15 ms·

This is a very rose colored glasses view of Iceland. Having lived there until very recently, it is not a tech utopia by any means. There are very few jobs in

by bbarn 3y ago

This is a very rose colored glasses view of Iceland. Having lived there until very recently, it is not a tech utopia by any means. There are very few jobs in tech, and no matter what you do or for how long it's rare to break 1M isk a month (which is about 80,000 - 85,000USD depending on the incredibly volatile currency) due to hostile tax structures. You can make less money developing software than you can fishing, so there's not a lot of draw to stay in the tech industry. Most of that geothermal energy? Yeah, it's sent to massive aluminum smelting plants. The entire government is also influenced heavily by the fishing industry, and there is a lot of resistance to change. The article also talks a lot about per capita investment. Considering Iceland has 375,000 people, that's hardly the stat to lead with. ~250,000 of them live in the capital area. Iceland is a wonderful place, with wonderful people, but the economy is collapsing and the warring 10 parties of government are effectively slap fighting each other instead of changing anything just so they can not be the Independence party. Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month for the last year. Iceland's real draw is its natural beauty, and the tourism it inspires. Unfortunately, what used to be a very inexpensive place to visit is now incredibly expensive to fly to, and also expensive to be in. People I know in the tourism industries have said they saw rapid growth post-covid, but rising costs have zeroed out or even made them less profitable than before covid. It is a place I love, and a people I love, and I will continue to go back and visit yearly. It isn't going to be the next hot tech spot though.

culopatin 3y ago
It’s interesting you say it’s expensive to fly to. We went last year from the US on our way to Poland because it was cheaper to fly to Iceland and then take a Wizz air than to fly through Frankfurt. And I’m talking a 50% savings. It’s cheaper for us to fly to Iceland from the east coast than to fly to Dallas.
- bbarn 3y ago
  Price flights today. I'm going in two weeks and paid 1500$ months ago. The same ticket is even more today. Three years ago it was a 500$ flight.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Years ago it was shockingly cheap, but I still found local lodging and eating out expensive. My last trip was in 2009 for EVE Fanfest and a week-long stay in a hotel on Laugavegur ran me around $5k USD. Most other trips for same length of stay at that time were running me half that or less.
    - avar 3y ago
      Iceland's expensive, but saying it's expensive because a hotel on Laugarvegur is expensive is like saying America's expensive because a hotel within walking distance of Times Square is expensive.
    - MrDresden 3y ago
      Add to that story that Iceland was in a deep economic slump after the financial meltdown when you arrived in 2009. The currency was cheap for anyone to buy. You can imagine how the cost would be now after the economy has recovered since then, plus at least 10% inflation.
monero-xmr 3y ago
Iceland is barely a medium sized US city. Norway has fewer people than Massachusetts. It’s difficult to make any comparison at all between Scandinavian countries and the US in any lens given their lack of immigration and fairly uniform race and culture. Doesn’t stop a lot of people here from trying, however.
- paddim8 3y ago
  Lack of immigration? Where did you get that from? Iceland had quite a high rate of immigration. In Sweden, 30% are either foreign born or have foreign born parents, with the largest immigrant group being from Asia.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    There were over 200k recorded immigrants in November 2022 alone. That doesn’t include the ones that weren’t caught. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/13/monthly-encounters-with-migrants-at-u-s-mexico-border-remain-near-record-highs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/13/monthly-e... Nearly the entirely population of Iceland came to the US in a single month. The scale of immigration here is very hard to compare with anything the EU sees.
    - paddim8 3y ago
      Absolute numbers tell me absolutely nothing. What matters is per capita. But if we're going to go by absolute numbers... Sweden had over 100-200k immigrants per year several years. That's over 1% of the population in just a year. Sweden has a higher rate of foreign born people than the US.
    - arp242 3y ago
      The US has a population of ~330 million. Iceland has a population of ~390,000. Iceland is 102k km², but only about a quarter of that is habitable due to glaciers, mountains, and nature reserved. It's comparable in size to Vermont or Massachusetts. 17k people migrated to Iceland last year, or about 4.3% of the total population. The United States 200k is about 0.06% of the population. Have you been to Iceland? There's loads of non-Icelandic people living there. About 16.3% of the entire country's population[1], and in some areas it's close to 30%.[2] The highest number of immigrants in the US are in CA, where it's ~23%,[3], and the country average is about 14%.[4] Although this number is no doubt higher in some cities like SF and LA. But as a country, Iceland has roughly the same or more immigrants than the US. [1]: https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2022/11/24/immigrants_in_iceland_just_over_60_000/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2022... [2]: https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2021/10/20/immigrants_represent_15_5_percent_of_iceland_s_popu/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2021/10/20/immigrant... [3]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/ [4]: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...
progbits 3y ago
I'm sorry, _hostile_ tax structures? Some people happen to prefer taxes and governments that provide value to its citizens. https://www.icelandreview.com/culture/manoftheyear/ https://www.icelandreview.com/culture/manoftheyear/
- bbarn 3y ago
  Talking about him has nothing to do with governments. If the government was functioning and so provided value to his citizens it wouldn't rely on a generous rich man to go around the country to install handicap ramps. Go live there and see what you get for your money. A poor, overloaded health care system, food prices that the rest of the world drops their jaw at, and a nice clean downtown area in Reykjavík to show off.
paddim8 3y ago
The inflation they're experiencing is not a sign of a collapsing economy. It's similar to other European countries right now. Also, 80k USD a year is a ton by European standards, so I'm not sure why you're using that as a point of comparison. Especially considering the employer pays significantly more (which goes to healthcare, pension, etc.) in practice. Iceland has some of the highest salaries in Western Europe.
- kristiandupont 3y ago
  >80k USD a year is a ton by European standards I can't speak to all of Europe but tech wages are significantly higher here in Denmark.
  - emptysongglass 3y ago
    That depends on if it's before or after tax. If after: 46k DKK out monthly is top of the line given our own crushing taxes. If before, yeah not good.
  - jdmoreira 3y ago
    Really? Not in Sweden though. What do you think accounts for this difference?
    - atdrummond 3y ago
      Tax burden on Danish salaries is borne by employees post-tax rather than businesses. This tends to inflate net take home pay.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Post-tax taxes?
        atdrummond 3y ago
        Just remove that word - I failed to properly edit the sentence.
jsnell 3y ago
> it's rare to break 1M isk a month (which is about 80,000 - 85,000USD I assume there must be an order of magnitude mistake somewhere here, either in the currency conversion or in the timeframe. > Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month Likewise I don't believe this for moment. It'd mean an annual inflation of about 300%.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jlokier 3y ago
  > I assume there must be an order of magnitude mistake somewhere here, either in the currency conversion or in the timeframe. I guess the GP meant "USD per year". With that the numbers work out. To clarify. 1M ISK ≈ 7,150 USD. So 1M ISK per month translates to about 85,000 USD per year.
- matt_storm 3y ago
  The numbers are not wrong. 1 euro is 150 ISK. Which means yearly salary od 80k is about 12M ISK, or 1M ISK per month.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    The OP's claim was that a monthly salary was 1M ISK, and that 1M ISK was $80k. You are saying that a yearly salary is $80k. It seems pretty clear that those original numbers were wrong.
probablypower 3y ago
I agree that the article has rose-tinted glasses, but your post has (cynic coloured)-tinted glasses. I am replying here not to attack your post but to provide an alternate perspective. > it's rare to break 1M isk a month (85 kUSD/year) 1M isk enough is very liveable here. If you disagree with this statement, I'm not surprised you left Iceland. Rightly so Icelandic society is undergoing a period of union-based striking in order to improve salaries for lower wage people (most recently teachers). If your motive in life is to maximise salary and pay minimal tax then, yes, Iceland isn't the best place to be. > Most of that geothermal energy? Yeah, it's sent to massive aluminum smelting plants. This is oddly snarky and vaguely frames this to be a negative when it is positive (especially for the economy). Roughly 85% of homes in Iceland are heated directly by geothermal energy. This drastically reduces residental electricity use. The economic situation in Iceland would be a lot worse if not for the smelters. Also, if the smelters were not in Iceland they would be elsewhere using electricity with a much higher carbon intensity. The article is wrong also, in that it praises Iceland for renewable energy when it is really just geographically lucky. > the economy is collapsing This is a pretty big statement that lacks any sort of support. > the warring 10 parties of government are effectively slap fighting each other instead of changing anything just so they can not be the Independence party As far as democracy goes, that sounds healthy to me. I agree that Icelandic politics is largely self-serving and is prone to "big fish in a small pond" mentality, but this is basically as good as democracy gets. > Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month No, annual inflation is 10%, so monthly inflation is around 0.8%. [1] > Unfortunately, what used to be a very inexpensive place to visit is now incredibly expensive to fly to, and also expensive to be in Yet tourism demand is quite good, which is creating a lot of jobs and bringing a lot of money into the country. It is now one of the 3 main pillars of the Icelandic economy (with electricity intensive industry and fishing). Odd that you'd look at this as a negative seeing as you have concerns about the economic health of Iceland. > It isn't going to be the next hot tech spot though. I agree. 1 - https://www.sedlabanki.is/annad-efni/verdbolga/ https://www.sedlabanki.is/annad-efni/verdbolga/
- borski 3y ago
  > The article is wrong also, in that it praises Iceland for renewable energy when it is really just geographically lucky. Lots of places that are geographically lucky still fail to take advantage of that very same luck. Iceland could just as easily not have used geothermal energy to heat nearly all their homes, but they saw their advantage and capitalized on it. That should be commended, imho.
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
> Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month Actually, about 1/12th of that. You meant 8-10% a year. [0] [0]: https://tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi
- runeks 3y ago
  More like 1/30th of that. Because of compounding, 10% monthly inflation is over 300% yearly inflation.
meheleventyone 3y ago
FWIW I've worked in tech here in Iceland for 12 years and this isn't really my experience. The article is a little rose-tinted but it isn't as negative a bbarn makes things seem either. In particular salaries in tech can definitely be higher than they make out and this sector is healthy for the size of the countries population!
- notyourwork 3y ago
  > isn't as negative a bbarn makes things seem either In what way? Saying I disagree and not qualifying it makes it impossible for those unfamiliar to compare and contrast these divergent opinions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - meheleventyone 3y ago
    I did follow up with another sentence where I disagreed with the point that’s relevant to the article under discussion here. It’s seems pointless to run through all the tangential stuff the OP wanted to have a jaundiced rant about.
yownie 3y ago
>Most of that geothermal energy? Yeah, it's sent to massive aluminum smelting plants. Energy production is majority from Hydroelectric, home heating uses geothermal. They don't pay very much for their use however, that's true.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
valdiorn 3y ago
> The article also talks a lot about per capita investment. Comedian Ari Eldjarn has a really good joke a bout "per capita". It's an economist term, but in Iceland every five year old knows the phrase, because we, as a nation, are very frequently outliers when it comes to per capita, due to the small size of the population it doesn't take much in absolute terms, to skew the average very high or very low. Also, as an Icelander who escaped to London almost a decade ago, I agree with everything bbarn has said. Most annoying to me was the fact that I could be a top expert in my field, and still only make about 50% above median income (assuming I can even find employment in Iceland doing that work). The bell curve in Iceland is very narrow, with almost no tail. In London I'm getting paid 4-5x what I got in Iceland, with significantly lower cost of living (and no inflation linked mortgage; if you want to be outraged, read about Icelandic mortgages) I always tell people; Iceland is a great place to live, if you're happy being an average person, who drives an average car, lives in an average house, have an average family, with common hobbies and average ambition. If you dare dreaming bigger than that, you are considered a narcissistic capitalist and nobody likes you. People are very supportive of start-ups, as long as they're not very successful. Once they start taking off and earning money, people change their tune. Then suddenly it's all "they couldn't possibly have been that successful without corruption", and "they need to pay more taxes"... --- I remember reading comments on various social networks, where people cheered when my family's hotel business failed. A spate of cancelled bookings after WOW air went bust (people also cheered that), ended up causing cashflow problems and eventually the hotel was shuttered and the property was repossessed. In the end it was sold for more than outstanding debt and every creditor got paid, including the bank. - but oh my god people lost their collective minds about this. "Corrupt capitalist scum getting their comeuppance" was sort of the summary of people's opinions. My dad literally worked himself to death fixing up that hotel and trying to make it successful (he had a sudden heart attack on location in 2017). My mom was left with a ~10 million krona stake in the business along (~80k USD) with her siblings who had a similar stake, but for most of them this was a significant portion of their savings. Just ordinary people trying to work hard and take a small risk to make something big happen, but people couldn't have that.

by bbarn 3y ago

culopatin 3y ago

It’s interesting you say it’s expensive to fly to. We went last year from the US on our way to Poland because it was cheaper to fly to Iceland and then take a Wizz air than to fly through Frankfurt. And I’m talking a 50% savings. It’s cheaper for us to fly to Iceland from the east coast than to fly to Dallas.

bbarn 3y ago
Price flights today. I'm going in two weeks and paid 1500$ months ago. The same ticket is even more today. Three years ago it was a 500$ flight.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Years ago it was shockingly cheap, but I still found local lodging and eating out expensive. My last trip was in 2009 for EVE Fanfest and a week-long stay in a hotel on Laugavegur ran me around $5k USD. Most other trips for same length of stay at that time were running me half that or less.
  - avar 3y ago
    Iceland's expensive, but saying it's expensive because a hotel on Laugarvegur is expensive is like saying America's expensive because a hotel within walking distance of Times Square is expensive.
  - MrDresden 3y ago
    Add to that story that Iceland was in a deep economic slump after the financial meltdown when you arrived in 2009. The currency was cheap for anyone to buy. You can imagine how the cost would be now after the economy has recovered since then, plus at least 10% inflation.

monero-xmr 3y ago

Iceland is barely a medium sized US city. Norway has fewer people than Massachusetts. It’s difficult to make any comparison at all between Scandinavian countries and the US in any lens given their lack of immigration and fairly uniform race and culture. Doesn’t stop a lot of people here from trying, however.

paddim8 3y ago
Lack of immigration? Where did you get that from? Iceland had quite a high rate of immigration. In Sweden, 30% are either foreign born or have foreign born parents, with the largest immigrant group being from Asia.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  There were over 200k recorded immigrants in November 2022 alone. That doesn’t include the ones that weren’t caught. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/13/monthly-encounters-with-migrants-at-u-s-mexico-border-remain-near-record-highs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/13/monthly-e... Nearly the entirely population of Iceland came to the US in a single month. The scale of immigration here is very hard to compare with anything the EU sees.
  - paddim8 3y ago
    Absolute numbers tell me absolutely nothing. What matters is per capita. But if we're going to go by absolute numbers... Sweden had over 100-200k immigrants per year several years. That's over 1% of the population in just a year. Sweden has a higher rate of foreign born people than the US.
  - arp242 3y ago
    The US has a population of ~330 million. Iceland has a population of ~390,000. Iceland is 102k km², but only about a quarter of that is habitable due to glaciers, mountains, and nature reserved. It's comparable in size to Vermont or Massachusetts. 17k people migrated to Iceland last year, or about 4.3% of the total population. The United States 200k is about 0.06% of the population. Have you been to Iceland? There's loads of non-Icelandic people living there. About 16.3% of the entire country's population[1], and in some areas it's close to 30%.[2] The highest number of immigrants in the US are in CA, where it's ~23%,[3], and the country average is about 14%.[4] Although this number is no doubt higher in some cities like SF and LA. But as a country, Iceland has roughly the same or more immigrants than the US. [1]: https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2022/11/24/immigrants_in_iceland_just_over_60_000/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2022... [2]: https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2021/10/20/immigrants_represent_15_5_percent_of_iceland_s_popu/ https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2021/10/20/immigrant... [3]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/ [4]: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...

progbits 3y ago

I'm sorry, _hostile_ tax structures? Some people happen to prefer taxes and governments that provide value to its citizens. https://www.icelandreview.com/culture/manoftheyear/ https://www.icelandreview.com/culture/manoftheyear/

bbarn 3y ago
Talking about him has nothing to do with governments. If the government was functioning and so provided value to his citizens it wouldn't rely on a generous rich man to go around the country to install handicap ramps. Go live there and see what you get for your money. A poor, overloaded health care system, food prices that the rest of the world drops their jaw at, and a nice clean downtown area in Reykjavík to show off.

paddim8 3y ago

The inflation they're experiencing is not a sign of a collapsing economy. It's similar to other European countries right now. Also, 80k USD a year is a ton by European standards, so I'm not sure why you're using that as a point of comparison. Especially considering the employer pays significantly more (which goes to healthcare, pension, etc.) in practice. Iceland has some of the highest salaries in Western Europe.

kristiandupont 3y ago
>80k USD a year is a ton by European standards I can't speak to all of Europe but tech wages are significantly higher here in Denmark.
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  That depends on if it's before or after tax. If after: 46k DKK out monthly is top of the line given our own crushing taxes. If before, yeah not good.
- jdmoreira 3y ago
  Really? Not in Sweden though. What do you think accounts for this difference?
  - atdrummond 3y ago
    Tax burden on Danish salaries is borne by employees post-tax rather than businesses. This tends to inflate net take home pay.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Post-tax taxes?
      - atdrummond 3y ago
        Just remove that word - I failed to properly edit the sentence.

jsnell 3y ago

> it's rare to break 1M isk a month (which is about 80,000 - 85,000USD I assume there must be an order of magnitude mistake somewhere here, either in the currency conversion or in the timeframe. > Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month Likewise I don't believe this for moment. It'd mean an annual inflation of about 300%.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jlokier 3y ago
> I assume there must be an order of magnitude mistake somewhere here, either in the currency conversion or in the timeframe. I guess the GP meant "USD per year". With that the numbers work out. To clarify. 1M ISK ≈ 7,150 USD. So 1M ISK per month translates to about 85,000 USD per year.
matt_storm 3y ago
The numbers are not wrong. 1 euro is 150 ISK. Which means yearly salary od 80k is about 12M ISK, or 1M ISK per month.
- jsnell 3y ago
  The OP's claim was that a monthly salary was 1M ISK, and that 1M ISK was $80k. You are saying that a yearly salary is $80k. It seems pretty clear that those original numbers were wrong.

probablypower 3y ago

I agree that the article has rose-tinted glasses, but your post has (cynic coloured)-tinted glasses. I am replying here not to attack your post but to provide an alternate perspective. > it's rare to break 1M isk a month (85 kUSD/year) 1M isk enough is very liveable here. If you disagree with this statement, I'm not surprised you left Iceland. Rightly so Icelandic society is undergoing a period of union-based striking in order to improve salaries for lower wage people (most recently teachers). If your motive in life is to maximise salary and pay minimal tax then, yes, Iceland isn't the best place to be. > Most of that geothermal energy? Yeah, it's sent to massive aluminum smelting plants. This is oddly snarky and vaguely frames this to be a negative when it is positive (especially for the economy). Roughly 85% of homes in Iceland are heated directly by geothermal energy. This drastically reduces residental electricity use. The economic situation in Iceland would be a lot worse if not for the smelters. Also, if the smelters were not in Iceland they would be elsewhere using electricity with a much higher carbon intensity. The article is wrong also, in that it praises Iceland for renewable energy when it is really just geographically lucky. > the economy is collapsing This is a pretty big statement that lacks any sort of support. > the warring 10 parties of government are effectively slap fighting each other instead of changing anything just so they can not be the Independence party As far as democracy goes, that sounds healthy to me. I agree that Icelandic politics is largely self-serving and is prone to "big fish in a small pond" mentality, but this is basically as good as democracy gets. > Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month No, annual inflation is 10%, so monthly inflation is around 0.8%. [1] > Unfortunately, what used to be a very inexpensive place to visit is now incredibly expensive to fly to, and also expensive to be in Yet tourism demand is quite good, which is creating a lot of jobs and bringing a lot of money into the country. It is now one of the 3 main pillars of the Icelandic economy (with electricity intensive industry and fishing). Odd that you'd look at this as a negative seeing as you have concerns about the economic health of Iceland. > It isn't going to be the next hot tech spot though. I agree. 1 - https://www.sedlabanki.is/annad-efni/verdbolga/ https://www.sedlabanki.is/annad-efni/verdbolga/

borski 3y ago
> The article is wrong also, in that it praises Iceland for renewable energy when it is really just geographically lucky. Lots of places that are geographically lucky still fail to take advantage of that very same luck. Iceland could just as easily not have used geothermal energy to heat nearly all their homes, but they saw their advantage and capitalized on it. That should be commended, imho.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

> Inflation has been hovering around 8-10% a month Actually, about 1/12th of that. You meant 8-10% a year. [0] [0]: https://tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi

runeks 3y ago
More like 1/30th of that. Because of compounding, 10% monthly inflation is over 300% yearly inflation.

meheleventyone 3y ago

FWIW I've worked in tech here in Iceland for 12 years and this isn't really my experience. The article is a little rose-tinted but it isn't as negative a bbarn makes things seem either. In particular salaries in tech can definitely be higher than they make out and this sector is healthy for the size of the countries population!

notyourwork 3y ago
> isn't as negative a bbarn makes things seem either In what way? Saying I disagree and not qualifying it makes it impossible for those unfamiliar to compare and contrast these divergent opinions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  I did follow up with another sentence where I disagreed with the point that’s relevant to the article under discussion here. It’s seems pointless to run through all the tangential stuff the OP wanted to have a jaundiced rant about.

yownie 3y ago

>Most of that geothermal energy? Yeah, it's sent to massive aluminum smelting plants. Energy production is majority from Hydroelectric, home heating uses geothermal. They don't pay very much for their use however, that's true.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

valdiorn 3y ago

> The article also talks a lot about per capita investment. Comedian Ari Eldjarn has a really good joke a bout "per capita". It's an economist term, but in Iceland every five year old knows the phrase, because we, as a nation, are very frequently outliers when it comes to per capita, due to the small size of the population it doesn't take much in absolute terms, to skew the average very high or very low. Also, as an Icelander who escaped to London almost a decade ago, I agree with everything bbarn has said. Most annoying to me was the fact that I could be a top expert in my field, and still only make about 50% above median income (assuming I can even find employment in Iceland doing that work). The bell curve in Iceland is very narrow, with almost no tail. In London I'm getting paid 4-5x what I got in Iceland, with significantly lower cost of living (and no inflation linked mortgage; if you want to be outraged, read about Icelandic mortgages) I always tell people; Iceland is a great place to live, if you're happy being an average person, who drives an average car, lives in an average house, have an average family, with common hobbies and average ambition. If you dare dreaming bigger than that, you are considered a narcissistic capitalist and nobody likes you. People are very supportive of start-ups, as long as they're not very successful. Once they start taking off and earning money, people change their tune. Then suddenly it's all "they couldn't possibly have been that successful without corruption", and "they need to pay more taxes"... --- I remember reading comments on various social networks, where people cheered when my family's hotel business failed. A spate of cancelled bookings after WOW air went bust (people also cheered that), ended up causing cashflow problems and eventually the hotel was shuttered and the property was repossessed. In the end it was sold for more than outstanding debt and every creditor got paid, including the bank. - but oh my god people lost their collective minds about this. "Corrupt capitalist scum getting their comeuppance" was sort of the summary of people's opinions. My dad literally worked himself to death fixing up that hotel and trying to make it successful (he had a sudden heart attack on location in 2017). My mom was left with a ~10 million krona stake in the business along (~80k USD) with her siblings who had a similar stake, but for most of them this was a significant portion of their savings. Just ordinary people trying to work hard and take a small risk to make something big happen, but people couldn't have that.