How too much wealth can harm a country
by The Economist · Australian Financial ReviewThe Economist
Apr 7, 2026 – 5.30pm
Norway’s tribute to Edvard Munch, Scandinavia’s most famous painter, is an impressive 13-storey slab of recycled aluminium and glass built on the harbour front in Oslo. Completed in 2021 at a cost of $US350 million, it was even more impressively late (by a decade) and over budget (by a scream-worthy $US200 million). Looming above thick mist blanketing the sea on a winter’s afternoon, the museum encapsulates the country that paid for it: sophisticated and so loaded that money is no object.
Norwegian oil has built an economy that is the envy of other rich countries, not to mention poor ones. GDP per person is a cool $US90,000 ($130,000), behind only city-states, tax havens and Switzerland. Since 1991, the government has amassed a sovereign-wealth fund worth $US2.2 trillion, or $US400,000 for every one of Norway’s 5.6 million people. Proceeds sustain one of the world’s most generous welfare states.
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