“The largest 26 of these trusts paid about 2.4 million claims totaling about $10.9 billion up to 2008.”

Sounds like they were made to pay people. The companies are bankrupt…the trusts ensure funds are available to pay people despite the companies being insolvent.

Mindfulness meditation

What? You have it backwards. 0 withholdings means the largest amount withheld on your paycheck, and a higher refund end of year.

“Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You'll_own_nothing_and_be_happy

Old school Runescape

I’m not sure if people are suggesting that oil itself is a magical solution or if they’re suggesting that having exclusive access to an extremely profitable resource (oil) enables a country with a tiny population to make socialism work.

I have a strange feeling that if oil became worthless Norway would quickly stop doing socialism well

Sweden is fairly unique as it’s economy wasn’t destroyed by WWII, and it’s stance on banking, foreign exports, and foreign ownership has enabled it to make massive profits. But the economy is seriously struggling today. The average home loan takes 100 years to pay off.

Finland economy replaces oil with timber and an extremely educated population. Both of which are not sustaining the model well as the country is in recession. The timber industry isnt producing sustainable profits like it used to. The debt-to-GDP ratio is extremely high. The highly educated population is leaving and people don’t typically immigrate to Finland.

So arguably the model isn’t working anymore, without something like oil to fall back on.