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Norway’s Trainwreck – How Taxing Unrealized Gains Has Caused an Entrepreneurial Exodus

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From hagaet the substack of Fredrik Haga, co-founder of Dune

Norway Shrugged 

Recently, my story as a Norwegian entrepreneur facing an unrealized gains wealth tax bill many ties higher than my net income went viral, amassing over 100 million views on X. A few years ago I publicly called out that this tax is both impossible-to-pay and nonsensical, but no politician would listen. So I made the difficult decision to leave my home country. I still don’t know how I was supposed to pay the tax, but I recently found myself plastered on the “Wall of Shame” at the Socialist Left Party’s offices.

In this post, I’ll delve into why there’s an entrepreneurial exodus from Norway, how we got here, and what the future might hold.

Socialist Left leader and me on the “Wall of Shame” (Dagbladet)

Norway: A real life Atlas Shrugged 

Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged paints a vivid picture of a dystopian society where government overreach and socialist policies kill innovation and demonize entrepreneurs. In Rand’s world, working hard and taking risks is not celebrated, but looked at with suspicion. As the government tightens its grip, mandating how businesses should operate, the nation’s entrepreneurs begin to vanish and are nowhere to be found. People get poorer while the state keeps growing. Step by step the functioning of society starts to crumble. The trains first go off schedule, then start crashing and eventually stop going all together.

Present-day Norway mirrors this dystopia in unsettling ways. Taking risk with your own money, working hard and then making a profit is frowned upon. While politicians spending the people’s money on non-viable green projects, and delivering dysfunctional public services at high costs has the moral high ground. The government is spending 35 Billion NOK on offshore wind that industry experts think is financially unviable. This is about the same amount as the total wealth tax revenues. Norway spends 45% more than Sweden on health care per capita with approximately the same health outcomes. Norway has 2,5 times bigger share of the working population on sick leave than Denmark. Norway spends ~50% more than Finland on primary and secondary school with worse results.

With unshakeable ideological conviction, socialist politicians are rapidly undermining Norway’s wealth creation. They’re imposing taxes that explicitly disadvantage Norwegian business owners, and are often straight up impossible to pay. When confronted with the reality that you can’t pay taxes with money you don’t have—or that loss-making businesses can’t afford massive dividends just to cover owners’ wealth taxes—the response is vague moralism like “Those with the broadest shoulders must bear the heaviest burdens.” Any argument against any part of the system is by default invalid because there’s free health care…

Norway’s entrepreneurs are now indeed disappearing from society. In the past two years alone, a staggering 100 of Norway’s top 400 taxpayers, representing about 50% of that group’s wealth, have fled the country to protect their businesses.

Norwegian trains have for a long time been notoriously unreliable – even less reliable then in war time Ukraine! In chilling similarity to Atlas Shrugged there’ve been two train crashes, including one fatal, in the last month alone.

Tram crashing into a retail store in Oslo 29th of October 2024 (NRK)

The Unrealized Gains Wealth Tax: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Norway imposes a wealth tax that taxes unrealized gains at approximately 1% annually. Calculated on the full market value for publicly traded assets and the book value of private companies. On New Year’s Eve, whatever your net worth – including illiquid assets – is subject to this tax. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a loss-making startup with no cash flow, if your investments have tanked after the valuation date, or even if your company has gone bankrupt—you still owe the tax.

This creates a perverse scenario where business owners must extract dividends or sell shares every year just to cover their tax bill. With dividend and capital gains taxes at around 38%, you need to withdraw approximately 1.6 million NOK to pay a 1 million NOK wealth tax bill. You’re essentially paying taxes to pay taxes, draining capital from your business without any personal financial gain.

Moreover, the tax incentivizes Norwegians to take on excessive debt to reduce their taxable wealth, inflating housing prices and making the economy more fragile. While real estate and oil companies can mitigate this through debt financing, tech startups—often equity-financed and loss-making for years—are disproportionately harmed.

The Berlin Wall Exit Tax: Another Tax on Unrealized Gains

After witnessing a mass exodus of top taxpayers, the Norwegian government had a golden opportunity to reassess its policies. The wealth tax contributes less than 2% to the state budget; eliminating it and marginally increasing capital gains, corporate, or dividend taxes could have halted the entrepreneurial bleeding without affecting government budgets.

Instead, the government doubled down on what’s not working, introducing an exit tax on unrealized gains. Now, if you choose to move from Norway, you’re immediately liable to pay 38% of the total market value of your assets upon departure. It doesn’t matter if you have no liquidity, if your assets are high-risk and could plummet in value, or even if your company does fail after you leave—you still owe the tax. Previously, entrepreneurs could at least relocate if the wealth tax became too burdensome. Now, they’re incentivized to leave before they even start their businesses.

The government could have listened to the tornado of negative feedback and adjusted course, but instead, they doubled down on what’s not working. When the Berlin wall was created it was clear which side of the city had the better system… the one that didn’t have to build a wall to retain its citizens. Instead of trying to attract and retrain capital and talent by making Norway a better place for business the Norwegian government chose to build its very own Berlin Tax Wall with yet another tax on unrealized gains. Trapping not only entrepreneurs, but anyone with more than $270k of wealth wanting to move their life abroad for whatever reason…

The first 50 years: Well Managed Oil Wealth 

Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. The government does not need to send their entrepreneurs abroad with non-sensical taxes. So you may ask yourself, “Well, how did we get here?”.

In fact, the oil wealth has been amazingly well managed by the politicians for almost half a century. In 1969, Norway struck oil—a discovery that could have led to the same resource curse that plagued other nations. Instead, Norwegian politicians made two genius decisions that benefited the entire population.

  1. Genius Move 1: Taxing Oil Profits at 80%Recognizing the need for foreign expertise but unwilling to let international corporations reap all the benefits, Norway taxed oil company profits at a staggering 80%. This bold move ensured that the wealth generated from the oil benefited the Norwegian people.
  2. Genius Move 2: Establishing the Sovereign Wealth FundIn the 1990s, Norwegian politicians understood that oil is a finite volatile resource and that it would be irresponsible to spend all the oil revenue on a running basis. In an act of rare political austerity and long term thinking they created the Oil Fund, to diversify and invest surplus revenues internationally. Furthermore the “Budgetary Rule” limited annual government spending from the fund to 3%, ensuring the fund in theory goes on forever.

For two decades, politicians across the spectrum adhered to this prudent financial management, displaying an impressive level of restraint and foresight rarely seen in politics.

How Oil Wealth Led to Socialist Ideology over Wealth Creation

But success bred complacency. In theory, everybody agrees that Norway needs new post-oil industries for the long term. In practice, the abundance of oil wealth has led to a detachment from the realities of how wealth and economic growth is created. While the Norwegian politicians impressively managed to restrain themselves for about half a century the current generation are now acting as if tax money grows on trees.

Ultimately that is the paradox that has caused the current situation: because the state has so much money, it is no longer at the mercy of businesses actually being created and staying in Norway. At least as long as the oil wealth lasts.

The 2025 Election: No Fundamental Solution in Sight

It seems likely there will be a new government after the 2025 elections, as the current government is seeing record-low support in the polls. Unfortunately, even seemingly business friendly opposition parties like the Conservative Party (Høyre) and the Liberals (Venstre) are not committed to abolishing the wealth tax entirely. They propose valuing companies zero for wealth tax purposes—a good step in the right direction, but not a fundamental solution to Norway’s ongoing crisis. Unfortunately The Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) is the only party that wants to remove the tax completely.

The wealth tax’s mere existence continues to create absurd incentives for excessive debt and over-investment in housing, detracting from more productive investments like stocks and startups. Moreover, the possibility of future governments reinstating the wealth tax for companies keeps the harmful uncertainty for businesses very much alive.

Many European countries have recognized the harm caused by taxing unrealized gains and abandoned it. Norway’s neighbor Sweden abolished its wealth tax in 2007. Since then they’ve seen its tech sector flourish. Spotify recently surpassed Norway’s state-owned oil company, Equinor, in market capitalization. In the last 15 years Norway has gone from having 7 to now only 2 of the Nordics top 30 most valuable companies.

Norway has produced four “unicorns”. Since then we the founders of Dune and Cognite have left due to the unreasonable taxes. Oda operates domestically in Norway. All founders have left the company and are wiped out. The last one Gelato is run by a swede that would likely move if they need to raise more money.

The Extra Long Journey to Post-Oil Wealth and Welfare

In Atlas Shrugged, the entrepreneurs refuse to return to society until the oppressive system collapses entirely. I sincerely hope Norway doesn’t have to endure such a downfall before entrepreneurs can return.

Fortunately Norway has a highly educated population and a lot of capital. With oil a high tech industry has been built in Norway before. What’s lacking is the political will to encourage entrepreneurship and big ambitions, not punish it.

Trust is built in millimeters and torn down in meters. In just a few years, the trust in Norway as a viable place to build and invest has been shattered. A whole generation of entrepreneurs has been lost.

The people of Norway currently enjoy and benefit from a host of generous welfare benefits. High income with short work days, free healthcare, free daycare, free education and beyond. For this to continue in the future Norway needs massive new post-oil industries. Due to the politicians’ series of unforced errors, the journey to get there will be extra long and painful. A definitive abolishment of all taxes on unrealized capital gains is the obvious first step.

 

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US government gave $22 million to nonprofit teaching teens about sex toys: report

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Center for Innovative Public Health Research’s website suggests teenage girls make their ‘own decisions’ about sex and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.

For almost a decade, the U.S. government funded a group that actively works to teach kids how to use sex toys and then keep them hidden from their parents to the tune of $22 million.

According to investigative reporter Hannah Grossman at the Manhattan Institute, The Center for Innovative Public Health Research (CIPHR) has been educating minors about sex toys with public funds.

Records show that the millions given to the group since 2016, according to its website, go toward “health education programs” that “promote positive human development.”

However, the actual contents of the programs, as can be seen from comments from CIPHR CEO Michele Ybarra, seem to suggest that its idea of “human” development is skewed toward radical sex education doctrine.

In 2017, CIPHR launched Girl2Girl, which is funded by federal money to promote “sex-ed program just for teen girls who are into girls.” Its website lets users, who are girls between ages 14 and 16, sign up for “daily text messages … about things like sex with girls and boys.”

The actual content of some of the messages is very concerning. Its website notes that some of the texts talk about “lube and sex toys” as well as “the different types of sex and ways to increase pleasure.”

The website actively calls upon teenage girls to make their “own decisions” and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.

Grossman shared a video clip on X of Ybarra explaining how they educate minors about the use of “sex toys” and dealing with their parents if they are found out.

The clip, from a 2022 Brown University webinar, shows Ybarra telling researchers how to prepare “young person(s)” for her research.

In 2023, CIPHR launched Transcendent Health, which is a sex-education program for minors who are gender confused. This initiative received $1.3 million of federal grant money that expired last month.

Grossman observed that the federal government “should not fund programs that send sexually explicit messages to minors and encourage them to conceal these communications from parents.”

She noted that in order to protect children and “prevent further harm,” U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services “should immediately cancel CIPHR’s active contract and deny its future grant applications.”

“By doing so, the Trump administration can send a clear message: Taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for perverted ‘research’ projects,” she noted.

The Trump administration has thus far, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), exposed billions in government waste and fraud. Many such uses of taxpayer dollars are currently under review by the administration, including pro-abortion and pro-censorship activity through USAID, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda” through the National Science Foundation, and billions to left-wing “green energy” nonprofits through the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Canadian Police Raid Sophisticated Vancouver Fentanyl Labs, But Insist Millions of Pills Not Destined for U.S.

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Sam Cooper

Mounties say labs outfitted with high-grade chemistry equipment and a trained chemist reveal transnational crime groups are advancing in technical sophistication and drug production capacity

Amid a growing trade war between Washington and Beijing, Canada—targeted alongside Mexico and China for special tariffs related to Chinese fentanyl supply chains—has dismantled a sophisticated network of fentanyl labs across British Columbia and arrested an academic lab chemist, the RCMP said Thursday.

At a press conference in Vancouver, senior investigators stood behind seized lab equipment and fentanyl supplies, telling reporters the operation had prevented millions of potentially lethal pills from reaching the streets.

“This interdiction has prevented several million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl from being produced and distributed across Canada,” said Cpl. Arash Seyed. But the presence of commercial-grade laboratory equipment at each of the sites—paired with the arrest of a suspect believed to have formal training in chemistry—signals an evolution in the capabilities of organized crime networks, with “progressively enhanced scientific and technical expertise among transnational organized crime groups involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs,” Seyed added.

This investigation is ongoing, while the seized drugs, precursor chemicals, and other evidence continue to be processed, police said.

Recent Canadian data confirms the country has become an exporter of fentanyl, and experts identify British Columbia as the epicenter of clandestine labs supplied by Chinese precursors and linked to Mexican cartel distributors upstream.

In a statement that appears politically responsive to the evolving Trump trade threats, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul said, “There continues to be no evidence, in this case and others, that these labs are producing fentanyl for exportation into the United States.”

In late March, during coordinated raids across the suburban municipalities of Pitt Meadows, Mission, Aldergrove, Langley, and Richmond, investigators took down three clandestine fentanyl production sites.

The labs were described by the RCMP as “equipped with specialized chemical processing equipment often found in academic and professional research facilities.” Photos released by authorities show stainless steel reaction vessels, industrial filters, and what appear to be commercial-scale tablet presses and drying trays—pointing to mass production capabilities.

The takedown comes as Canada finds itself in the crosshairs of intensifying geopolitical tension.

Fentanyl remains the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Canada, with toxic supply chains increasingly linked to hybrid transnational networks involving Chinese chemical brokers and domestic Canadian producers.

RCMP said the sprawling B.C. lab probe was launched in the summer of 2023, with teams initiating an investigation into the importation of unregulated chemicals and commercial laboratory equipment that could be used for synthesizing illicit drugs including fentanyl, MDMA, and GHB.

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