As a Norwegian that aspires to eventually live off investments and passive income, you do have some salient points. We could probably have a significantly cheaper public sector; hiring for the public sector during the last decade has been ridiculous. Counter-cyclical spending during times of economic crisis should not be performed by hiring people for permanent positions with some of the strongest labor protections in the world; you'll never get rid of the expense when the cycle turns back.

And don't get me started on the wealth tax; it's a good and probably necessary idea in the long-term, but here it's both (1) too high; at 1% p.a. it's in effect an extra 25% capital gains tax on top of the 29% which is taxed directly, and (2) assets that "everyone" own (real estate) are only taxed at 25% of their market value. And debt is deducted at its full value! Buy a million dollar home borrowing $250k, and you pay no wealth tax at all! So you are allowed to be a real estate millionaire (and receive tax-free income on rent from your primary residence), but not a stock fund millionaire.

To everyone's big surprise, real estate has appreciated much faster than other assets (20% in Oslo last year), mostly evening out the post-tax advantage over other assets.

The tax on investment income was recently reduced by three percentage points to make the system more similar to other parts of the EEC, but a multiplicative factor was introduced when calculating the "taxable value" for stocks and funds, in effect increasing the tax by two percentage points. I never quite understood this move.

I am proud of our universal healthcare system and our welfare system -- in effect it's a means-tested basic income system; no one starves or freezes -- but some tax policies feel really oppressive if you are trying to do something ambitious.