Comparisons between countries like Norway and the US are a bit misguided IMO. It's hard to imagine that an oil rich country with a homogeneous society of 5 million people at the edge of the world can be fairly compared to the leader of the world's current Pax-Americana with a population of 300 million. Norway enjoys the benefits of being an almost-city-state as described in Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.