Summary
Norway is on track to become the first country to eliminate gasoline and diesel cars from new car sales, with EVs making up over 96% of recent purchases.
Decades of incentives, including tax breaks and infrastructure investments, have driven this shift.
Officials see EV adoption as a “new normal” and aim for electric city buses by 2025.
While other countries lag behind, Norway’s success demonstrates the potential for widespread EV adoption.
Most things have a 25% sales tax on them + 22% flat rate for income tax. How much taxes are billionaires paying in the US?
Again, blame the fund all you want, in the end the problem is other countries not jumping at the opportunities presented to them to build a similar fund.
It was inspired by Alberta’s heritage fund (which obviously existed before Norway’s), Alberta has a much bigger oil reserve and has extracted way more oil than Norway. How much do they have in their version of the fund? Less than CAD $30B. Instead of investing for the future they decided to cut all sales taxes and to lower income taxes as much as they realistically could while still offering public services.
The same logic can apply to any government that has natural resources to manage and decides not to nationalize it to invest for the future.
No clue, I’m from Finland where our VAT is 25.5%, income tax is higher than in Norway, and our vehicles are some of the most expensive, and also the oldest, in Europe :)