Vengeance Belongs to the Lord

It's now ten years since I retired from my career as a software developer. I didn't at the time know what to do with my newfound freedom, so I tried my hand at various projects with the intent of making some money to cover the shortfalls I expected in our overall cash flow. However, that came to nothing, and I was in the end forced to sell my house in Norway to balance our budget.

The process was frustrating, to say the least. I was being squeezed by the system; forced to do things I'd rather not do. But once my house was sold, things sorted themselves out. Our budgets balanced, and our need to make money to cover the costs of owning a house disappeared. Instead of a house in Norway, we have a box of gold close at hand. There are no costs associated with this box, and it keeps its value just as well as a house. It is, as it were, real-estate in condensed form.

Things have turned out well for me and my wife. But it didn't always look that way. The system was full of hurdles. Life decisions that didn't conform to preferred norms were heavily taxed. Most people saw nothing wrong in the way I was targeted for taxation. It wasn't their problem, so they didn't care. There was a clear majority in favor of the system as it was. There was no hope for any change. The system would for ever work against me.

All of this made me angry. But what could I do? The only way to escape was to sell everything and retire, and that's what I ended up doing.

I'm not the only one who've made this kind of decision. Thousands of Norwegian tax-donkeys disappear from the system every year. Just like me, they leave Norway for better climates and lower costs of living.

No-one has so far complained about this apart from some politicians pointing their fingers at the emigrants, claiming that they are selfish. But the public don't see any problems in this. After all; who needs them? If they hate Norway so much, let them go.

The average person is ignorant of economy. They don't see how a steady exodus of tax-donkeys means that more taxes must be paid by those who remain. They don't see how unsustainable the situation is. The general consensus is that Norway has so much oil that it doesn't matter if a few rich people leave. There's also a sovereign wealth fund that will keep everyone affluent for ever.

But the thing about unsustainable systems is that they can remain afloat for a long time before they break. There's usually a long and slow decline, hardly noticeable by most people, followed by a sudden collapse.

In the case of Norway, the decline has been going on for more than a decade. I was hardly the first one to leave. But consensus is that things are going all right. There might be some signs of decay here and there, but this is nothing to worry about. The downturn is temporary and will soon turn into renewed growth. However, the collapse might already have arrived. People are simply blind to it due to decades of having been shielded from reality.

If the state remains large, as it is in Norway, the tax burden must at some point reveal itself, either as monetary debasement or as some sudden increase in public fees. As it turns out, Norwegians are getting the latter. Their currency is holding up, but their electricity bills have skyrocketed. Electricity is now five times more expensive than normal.

This is a big deal because winters in Norway are cold, and most people heat their houses with electricity. Many are now experiencing living costs at more than 100% of their income. This problem that used to be confined to a small group of tax-donkeys is now suddenly widespread among ordinary people.

They don't know it yet, but this is probably the end of Norwegian affluence relative to the rest of Europe. The cost of living is now so high that most people will find themselves no better off than people living in more impoverished parts of Europe. The cost of electricity will go down from where it's currently trading, but there will be similar spikes in the future. The cost of living has permanently shifted higher.

Seeing this, I cannot help being reminded of the Bible that states that vengeance belongs to the Lord. My Norwegian peers tolerated too easily the injustices of the system when they were unaffected by them, and now they have to pay a heavy toll for their sins.

I'm past being angry at anyone for the way I was treated, but my former self would no doubt have taken comfort in what's currently happening, and in a way I did, because I knew that a day would come when the chickens would come home to roost. I trusted that this would happen, and so I let it be up to reality to take care of things at a future date. Instead of ranting against the system, I chose to take practical actions to save myself from the inevitable.

I shudder to think how things would have been if I had held onto my house in Norway. The bills would have been horrific. I would have been in a deep liquidity crisis. As it turned out, the adverse conditions I found myself under in the past were a blessing in disguise. I got out of dodge, and I can now watch the unfolding disaster from a distance.

It's hard to see how the elevated cost of living in Norway can continue without a severe blow to house prices. The spike in electricity prices is likely to work its way through the economy like a shockwave. The Lord is about to hand out vengeance left, right and center.

Reflection in a soap bubble

By Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link