About the current situation in Norwegian economy

Due to a huge income from oil and gas fields which give the Norwegian goverment the ability to collect great tax amounts and gather huge funds for future prosperity, the world is generally regarding Norway as a country without economical problems or difficult challenges. Unfortunately, the situation is very different. Here is a survey of the most important aspects of the economical situation of Norway as by summer 2013:

The good side of the situation are still huge annually income from the oil and gas fields and one has found even new fields that can be opened for exploitation. . Another good side of the situation are big funds that still are growing by saving 4% of the annual tax income. It has been an aspiration of the politicians to make the funds so great that interests and dividends form the funds can pay for all pensions payed out to Norwegian citizens anually, an aspiration that is still not fulfilled though.

There are however emerging serious issues regarding the sources of economical income that Norway has available:

- A great part of the industry is directly engaged in the search for oil and gas, or in the production of oil and gas. Another great part is engaged in support of the oil industry, either directly or indirectly. Even airways, ships, hotels and resturants belong largely to this part.

- The oil an gas prizes are falling, partly due to the economical world climate, but even more to huge new fields that are been opened in other parts of the world, and even greater fields that has been found which still wait to be opened, for example in Australia.

- The Norwegian oil an gas fields are running out, which has the effect that the oil production has decreased by 30% from the top by now and the new fields found are not great enough to compensate for the loss.

- The cost of readying new fields for production and the production itself on Norwegian sea territories are skyrocketing, because the oil is steadily more difficult to bring up. The oil istallations also by now have a dangerous maintainance backlog that often creates production stops.

- These three facts above make the proffit from Norwgian oil and gas production decrease year by year and there is a real danger that the whole of the Norwegian hydrocarbone production will be proffitless within few years. This will have the effect that the whole of the industy that supports the hydrocarbone production will lose its proffit too..

- Norway has some industry in addition to the hydrocarbone dependent sector, mainly production of raw materials like aluminium, titanium, fertilizers and electric energy. There is also a smaller sector of specialized mechanical industry, information technology, furniture and biotechnology. But these industries are heavily afflicted by the general worldwide recession that does not seems to end for some years. The proffit ifrom these industries are generally declining and is suspeced to decline for years to come since these industries are equally affected like the industries in the rest of Europe.

- Norway also has let the competancy in other tields that the hydrocarbone dependent one degrade and there is little innovation in other fields. Norwegian industry is also getting constantly depleted by owners selling the share majority to foreign interests that after some time take down the factories in Norway and bring the patent and compentency out of Norway.

Norwey also have some huge internal challenges, directly connected to the type of society that Norway has become.

- The country has perhaps the greatest and most expensive burocracy in the whole western world. A huge part of the Norwegian population is engaged in controlling the rest of the population in various ways. The average Norwegian citizen does not, however, feel vey much in their daily life from the presens of this burocracy. It mainly stays in the background, waching everything and everyone and collecting data about everything and everyone. Nearly everything a Norwegian citizen does is in some way recorded by the burocracy..

- Norway also has a huge social and health sector, which however is very inefficient and generally are not solving the task they are meant to solve, and to some extent create broblems rather that solving problems. A great part of the Norwegian population is at any time out of work, waiting to be treated, or under treatment that does not cure their health problems at all, or only very slowly, and often causes new health problems.

- The country also have a great privat sector that delivers social services, including child protective servcises, and health services ordered by the public social and health sectors which burden the economy..

- The country's infrastructure is mostly worn down. There is a huge backlog in the maintainance of public buildings, hospitals, schools, railroads, sewers,electric grid and roads, and the backlog is growing.

- The Norwegian home prizes are among the highest in the western world, to some extent due to a backlog in house building, but even more due to a joint colaboration between real estate brokers, bankers and speculators in bringing the prizes to the greatest level possible.

- The average Norwegian citizen has a dept, mostly due to high prizes of homes and cars, that they are not capable of serving if the interest rates get higher or the average income decline, both of which is highly probable. A great part of the Norwegian population is also in a situation where they pay off dept by establishing new and higher dept.

- There is a constant immigration of people from foreign cultures When coming to Norway they will have a long time to adept and the Norwegian society has huge costs for the integration of immigrants. Many of these come from conflict areas and come here with great psychological trauma. Not a few also come with the attitude that Norwegians are obliged to adept to the rather strict living principles of their religion. These issues and the conflicts they create has become a constant challenge in everyday life of Norway.

- But Norwegian employrs also have got the habit of importing workers, and squeezing out people alreathy established in Norway from the workplace, in order to get a cheap and easily manipulated workstock, and thus contributing to a growing rate of unemployment.

- Norway has a very high de facto unemployment, but most of it is redefined to other cathegories and the unemployed giving permanent welfare. The official unemployment rates are rather small, but does not give a correct picture of the situation.

The economical funds possessed by Norway are big, but they are to great extent invested in precarious areas, including loans to countries in utmost difficulties. The funds will experience great losses, but how great is difficult to say. The funds are however not as huge as someone believes. If the whole of Norway was to live off the funds, they would only last 2-3 years, actually.

It is higly probable due to the listed factors that the average income per capita in Norway will decline drammatically in the near future. Then a huge part of the population will not be able to serve their dept and the government will not be able to maintain the huge public sector, comprizing also the private sector that delivers services to the public sector. The government will neither be able to alleviate the situation very much by using the funds either, simply bcause the funds are far from limitless.

One can hardly draw any other conclusion out of these facts that the Norwegian society will experience a collapse of the kind we have seen in Hellas or Spain, whith all problems herein included.