"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government services are among the highest in the world." >Of course, the country has some of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in Nepal.
"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones." > Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.
"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish" > What?
"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar bears." There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on arctic island owned by Norway.
"The food isn't great." > The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.
"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey" > Define happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates.
"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home." > Alligators, heat-waves, and death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home.
"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world." > Thanks to how Norway actually measures unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.
"There are no private schools in Norway" > Incorrect, there are many private kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in Norway.
"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead researcher for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway." > I included this statement because it's TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview an expert.
"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk, regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good schools." > Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its schools are mediocre at best.
So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry-pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y, it also may have a downside Z".