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10-08-2015, 07:15 PM
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NORWAY
"Norway's energy boom is tailing off years ahead of expectations, exposing an economy unprepared for life after oil and threatening the long-term viability of the world's most generous welfare model."
"High spending within the sector has pushed up wages and other costs to unsustainable levels, not just for the oil and gas industry but for all sectors, and that is now acting as a drag on further energy investment. Norwegian firms outside oil have struggled to pick up the slack in what has been, for at least a decade, almost a single-track economy."
End of oil boom threatens Norway's welfare model | Reuters
SWITZERLAND
"And so the Swiss have arrived at an arrangement for the care of
the poor which, first of all, has to meet the requirement of aiding
them in such a manner that they are temporarily helped--yet not
encouraged to become dependent on government aid. Second, aid
has to be tied to a policy of encouraging the poor to help themselves
as much as possible, and to move them out of poverty as rapidly as
possible, if not in that generation, then at least in the next.
The Swiss have established a far-ranging and expanding program of compulsory social insurance that imposes on each worker and his
employer a compulsory shared-risk program to provide for both the
expected and unexpected financial needs of most other workers.
This primarily self-sustained (with a minor government contribution)
insurance program provides the worker with old-age retirement,
disability and sickness insurance, survivors' insurance, accident
insurance, and unemployment compensation. Unlike the social
insurance policies of many other industrialized nations, however,
these programs are designed so that the beneficiary cannot control
the outcome. Unemployment compensation is given only if the person
is validly out of work and readily available for employment as it
opens up. Disability is strictly defined in such a way that it has not,
as it has in many other nations, become an alternative to work."
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/docli...phsegalman.pdf
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