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FOR THE RICH, ONE NATION ISN’T ROLLING OUT THE RED CARPET  
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Sam Pizzigati
June 6, 2024
Inequality.org
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_ Norway, now maybe more than any other nation, is really working to
share the wealth. _

, Getty Images

 

So you think the rich have life easy, do you? Just try telling that to
the deep pockets who’ve spent tens of millions buying condos at 432
Park Avenue, the 11-year-old Manhattan luxury tower that once rated as
our hemisphere’s tallest residence. Condo owners in the tower have
had to put up with “faulty elevators, leaky plumbing, and noise
issues.” They’re now suing
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building’s operator.

Or consider the plight of those fabulously wealthy souls who’ve had
to pay millions
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move their mansions off the sandy coast of Nantucket, the one-time
hippie refuge that’s become a summer “holiday hot spot for
billionaires.” The problem? With climate change raising water
levels, seaside homes on this Massachusetts island now have a nasty
habit of “falling into the ocean.”

Or contemplate what life would be like if you were a person of means
who fell in love with a mega-yacht the length of a football field and
just had to be able to call that yacht your own. The purchase sets you
back well over $100 million. But now you’ve just realized
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be annually paying at least 10 percent of that purchase price to dock
and staff and fuel and insure your oh-so-cute new plaything.

The one saving grace amid challenges like these: Things could be a lot
worse. You could be a rich Norwegian.

Norway’s wealthiest have faced
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wealth tax ever since 1892, and, over the generations since then, no
nation in the world has taken taxing wealth as seriously. But that
tradition came under a direct challenge just over a decade ago, in
2013, when a new conservative government came into power. Over the
next eight years, that government set about cutting Norway’s richest
some slack at tax time.

This conservative government, under prime minister Erna Solberg,
trimmed down Norway’s wealth tax, eliminated the nation’s levy on
inheritances, and slashed the tax rate on incomes. The predictable
result: Norwegians with the greatest wealth, a Statistics Norway
analysis found, saw
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greatest gains.

“The richest have been given 100 times more in tax cuts than the
lowest-paid under Erna Solberg,” the Norwegian Labour Party’s
Hadia Talik would charge
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“If you want less inequality, tax policies have to be distributive.
That’s the fairest way and gives a better basis for the country to
create value.”

In the 2021 elections, voters would agree. The center-left government
they voted into power that year moved quickly to reverse the
Conservative Party’s rich-people-friendly tax cuts. By 2023, the top
wealth tax rate on Norway’s largest fortunes had risen from 0.85 to
1.1 percent, just one of a number of moves that distinctly displeased
many of Norway’s richest, among them the industrialist Kjell Inge
Røkke. Midway through 2022, Røkke announced
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was moving to Switzerland.

Other rich Norwegians would follow Røkke out. By 2022’s close, over
30 of Norway’s richest had departed
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more wealthy emigres than Norway had seen over the previous 13 years
combined. But that exodus would only strengthen the resolve of
tax-the-rich progressive lawmakers.

“The wealthiest should contribute more to society,” noted
[[link removed]] Bjørnar
Moxnes, the Red Party leader, “and it’s important that Norway
doesn’t let itself be held hostage by billionaires who threaten
capital flight.”

Norway’s richest, the finance ministry state secretary Erlend Trygve
Grimstad would add, have always had to pay more in taxes to help keep
the nation’s world-class public services — including free health
care — strong and vital.

“Those who enjoy success with this social model,” Grimstad
posited, “must contribute more than others.”

Other Norwegians — like the _Financial Times_ economics
commentator Martin Sandbu — would directly challenge the case
against raising taxes that Norway’s tax exiles were trying to make.

These exiles, Sandbu observed
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tend never to say “that they just want to pay less” at tax time.
They instead pose as the “geese that lay golden eggs.” They’re
only moving, these rich insist, “because the wealth tax forces them
to take capital out of their companies to pay it, and that, in turn,
is bad for growth, business development, and employment where their
companies are based.”

But Norwegian companies, Sandbu countered, show no signs of suffering
from a lack of access to capital. The capital these companies need can
“come from other sources than the original owners, and it may be
precisely this dilution that rankles, especially for self-made
entrepreneurs or family businesses.”

Those Norwegian wealthy who feel most rankled, Norway’s current
legislative majority believes, do have every right to exit the nation.
But they have no right to leave with all the wealth that Norway’s
commitment to economic security — for everyone — has helped those
rich amass.

How to keep wealthy exiles from jetting off with wealth they should be
sharing? Norway’s progressive lawmakers have put together a new
“exit tax” that will have wealthy exiles paying a loophole-free
exit levy on unrealized capital gains. Exiles will have the option of
paying their exit tax in interest-free installments over 12 years or
paying the total due, with interest, after 12 years.

These exiles will, of course, have the option of returning home to
Norway anytime they’d like. And if they do return, they’ll be
reentering what may be the world’s most equal
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One telling indicator of that equality: the Bloomberg Billionaires
Index. On this list of the world’s 500 richest, only one Norwegian
today appears [[link removed]] — in 374th
place.

In a few years, who knows, you might not find any Norwegian on that
list at all.

_SAM PIZZIGATI, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow,
co-edits Inequality.org. His latest books include The Case for a
Maximum Wage
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Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that
Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970
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_INEQUALITY.ORG has been tracking inequality-related news and views
for nearly two decades. A project of the Institute for Policy Studies
since 2011, our site aims to provide information and insights for
readers ranging from educators and journalists to activists and policy
makers._

_Our Inequality.org contributors come from the United States and
around the world. Our focus throughout: What can we do to narrow the
staggering economic inequality that so afflicts us in almost every
aspect of our lives?_

_If you would like to support and help expand our work, please
consider making a donation. Thank you!_

_DONATE [[link removed]]_

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