These are the issues they're worried about? None of the numbers I saw while scanning look particularly worrying, and I doubt there's ever been a country on the face of this planet for which you wouldn't have been able to produce a similar list of issues of this magnitude - including past Norway.
They're worth paying attention to, but not sounding the alarm bells over.
That's because there is a default bad assumption that because they are so wealthy that no problems should exist, similar to how very rich people are seen. Looking at other wealthy petro-states (and people) around the world, that's clearly not true.
But relatively speaking I don't think there's a country that wouldn't trade most of their problems for Norway's, with the possible exception of their aging population.
Poorer health might be concerning, but is likely the result of the population growing older. More children would help make the numbers look better, I suppose, but, statistically, only poor people like having children.
That may be a reasonable take at the level of an individual. But it's nonsense at the level of a country.
Wealth is the ability to get other people to do things. But if everyone is becoming less capable, then that's not a problem that wealth can fix.
Outsourcing may be a temporary solution to his problem, but I don't see it working well long term.
What suggests that people are becoming less capable? More importantly, what suggests that people are becoming less capable in an irreversible way? If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it. As you said, you can use wealth to get other people to become more capable.
From the root level comment in this thread:
> Student test scores have worsened more than in other Scandinavian countries, and critics of the government say there are too many boondoggle tunnels and bridges to nowhere.
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> More importantly, what suggests that people are becoming less capable in an irreversible way? If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that this trend is irreversible.
But big trends like this can be difficult to turn around - if it were easy, the trend wouldn't have happened in the first place (or, at least, it wouldn't have been detectable).
> If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it. As you said, you can use wealth to get other people to become more capable.
You can't just say "wealth will do x". That's really a semantic shortcut for saying "people will do x". But presumably people are already trying to improve the countries test scores. And people are already trying (at least to a certain extent) to spend government funds wisely. I'm not really sure how wealth will change what's currently occurring.