What's in a Word (Inflation)?

Rents across Norway rose 26-28% since 2022, indicating gross mismanagement by the Big Gov't/Labour/Business cabal, which is 'splained™ in the most absurd ways: insanity galore ensues

Today I have a gem for you, dear readers: I happened across a stupid legacy media piece informing™ the general public about massive hikes in rents over the past less-than-three years.

Rents ‘since the beginning of 2022’, state broadcaster NRK reported™ the other day, were on the rise, but that growth ‘had now flattened out’. That is, except in Bergen, journos™ Maria Gunnarsdotter Svedal, Trond Lydersen, and Sissel Rikheim wrote in a long-ish exposé in NRK (source; archived):

The last three years have seen ‘very strong’ growth [sic], according to Henning Lauridsen, CEO of Eiendom Norge.

Since the start of 2022, prices have risen by 26 per cent in the major cities. For Oslo, the figure is 28.3 per cent. This is the largest increase in as long as Eiendom Norge has kept statistics.

‘For tenants, things have become much tougher’, says Lauridsen.

But now the trend has levelled off.

Bergen is the only city that still has quite strong price growth.

In the past year, the price of renting a home has risen by 8 per cent in the capital of Vestland.

Price growth in the past year:

• Oslo 2.9 per cent

• Bergen 8.0 per cent

• Trondheim 3.0 per cent

• Stavanger and Sandnes 1.0 per cent

Lauridsen does not believe that the development in Bergen will turn around anytime soon, because there is little indication that there will be more homes available for the rental market.

‘We also see that there are quite a few homes available for rent in Bergen, compared to the other cities.’ [sure, at what prices and what would one get for that?]

My personal interest in this is simple: I work at the university here, and every year in summer, we see hordes of young people looking for a place to stay; way less often (but with deeper pockets), I get new colleagues who also move to the area, much like happened earlier this year. Two weeks ago, I had a chat with one of them, and I learned (though I don’t know what place he’s renting in terms of size, location, etc.) he’s paying 17,000 crowns, or about US$ 1,700 per moth, which is more than I paid for renting a house in 2020.

And then there’s the simple lived experience (muahahahaha) of venturing over to Finn.no and check out their listings.

I do maintain a small apartment in Bergen for work-related reasons; I pay about 7,000 crowns per month, and I have been renting the same place from the same landlord since summer 2022. That said, I’m permanent faculty at the university and not that young anymore, hence I’ll tell you something else: that’s about the same price I paid for a comparable apartment in Zurich, Switzerland, back in 2010. I would have preferred something cheaper, but there isn’t anything, except co-ed/dormitories, but the price differential is too small to entice me to do that.

The inner city is full of large apartments rented out temporarily to 4-6 tenants at cut-throat rates; as a consequence, there’s virtually no-one who permanently resides in the city centre: there’s shops, offices, food places, and the accompanying services (barbers, etc.), but that’s virtually *it*.

What’s in a Word (Inflation)?

And that brings me to what people are doing to avoid these prices: young people, spending their most active years at universities, are forced into co-ed/dormitory situations with little, if any, privacy; they are getting an education™ using student loans (also here in Norway, and while not as insane as in the US, the problem is the same) to get increasingly useless credentials that don’t even pay very well.

As the OECD’s recent ‘Education at a Glance’ report (2025) made clear,

Norway is the country with the smallest wage gap between those with and without [higher] education, also compared to other Nordic countries. The Norwegian wage gap has also decreased by two percentage points since last year’s report, from 20 to 18 per cent.

That is—what the higher education rag Khrono reported™ a few weeks ago. Whereas the wage differential between a high school diploma vs. college degree in the US is a whopping 76% (meaning the latter earn, on average, that much more than the former), that difference is a measly 18% in Norway.

And there’s much, much more to say about all of this:

Differences between OECD countries are enormous. The Norwegian government spends 27,256 US dollars per student in higher education. The OECD average is 15,102. Much of the difference can be explained by different income levels, the report says.

94 per cent of funding in Norway is public, compared to the OECD average of 71.9 per cent.

‘The fact that Norway spends a lot of money per student is linked to the fact that we have free public higher education, while many other OECD countries have tuition fees at both public and private higher education institutions’, says senior researcher at NIFU Elisabeth Hovdhaugen [well, it’s not free if the gov’t spends taxpayer funds on it; also, get that: in the US, to cite but the most widely-known example, students go into debt to obtain a degree that may (not, in reality) pay off in terms of higher lifetime earnings; that’s not the case here in Norway on two accounts: as higher education is said to be free™, student loans are spent on other things, right…]

Although real spending on education increased in OECD countries from 2015 to 2022, it decreased in relative spending from an average of 10.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 10.1 per cent. In Norway, the share has decreased from 12.2 per cent to 11.5 per cent during the period [that would be the powerful work™ of both Erna Solberg’s right-wing gov’t (in office until 2021) and her successor Jonas Gahr Støre who leads a left-wing gov’t ever since: welcome to the knowledge economy of the 21st century, by the way]

‘Norway has also seen less money allocated to the higher education sector in the last couple of years’, says Hovdhaugen, adding,

‘Similar to when tuition fees were introduced for students from outside the EU in Sweden and Finland, the proportion of foreign students at Norwegian universities fell sharply when tuition fees were introduced in 2023. This means lower income for the universities since there are fewer students producing credits—and degrees.’

And here we go—on a rant about the neoliberalised university and the utterly stupid level (sic) of discussion about this nonsense.

First of all, let’s note the so-called foretaksmodellen as the direct problem: this is the way the gov’t allocates funding to both higher education institutions and across the similarly socialised healthcare sector in Norway.

In a nutshell, any given institution receives a basic allocation of funds from the gov’t budget each year (this is to keep the lights switched on, etc.); then there are staff salaries, a separate budget item; and the crown jewel in this system is the allocation of funds per student-to-be-trained. (Yes, basically the gov’t centrally plans the numbers of students per discipline, allocates the funds, and pays for everything; in case you’re wondering where the real-life experience with something akin to a communist system comes from, well, here goes.¹) For a deeper dive into the absurd nooks and crannies, see this:

The Sun is Setting on Big Healthcare and Big Education--in Norway, of all places: buckle up!

Now, the big issue is, of course, why would the wage gap between those with higher education vs. those without be that small? For starters, here we note that the Nordic gov’ts are basically practising a king of ‘friendly fascism’ in terms of how the economy is managed: by collaboration between Big Gov’t (regulates salaries), Big Business (complies), and Big Labour (the unions, which pretend to negotiate with the other two instances).

For a telling example—Norway’s public health micro-management during the Covid shitshow—please see this one:

Covid in the North: Lessons from Norway, as the Government’s Koronakommission Actually Wrote Them

Turns out, in brief, that the gov’t sought to micro-manage everything, which had detrimental effects. It’s not like, you know, the consequences of a centrally-administered economy weren’t known, but since we’re in the middle of the Great Un-Learning, few people know.

Every year in summer and autumn, collective bargaining takes place, and while this is reminiscent of a kind of cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) contracts known from pre-1971 experiences, the main difference to Norway is that wages have long lagged behind price growth (inflation).

Speaking about stupid things, here’s a few words of wisdom from Statistics Norway about inflation (and, no, I’m not making this up):

More or less money in circulation affects prices

When there is more money in circulation than there are goods and services, there will be inflation.

This can be caused by generally higher wages or that banks have a low interest rate on loans. When the Bank of Norway adjusts the key interest rate, other banks will follow suit and adjust their interest rates based on the key interest rate. When you take out a loan from a bank, you will have more money to trade with than before. The more people who can afford to take out loans—the more money there will be in circulation. This will mean that companies that supply goods and services can raise their prices [what economists—and, admittedly, most people—don’t understand is that this situation gives enormous power to the consumer: stop buying, crash the system, and there’s nothing the gov’t could do].

If banks raise interest rates, fewer people will be able to afford to take out loans. This will lead to less money in circulation, and companies must [sic] lower their prices to keep their customers. This is called deflation, and is the opposite of inflation. If prices go down, people have more purchasing power. Deflation in Norway is admittedly a rare phenomenon.

And there you have it—from the horse’s mouth (the official number-crunchers): deflation is increasing purchasing power but an ‘admittedly rare phenomenon’.

Once you’re done laughing angrily, consider the enormity of this: the Central Bank manipulates interest rates, which typically facilitates lending (credit creation), which increases inflation. And inflation is another word for repossession of real property via mortgage lending (which is done, incidentally, by the same commercial banks that create credit in the first place). Talk about judge, jury, and executioner in one and the same legal person.

Bottom Lines

At the end of this piece, let’s return to the utter absurdity of the initial NRK piece, which speaks about cost increases since 2022.

Yes, it’s bad that rents have been exploding since then; but that’s not even half the story—for the official data show that prices for ‘housing’ (bolig) have grown 41.9% since 2015.

Needless to say, these data are not to be taken at face-value for the CPI has been ‘harmonised’ (massaged) and true cost increases are much higher. And here’s the ‘splanation™ by Statistics Norway’s Espen Kristiansen from 2024 as to what that all means:

Since housing prices have increased so much, some might think that a CPI without house prices underestimates the growth in households’ cost of living, which in turn will result in too little compensation in wage negotiations or adjustment of benefits. In Norway, however, most Norwegian households own their own homes. For these households, house price growth means increased wealth, since the value of the home they own has increased. It would be difficult to argue that they should also be ‘compensated’ for this in the form of, for example, higher wage growth.

This is both true and utterly wrong on so many accounts: most people in Norway own™ their real estate via mortgage financing, which means they don’t own it; the bank does.

And the bank will gladly give you a higher loan based on the artificially inflated value™ of your home, which has risen nominally due to…(drum roll) the amount of credit-creation by commercial banks due to low interest rates as indicated by the Central Bank. Higher loans, as the preceding nugget of wisdom from the very same Statistics Norway website tells you, allows the individual to spend more, thus driving (esp. asset) inflation higher.

If that sounds like, well, utterly stupid, well, it is. It’s also the tell-tale sign of an asset bubble like none other. Plus, there’s not a whole lot other stuff to park one’s funds, loaned or otherwise.

To wrap this up, the answer to the question of how the powers-that-be talk about inflation™ in Norway is: in the most childish and inane ways possible.

The solution™ advocated by NRK (whose journos™ admit to have read about the story in Bergens Avis) is this:

[the student in question] has done something else.

A sailboat is centrally located and affordable. The boat was purchased for 40,000 kroner a year ago. Stæger-Breisnes has also spent money on renovating it.

‘In that sense, I have paid a very large deposit, but it’ll pay off over time.’

The home has a small kitchen, or ‘galley’, with a refrigerator, microwave and two heating units for cooking.

The lounge serves as a dining area and workplace. In addition, there is ample storage space and the possibility of making beds for four.

But it’s a boat without insulation; it may be cheaper now, but good luck in winter with sub-zero temperatures and a rain cover akin to a convertible. Also, there’s no shower, it would seem.

Imagine, if you will, an economy in which Big Gov’t rules supreme, aided by Big Business and abetted by Big Labour.

Whatever you want to call that thing, it ain’t good for people.

And the mental gymnastics required by ostensibly well-intentioned gov’t-adjacent snake oil salespeople to keep the rest of the population from finding out is telling.

Yet as long as the solution™ to every problem is calling for more gov’t regulation, things won’t improve a bit. In fact, it’ll get worse from here on.

1. Another sub-rabbit-hole, if you will, courtesy of my life in academia:

In Norway, Big Gov’t offers funding for X amount of students per discipline/year, which is centrally planned by the Higher Education Ministry.

At the same time, Big Gov’t employs the people who work at the state-owned universities and proscribes, in cahoots with Big Labour, salaries across the economy (and now ‘just’ in academia), hence one cannot discount Big Business.

Big Business loves Big Gov’t and Big Labour for two main reasons: calls for more regulation™ increase compliance costs, which is something Big Business can more easily afford than an mom-and-pop outfit or any small/medium-sized enterprise (SME).

So, basically, what the Nordic countries are pioneering is a de facto collectivist system of total control of any jurisdiction without admitting to this fact.

In the above-linked posting, I call this ‘friendly fascism’, but you’re of course free to call it whatever you wish, corporate socialism, for instance, would be fine, too.

It’s also a self-perpetuating eco-system as more regulations, of course called for by Big Labour sounds nice enough to divide wage-earners (who could be against workplace safety reg’s, eh?), justifies bigger bureaucracies to enforce compliance with Big Gov’t mandates, and renders competition from start-ups and SMEs less probable.

It’s a win-win-win for the Big Gov’t-Big Labour-Big Business cabal dominating the world-economy since the 1930s.