Viking Economics by George Lakey Page A

reportedly too dyslexic to finish secondary school. He worked on fishing trawlers in Alaska and returned to Norway to become an industrialist with assets reportedly worth $3 billion. My own townhas reason to be grateful to him: his shipbuilding firm Aker saved the Philadelphia Navy Yard from giving up its centuries-old mission of building ships.
    Rates of start-up creation in Norway are among the highest in the developed world, and Norway has more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States, according to a report by a Boston-based research consortium. 31
    The flurry of new Norwegian enterprise was news to me. I assumed that my own country would consistently lead the start-up economy. But the U.S. Small Business Administration released a study in 2010 reporting that U.S. start-up activity fell behind not only Norway but also Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland.
HOW THE ECONOMIC DESIGN SUPPORTS ENTREPRENEURS
    In 2010, Max Chafkin did a survey of Norwegian entrepreneurs for
Inc. Magazine
, where he was a senior writer. While in Norway he noted the liveliness of the start-up scene. When he returned home he consulted Zoltan J. Acs, the chief economist for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. Chafkin asked why more Norwegians than Americans would be taking the risk of starting their own businesses. Acs said, “The three things we as Americans worry about—education, retirement, and medical expenses—are things that Norwegians don’t worry about.” 32
    Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, in 2014 added another reason for start-ups lagging in the United States. Thirty-somethings, a demographic usually productive of risk-taking and start-ups, are often held back by student loan debt. 33
    The Nordic model’s free higher education opens doors. The Norwegian Entrepreneurship Program is a collaboration of all seven of the Norwegian universities, nine university colleges, and some business and architecture schools. The program cooperates with international partners, including the University of California at Berkeley. Budding entrepreneurs take academic and practical courses and spend three months working in a start-up company with a technological focus.
    Because the Norwegian Entrepreneurship Program is for Norwegians wanting to make a major commitment, the government has set up other programs that are more introductory, designed to clarify people’s intention. Oslo offers free introductory courses on how to start a company. The course instructors teach in English in order to catch new immigrants whose Norwegian skills may not be very secure yet.
    Many immigrants live in the city of Drammen, where workers went on one of Norway’s earliest strikes. Drammen now hosts a national pilot program for immigrants to support entrepreneurial spirit and professionalization, and the project emphasizes the contribution of immigrants. 34
INNOVATION AND EQUALITY: THE TRACK RECORD
    Conventional wisdom links innovation to wide
in
equality. The belief is that inequality motivates, by increasing both the risk and potential reward, attracting talented people who love adventure. The bold ones make the breakthroughs that propel invention and innovation. It sounds reasonable.
    Three researchers at the London School of Economics put thisassumption to the test by examining, among other things, patent filings in different countries. They found that Sweden, which gets sneers from some red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalists as a “nanny state,” had more patent filings per resident than the United States for most of the last half-century. The LSE researchers then turned to the Global Innovation Index and compared innovation with inequality. They found that innovation in the United States lags behind a number of OECD countries that have lower inequality. 35
    The advocates of inequality invoke the concept of meritocracy. They point to the olden days in the United States when high rates of upward mobility showed that the