economics

Nuance? A Norwegian Tale

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Nuance was described in a past essay. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

There is a beautiful illustration of nuance across the ocean in Norway. Norway has been ranked the happiest nation in the world for nine consecutive years, according to The World Happiness Report.* But happiness does not inoculate anyone from misunderstanding an idea because of a lack of knowledge about nuance. Norway recently raised their country’s Wealth Tax rate despite the argument that raising a tax on the wealthy would make the rich leave Norway for lower tax countries. After the new tax passed, many wealthy Norwegians left the country.

Showing true confirmation bias, many news outlets reported it as a “tax exodus” and determined The New Wealth Tax is too much of a burden for the rich. The new Wealth Tax is 1% to 1.1% depending on rich you are. Kind of high, right?

From: Money & Macro 28m 9-24-2026 Norway raised taxes on the wealthy and millionaires started leaving – the headlines missed the biggest part of the story “Norway’s decision to increase its wealth tax was followed by a noticeable wave of wealthy business owners moving abroad, (and) produced headlines that portrayed the policy as a failure. But the transcript argues that the amount of taxable wealth leaving was relatively small and that higher wealth-tax revenue more than offset the departures. Its analysis instead points toward Norway’s capital-gains exit-tax rules as a major reason entrepreneurs had an incentive to move when they did. The broader lesson presented is that modest wealth taxes and aggressive exit taxes can create very different economic incentives.”

For a good, sleepy read, look at “The High Cost of Wealth Taxes”, by Christine Enache for the Tax Foundation Europe, dated June 6, 2024. It makes the case that taxing rich people doesn’t generate any new revenue, is illegal, and only four countries in the world still use the tax. Norway and Switzerland are two of those countries and both are in the Top Ten of Happy Countries. Coincidence?

WTF. Taxing rich people is illegal?** Or is it taxing them more than once that is illegal? Why would it not generate revenue? Or does it just not generate enough?

The whole issue is one big, bag of nuance. But it appears a lot of that “nuance” is “chatter”, “fluff”, even misinformation meant to make sure governments know NOT to tax the rich any differently than other citizens.

If you are rich or hope to be you want low taxes or none at all. Why? There appears to be a rich mindset that says this: “just because I’ve figured out a way to make more money than you, don’t make me pay more for the privilege.” Nuance? Yes. The few rich people I know have a very nuanced view of the non-rich. It’s not just the poor. It is an ambivalent belief about how the rest of us are not smart enough and greedy enough to take what anyone will give us.

The actual impetus for Norway’s Tax Exodus wasn’t related to the new HIGHER 1% tax. It was related to a previous law that was about to take effect, about what wealth is and how it gets “counted.” Just like in America and other rich countries, the tax code used to tax us, the citizens, is riddled with holes where nuance used to be, or strangled by layers of nuance when a simple sentence may have been enough.*** Even better, all of this is understood by tax attorneys, and advisors whose sole purpose is to use nuance, create nuance, or eliminate nuance so their clients can make, keep, and do whatever they want with money.

Holy crap there isn’t enough space for this subject. Stop reading.

But remember nuance. The lack of seeing it, recognizing it, and understanding it is ruining our world’s discourse and civility. Nuance is the opposite of opinion and is always present. Think of it before you speak. To paraphrase Dr. Wright: “A conclusion (opinion) is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

*Google It.

**I have anew appreciation for Robin Hood.

***Damn lawyers. We’re almost to the point where “simple sentences” are extinct.

Why? Because.

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After writing the last essay, I overheard a RadioLab podcast about the world’s population.

That essay’s lamely supported assertion about not much changing in the world suddenly became a lame, unsupported truth: massive changes are already underway and will forever change the world.

Don’t puff your chest out and think you knew all along climate change would be the major problem because it’s not. At least not yet. The “other” problem is already changing things in parts of the world and soon, its full effect will be felt in America.

The real, immediate problem: Population Growth. Specifically, the lack of population growth. In the late 1900’s, population growth was exponential and hit 3.7 billion in 1970. Experts labeled the high level of growth a “Population Bomb”. It threatened to outpace societies, systems, and the earth’s ability to supply food. My own personal world views are often shaped by the concept of constant growth since more people means more financial expansion, more building, more manufacturing, and a large population needing a centralized government for health, safety, and happiness. I often called America a big, stable, seaworthy ship capable of floating and lasting for centuries.

There are many different data points that could be mashed-up in this essay. Some sites, for example, “estimate” population growth to continue and we are already over 8.3 billion. With immigration and emigration issues, the total population figures can confuse population comparisons, but simply comparing birth to deaths tells the story we’re discussing. Checking births versus deaths reveals America’s changing growth rates. In 1960 there were 4.2 million births and 2.43 million deaths. Do the math. In 2026 there were 3.60 million births and 3.10 million deaths. Births declined while the general population increased.* 2027 figures may show more deaths than births!

Notably, China and other Asian countries responded to the 1972 Population Bomb by severely restricting new births in their societies. All those countries have recently reversed those restrictions and put in place new programs to generate more births.

America is already seeing the results of a population that may be “downsizing”. When Social Security began paying Old Age benefits in 1940, the system used taxes from over 150 younger workers to support a payment to one, old retiree. Our current 2026 system is using three (3!) younger workers. Is the difference caused by inflation or population loss or something else?

 Another problem is the “Population Bomb” caused the building of new schools to handle the new students. Due to America’s fragmented public and private school systems, getting accurate data is a crap shoot, but there is a consensus among the experts that grades 9-12 have had steady enrollment for the last 20 years, but total pre-school, elementary, and middle school enrollments appear to be declining. There are 3 closed schools in my town, right now.

The South Korea Ministry of Education, for comparison, has closed “4,000 schools and 17 regional offices” as the country’s student population shrinks.”**

America’s consumer driven, capitalist economy depends on new workers who become new consumers and generate regular growth in economic activity. *** So do other counties, even Socialist and Communist based countries.

Looks like regular growth is over. What will happen?

Ha. What do I care? I’m outta here, and–for the sake of my grandchildren–I hope someone in power notices this essay.

But first: Economists have predicted 10 out of the last two recessions. Ba dum dum.****

*The website, “Worldometer.com” shows a consistent 1-3% growth in the world’s population since 1972. Since 2020, that growth rate has never been more than 0.88% and has been declining every one of those 7 recent years. And that is with high levels of immigration.

**The Korea Times, December 28, 2025.

***An important complication in our current immigration crisis. We need workers.

****Am I aging myself by continuing to use the old “rim shot” comedy signal?

 It’s The Rich, Stupid

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Have you noticed the higher status of actors/citizens in all advertising, lately? Even the prostate cancer ads feature people who seem too well-off to be sick*. Car ads are for cars so expensive I can’t even afford the sales brochures. Medicare ads…why are those seniors always smiling, laughing, and well-dressed even in the pool? Is my economic inferiority complex simply an age thing? All my grand-kids have started jobs with salaries seldom seen in my entire working lifetime. Am I getting poorer or simply financially older? (Imagine a sad, sad face.)

It’s been mentioned, before, that income inequality is starting to skew financial-life planning for “normal people”. Here’s a (paraphrased) idea of what is happening:

Costco’s controversial new policy says something worrying about the economy

FAST COMPANY 11-4-2025  Jessica Stillman

New perks for some Costco members have received a decidedly mixed reaction from customers, employees, and analysts.” 

“It’s a decision that more and more leaders seem to be weighing. As management consultant Daniel Currell noted in a fascinating essay in The New York Times on the rise of pricey upgrades at Disney theme parks, companies are increasingly looking for ways to cater to–and extract more profit from—their most upmarket customers.” 

“Extract”? What a great word for what is happening. David Stockman and Ronald Reagans’ (and others) original “Trickle-Down” economic theory, where the benefits accrued by the rich will trickle down to the rest of us, appears to be working in the opposite direction, these days. The middle class of America has shrunk so much businesses are faced with the choice of marketing to the lower-class poor, or marketing to the upper-class rich. If you were running a business, which class would you want for customers? It is the logical result of a free-market capitalist society. Its effects, however, are anything but free. Those effects are easy to see in real estate where rich buyers purchase entire neighborhoods and gentrify it until no one but rich people can live there.

Now it’s seeping into all areas of life. If Costco can sell hamburger meat for $10 a pound because rich people will pay that much, what are poor hamburger buyers to do **? An upper-class customer base does not shop the same way a frugal middle-class or desperate lower-class shop. The upper-class rich don’t waste time with sales and coupons, often making purchases just to buy something, no matter the cost.

In the old days the free market focused on the savvy-shopping middle and lower classes simply because those people were the majority of purchasers. A simple chart would reveal why larger discretionary spending will beat lower, necessary spending anytime there is “competition” for markets.

Trickle Down is finally lifting all our boats, just not the way it was intended. The next few years will be interesting as there is no enforced government regulations or rules to limit the amassing of personal wealth.  Hopefully, all the new billionaires will let us have some crumbs. Forbes says “288 new billionaires entered the list in 2025.”  That gives America a total of over 900 billionaires. Ai says America had 13 billionaires in 1980. Imagine all that money…

*Don’t they get the best healthcare, with screenings and tests, whether they need them or not?

**Google “Model Pricing Strategy”.

RICH PEOPLE ARE RUINING OUR WORLD

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It’s okay to be rich. America is designed to not only allow it but encourages it. A capitalist economy is the perfect system to reward ingenuity, inspiration, hard work, and dedication. In an ideal world. And without that “carrot”, we may not have many of the inventions making life easier and safer.

In a less-than-ideal world, however, it is the perfect place for greed and injustice to run amok, unfettered, destructive, and cruel. Think of a herd* of cute, rabid bunnies who have genetically developed to the size of Elmer Fudd. He used to call them “wascally wabbits” in the old days…when they were cute and small.

Baffling, related, but incomprehensible sidebar: The Board of Directors of Tesla have offered Elon Musk a potential (and complicated) compensation plan worth $1 TRILLION(sic).

In a macro (large) economic system, general rules apply like the relationship between supply and demand: too much demand for goods with too little supply of goods means whoever has that “supply” can raise their prices and make more money. Manufacturers, investors, consumers, the government, me, we all used to rely on this one, basic, fundamental rule. There are many more complicated rules concerning pools of money, interest rates, taxes, the size of several types of debts, and blah blah blah. It’s also enlightening to understand the costs of things, where they come from, and how long they last. At least it used to be.

In 2024 there were 23.8 “million millionaires” in the America, or 460,000 per state. We had 813 Billionaires, a record, in 2024.

In 1960 we had 306 millionaires and fewer than 10 billionaires. When America was Great, originally.

If we ignore the crippling concept of Gross Materialism** and simply focus on the amassing of wealth, what is the problem? In a real, free capitalist system, we tend to pay a price for an object determined by “what the market will bear” as long as it more than the cost of the product. (Again, an economic process simplified for this post.) The “market”, a micro system, is us: you and me. Normal people. Average Joes and Janes with “normal” pools of money. What do you think happens when millionaires’ pools of money becomes part of this micro “market”? Can millionaires “bear” to pay more than Joe or Jane?

Our economic system generates 400,000 new millionaires, or 8,000 new ones per state, yearly. That’s a lot of “money” capable of “flooding” markets with millionaires’ dollars instead of Jane or Joes. No judgement, here, but how many millionaires really care about efficient, cost effective, market-driven pricing? Yes, some do, but most don’t. If Jane and a millionaire wanted the same car, or the same house, whose offer would the seller accept? It’s a question of not only “demand” in the market, but also the available “pool” of money in that market, and the desire of all sides to be treated fairly and economically “equal”. To wit: who is in better position to pay what the seller wants, even if it is too much? Jane or the Millionaire? Imagine if you were the seller…who’s your best bet to pay the highest price?

This scenario has “trickled down” to communities in America where Janes and Joes who research and buy responsibly are being priced out of purchasing, or at last are forced to make purchases at higher prices in a competitive situation. It is evident in housing markets and subtly infecting grocery, gas, and living essentials markets. And try buying a ticket to a professional sports game.

There is nothing legally wrong with this trend. And it is only a problem if you are not one of the existing or new millionaires living in your area. America’s current birth rate is 3.6 million new Janes and Joes per year, so do the math.

It will be a huge problem soon because as the rich “strata” grows larger it sucks all the “value” out of the “poor” first, then the lower middle class, then the real middle class, then the upper middle class until every American will be one of only two classes: very poor or very rich. Eventually, even being a millionaire won’t be rich, enough.

There are many other factors in play: inflation, regulation, wealth transfer, taxes, the end of the world, history…but can we just let this “stratification” happen? Is it already too late? Who cares?

Prediction from an older post: Rich enclaves will return to a feudal society with the Lord and Master ruling over servant’s, vassals, slaves…all of whom will be well-paid but with no place—or time–to spend the money.

Ran out of room, here, but think about how much a professional athlete gets paid, then ask the same of your teacher, fireman, policeman, or doctor.

Anyone miss the days of 10 cent cheeseburgers and 15 cents a gallon gas? Make America Cheap Again. Please.

*Yes, a bunch of rabbits is a “herd”. Conjures up a strange image of cowboy rabbit drives in the old west. Rabbitboys, then, out on the range? Wascals.

**Google it. I dare you.