What Caught My Eye Today - Norway, Sweden, Venezuela, Fish

Norway - As if there were not enough reasons to envy Norway... Middle East-style oil wealth combined with a generous Nordic welfare model is slowly throttling big chunks of Norway’s economy, threatening western Europe’s biggest success story. On the surface, Norway is the envy of the world: growth is strong, per capita GDP has exceeded $100,000 and the nation sits on a $700 billion rainy day cash reserve, or $140,000 per man, woman and child. But it may just be too much money as Norwegians, more keen on leisure and family life are working less and less. Gee whiz. Your heart just bleeds for these poor folks, doesn't it? Wage costs are up 63% since 2000, about six times more than in Germany or Sweden, while the employment rate, adjusted for part time work, is 61%, below rates anywhere in the Nordics and even below Greece. Still, unemployment is a barely visible 3% as more prefer part time work. The government recently warned that unless working hours are increased by 10% over time, the state will eventually start eating into its savings. Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river. You have $700 billion collecting dust in some vault. There are worst things that could happen. The central bank also warned that the welfare model is simply. encouraging people to leave the labor market. Norway’s egalitarian wage distribution pays low-skilled workers well above the European average but pays the higher-skilled at, or even a touch below, international norms. The central bank predicts that wages will rise about twice as fast as GDP for several years to come while productivity improvements will trail economic growth. With a budget surplus worth 12% of GDP, Norway can afford just about anything now but unless it scales down benefits, that surplus will melt away. But generous benefits, a good work-life balance and limited wage inequality are long-standing parts of a social model cherished by many Norwegians, so any change will be difficult. And that, my friends is why they are called entitlements. When times are good, governments pass along that prosperity to its citizens, as it should. The problem, is that those same citizens get used to the frills they receive in good times and cannot understand why they shouldn't get what they have become accustomed or entitled to when the good times inevitably end.

Sweden -  Sweden is in a bit of a pickle: the squeaky clean Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million has run out of garbage. How is this even possible? The landfills have been tapped dry; the rubbish reserves depleted. And although this may seem like a positive predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden has been forced to import trash — 80,000 tons of refuse annually, to be exact — from neighboring countries, namely Norway. Pray tell, why would anyone do this? Swedes' remarkable recycling habits - only 4% of all waste generated in the country is landfilled - are also a bit of a problem given that the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Finally something I can relate to. It’s kind of a great deal for Sweden. Why am I not surprised. Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and landfilled. On one hand, I'm impressed at what Sweden has managed to accomplish with not only its recycling program but also its innovative energy incineration program.  One wonders if other countries couldn't learn something for the Swedes.  On the other hand, don't you just hate these guys? 

Venezuela - Venezuela's government has given up on its plan to preserve the body of late President Hugo Chavez in a glass case like that of Vladimir Lenin. Bugger. I guess I will have to cancel my trip to Venezuela. If I cannot see Chavez's corpse, the trip just wouldn't be worth it.  After Chavez died early this month of canter, the acting president announced that the body would be placed on display in perpetuity in the Museum of the Revolution.  But Russian scientists told Venezuelan officials that the body was not embalmed in the right way to preserve it for long, and now it is too late.  I cannot help but wonder what these guys did to Chavez's body in attempting to embalm it the "right way".  I know it's a bit gross, but tell me you weren't thinking the same thing. Instead the government will convene a commission of "the world's best scientists" to study tissue samples and investigate whether Chavez was poisoned by the United States. Will this commission really consist of "the world's best scientists" or just those who weren't able to come up with a good enough reason to get out of it? Personally, I think a good lie detector is all that is needed here. What with everyone lining up to take credit for this, I'm not sure science is really going to help here.

Lent ends this Friday, so I thought this next item was not only rather amusing but also timely.

Fish - Early settlers of Quebec had a tough time following the Catholic Church's Friday dietary restrictions, since there wasn't much edible fish around.  There was no shortage of beaver meat, though. Lucky them. So in the 18th century the Quebecois asked the church to declare that the beaver was a fish. Seriously? How do you make that connection? After all, it lived in the water and had a flat, scaly tail. How can you argue with logic like that? The Church agreed and the beaver got classified as a Christian fish. Of course they did.