (e.g. poor farming conditions). I would almost argue that "being cold" is probably a better indicator of national wealth per capita than "being a social democracy" (though admittedly, I haven't done thorough research either). I mean, look at Canada. Look at the non-farming bits of the US vs. the farming bits. Look at North versus South Italy. etc. Industrialization is more efficient and effective in regions where alternative methods of production weren't great in the first place.

For reference, here is the population density of the nations he was comparing (in people per km^2):

Iceland - 3; Norway - 16; Sweden - 22; US - 33; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...

The US has 11x the population density of Iceland. Easier to have shared wealth when each person in your country can have 11x the land they could have in another country (with the caveat, of course, that this only applies if you are an industrialized nation).

I mean, just look at one of his "indicators" - billionaires per million people. By that metric, iceland is at that top. But there is only a single billionaire in iceland. Statistically, then, it's easier to be a billionaire in iceland. In practice, however, that is not the case. Things like population subsets need to be considered. In the US, you have a very large population, which is obviously going to impact per capita stats. However, you need to ask what proportion of those people are actually pursuing wealth in a way that could ever result in becoming a billionaire. e.g. a grocery bagger, probably never to be a billionaire. A plumber? Same. A hippy in a commune? Same. No data has been shown to adjust for lack of competition. At the end of the day, you have to look not at the total population, but at how many people are actually competing to become uber wealthy. Because, while attaining wealth isn't a zero-sum game, it certainly isn't an "everyone wins" game either.

Scandinavian countries have a very high proportion of jobs that don't really have a cap on upper income, such as software/game development, banking, music production, etc. because they have exceedingly efficient economies (as he actually touches on).

However, there is not clear reason to believe that they are efficient because they have social democracies. In fact, the converse (they became social democracies because they already had efficient economies) is just as likely, if not more so.

⬐ doktrin

> The US has 11x the population density of Iceland. Easier to have shared wealth when each person in your country can have 11x the land they could have in another country (with the caveat, of course, that this only applies if you are an industrialized nation).

Can you elaborate on this supposed link between population density and shared wealth in developed nations? I don't understand the logical underpinnings of your argument. Developed countries almost by definition are less reliant on local geography.

Moreover, I don't see how space metrics are even relevant here. Iceland may technically have a lot of available "land" - but more than half the country lives in Reykjavik. A similarly lopsided urban / rural population distribution holds true in other Nordic countries.

⬐ fastball

You are exactly right. I did a poor job of explaining my thinking.

My point about geography and population density needs to be related to my point about industrialization to make any sense.

It is this: Nordic countries have modern economies weighed very heavily towards industrialization/mechanization, but most importantly, they are efficient. As you say, they also have a "lopsided urban / rural population distribution", which is a much better way of saying (thank you) what I was trying to say: Nordic countries have land, but it's not good for the classic wealth generator - farming. This is why the population is focused in urban areas and is not spread out. However, luckily for places like Iceland, modern cities don't really care how good the land is for farming. An oil refinery doesn't care about the health of the soil. A modern factory doesn't care if the terrain is a bit rocky. Solar panels don't care. Mines don't care. etc., etc. Basically all modern industry is fine in a place like Iceland.

This an unexpected and immense boon to making a modern industrialized nation efficient, because on the one hand, you have major population centres with not much in-between (due to the lack of farming), which is in itself efficient, because areas you need to service with public services are greatly reduced. But on the other hand, you have plenty of space to put modern things like factories or new cities or what have you.

Compare this to the US, the country with more arable farmland than any other country on earth. Sure, the US has big population centres, but they are spread out, and many of them are still driven by rural economies. This greatly reduces efficiency, and is generally why the spread out states seem to be further behind the small / densely populated ones.

I've included the percentage of population that is urban below for comparison, according to The World Bank, from 2015. Also, I think it is slightly different when the rural population is doing something like fishing (Nordic) vs farming, but I won't go into that here.

US - 81%

Sweden - 86%

Iceland - 94%

Comparing anything to the US is a little bit silly though, because the US is comprised of 50 states, all of which are quite a bit different from each other. For instance, I bet the uber wealthy per capita in say California or New York is much, much higher than the Nordic countries. So the obvious answer to this video is probably "move to New York or California if you want to make a lot of money". I will say that would probably require more initial capital than a nordic country, but if you have the initial capital, then your chances are probably better. SO THE ACTUAL ANSWER IS: Get a great education and livelihood in Norseland while you're young, get some seed capital, and move to Cali/NYC/etc to really start making bank.

Obviously if you want to become a billionaire, you're not going to move to Plano, TX. Yet Plano is affecting the per capita stats.

⬐ Chris2048

Now can I know which country has the most net-salary millionaires who used to be regular software developers?

⬐ ralfd

Summary?

⬐ rodrigosetti

In which society is it easiest to get rich? Contrary to common belief, it is not countries like the US or the UK that create the highest number of rich people per capita, but Nordic social democracies like Norway and Sweden. Counter intuitive as it may sound, high taxes, generous welfare states and strong unions makes a better environment for the people who wants to earn huge amounts of money, than free markets, low taxes, and minimal government intervention.

⬐ mamon

First, define "huge amount of money" because obviously Nordic countries have some alternative definition of it :) How many self made billionaires are in Sweden?

Second, the way of becoming rich country haven't changed for the last few millenniums: you have to exploit cheap labor from a large number of slaves (sorry, now we call them immigrants) Therefore becoming rich strongly depends on being born in right race and social class.

Lastly, it's amusing how so many social issues get blamed on capitalism and free markets when both of those things are pretty much nonexistent in most countries - even US have some heavy regulation in place.

⬐ Temasik

Would local market counts?

Average 5 million humans in Scandinavian countries vs 300+ in USA and billions in China and India

Throw anything in China the market is already there e.g that China uber

⬐ Alan_Dillman

I was quite surprised that the Nordic countries have more reported billionaires per capital than Canada, despite the Nordic nations being —theoretically— less business friendly.

Example: Canada has about 1.08 billionaires per million people, while Sweden has 3.16. Norway, with its oil, performs more poorly, but still better than Canada: 2.69 billionaires per million people. Denmark is only slightly worse than Canada at 1.05.

Source of my information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...

⬐ mcv

> the Nordic nations being —theoretically— less business friendly.

I've seen plenty of reports that listed the Nordic countries as the most business friendly. Taxes are only a tiny part of the equation, and the tax differences are not as big as often believed.

⬐ namlem

Denmark is consistently ranked either first or second in terms of business friendliness, trading places with New Zealand. The US is third.

⬐ pawadu

> less business friendly

Just hypothetically, which of these two made up countries do you consider more business friendly:

* Country 1 with low taxes and zero labor and environmental laws

* Country 2 with a highly educated work force and low crime but high taxes

⬐ apk-d

Crime isn't really a big factor, I think (maybe excluding weird failed states and countries that are at war) and work force is easy to train if you can afford the initial investment.

Low taxes + low bureaucracy go a long way.

⬐ Temasik

No fun being rich in a country where public infrastructure are broken e.g crazy congestion

⬐ tryitnow

Really? So instead of my business paying a lot in taxes I'll have to pay a lot for education. Doesn't really seem to be much of an advantage.

⬐ None

None

⬐ ZeroGravitas

Reminds me of the many discussions about the "business-friendliness" of GPL vs BSD software. Usually the focus is narrowly on the business that wants to take the code and sell it or derivatives as proprietary software, not on the business customers who would be locked into the software as customers and would benefit from GPL protections of software users.

But for whatever reason, that framing seems very powerful and hard to dislodge. Probably because there's (at least potential) fat profits available to people who disseminate it. I guess the same is true of the "business friendly" policies of Republicans.

⬐ Shivetya

First, this is a TEDx. Second this based on defining rich as based on the wealth report, individuals net worth more than 30m US dollars. (Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI))

So what he did is use the "Per Capita" rate to establish that Norway was #1, even though if you look at total the US comes at top.

So typical TEDx

⬐ tryitnow

What measure would you use instead of the per capita rate?

How else would you correct for population size?

Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve. If you want it to work it needs 3 things:

1) Free Education 2) High Taxes 3) Strong Unions

Sounds leftist? It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live. This and a good explanation can be found in "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? (TEDxOslo)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU

Just giving money may help in short term anyway, but I doubt it is one solution for everything.

⬐ s_q_b

1) Free Education

The Saudi's have a recently reformed education system, complete with a freshly built full-fledged research university: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST.)

KAUST has a more Western model of education, instruction in English, American and European faculty, partnerships with multiple Ivy League institutions. The current President of KAUST is Jean-Lou Chameau, who was previously the president of Caltech.

Perhaps most significantly, the university is granted greater freedom of speech and thought than probably anywhere else in Saudi Arabia. Saudi royalists politically protect the University, while the campus's isolated location prevents random acts of "law enforcement" by the religious police.

KAUST has an endowment of $20 Billion USD, which puts it in the same league monetarily with H/Y/P and is about twice the endowment of Oxbridge.

So the Saudis are investing in the right things in advanced education at least: alternative energy, desalinization technology, chemical engineering...

They're also building a series of new model commercial cities along the coast where they will attempt the same thing on a city-state scale. The religious rules will be less strictly enforced in these model cities, but far more importantly (for commerce), they will have independent judiciaries (still based on sharia fiqh law), but with written standardized laws of contract (uncertain contracts have put a strain on the Saudi economy.) They're also considering relaxing the onerous permitting regulations required to start a business.

It seems like the Saudis' want to have their cake, and eat it too. On the one hand, they want the benefits of Western higher education and economic systems. But on the other, they want to maintain a fundamentalist religious monarchy.

I cannot really see that being successful. The academic freedom needed to conduct meaningful research is diametrically opposed to the restrictions on thought and expression in a repressive theocracy.

⬐ sdiq

Education wise they may be doing well. However, I have a feeling they both do not pay taxes and lack unions of any form.

⬐ refurb

Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve.

What do you mean didn't evolve?

My understanding is a lot of stuff is free in Saudi Arabia. Oil money is used to fund education and cash is given to citizens.

Not sure I understand your point.

⬐ ptaipale

What countries did evolve? Not ones that had high taxes or even strong unions. Recently, as mentioned above: Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan.

Yes, education is important. But what also matters is a working government. Strong unions and high taxes are a consequence (you have them once you can afford them), not a tool to achieve wealth.

⬐ dv_dt

Who has control of the money in Saudi Arabia, is it in a few hands, or broadly distributed in a stable way so people can make good consistent long term decisions?

⬐ fche

"It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live."

I hear Hugo Chavez' daughter has billions.

⬐ jrochkind1

what sort of 'evolution' are you looking for, what does that mean to you?

I'm not sure the OP program is meant to lead to any kind of 'evolution'. It's meant to lead to fewer poor people.

⬐ peeters

I don't disagree with any of those numbered points, but this statement is completely irrelevant:

> Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve.

There are so many reasons why that's not relevant to the conversation that it's hard to know where to start. 1) You are conflating value systems with poverty. 2) You are cherry picking one particularly bad example and using it as evidence that it could NEVER work. 3) "All the money they can dream of" does not apply to all Saudi Arabians, it applies to those that have a lot of money.

⬐ andreasklinger

POV on social democratic systems as someone who is from one of those countries but lives in USA atm

We dont have it b/c they are more fair. We have them because they are cheaper, for everyone individually and a whole.

Yes we have higher taxes for higher incomes but on the other side. I couldn't even imagine getting 2-3 kids through college in America no matter what my (realistic) income would be.

Imo it's good to let the free market do what it's doing best: optimize, create entropy. Keeping balance and fairness between the players is the job of society, not of the market/the market players.