Privacy......What Privacy?
When we first moved here we were a little surprise by the number of thing you could find online about anybody. If you were looking for a person and had their name you could easily find their phone number (landline and mobile) their address and could even have a bird view of their house. It also works with just a number or just an address (you would then find whose number it is or who lives at this address).
So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when I found out that at the end of October an official records showing the income and overall wealth of nearly every Norwegian taxpayers (the “Skattelist” or Tax List) was released and available online to everybody.
What might appear to non-Scandinavians as a gross violation of privacy, the defenders of the system here say it enhances transparency which is essential for an open democracy.
In national broadcaster NRK's database, you can type a name, hit search and within moments get information on exactly what that person made last year, paid in taxes and his or her total wealth.
It also gives an overview of how those figures compare with Norway's national averages for men and women, and averages for that person's city of residence.
The country of 4.8 million people had the third highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, according to the latest OECD statistics, behind Denmark and New Zealand.
So who's Norway's richest man?
Tobacco mogul Johan Henrik Andresen, worth $2 billion, has surpassed last year's No. 1, industrialist Kjell Inge Roekke, according to Dagbladet.
Norway's richest woman was stock market investor Tone Bjoerseth-Andersen, whose wealth of $107 million placed her behind 24 men.
So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when I found out that at the end of October an official records showing the income and overall wealth of nearly every Norwegian taxpayers (the “Skattelist” or Tax List) was released and available online to everybody.
What might appear to non-Scandinavians as a gross violation of privacy, the defenders of the system here say it enhances transparency which is essential for an open democracy.
In national broadcaster NRK's database, you can type a name, hit search and within moments get information on exactly what that person made last year, paid in taxes and his or her total wealth.
It also gives an overview of how those figures compare with Norway's national averages for men and women, and averages for that person's city of residence.
The country of 4.8 million people had the third highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, according to the latest OECD statistics, behind Denmark and New Zealand.
So who's Norway's richest man?
Tobacco mogul Johan Henrik Andresen, worth $2 billion, has surpassed last year's No. 1, industrialist Kjell Inge Roekke, according to Dagbladet.
Norway's richest woman was stock market investor Tone Bjoerseth-Andersen, whose wealth of $107 million placed her behind 24 men.
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