What happens when the oil runs out?

It's starting to, and those well-to-do, happy Norwegians won't even consider opening new offshore areas to exploration.

It's not going to be pretty in a few years.

The HDI is a summary measure of human development. It measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development:

* A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth

* Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (with one-third weight)

* A decent standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita (PPP US$).

Caution: Calculation of HDI is an evolving methodology, and comparisons should not be made between years (when methods might have varied) but can be made between countries, as issued by the same source.

The first qualifying point, life expectancy, is a pretty broadly calibrated measure.
It's affected by climate. People in colder places live longer, i.e., those who live their whole lives in Minnesota typically live two years longer than people who live their entire lives in Florida.
It's affected by cultural diet. Okinawans live very long lives, attributed mainly to their diet and dining habits, but have no greater access to food or medical care than the Scots, who deep fry everything, even candy bars.

The second point, knowledge, is also fairly vague.
Adult literacy is measured differently by different nations, so one country's reported 99% literacy rate might include 30% of the population that's functionally illiterate, whereas other nations might report lower adult literacy rates, but have a tougher standard of "literacy".
Also, although literacy is a good proxy for "knowledge", it's only a proxy, and doesn't guarantee that the common citizen has a good grasp of basic concepts of science, or even of current events.

Given that, the margin of error on this list has to be pretty high, and my guess is that the top 20 nations are fairly interchangable, with only a 3% difference in score between #1 and #20.

As noted by the UN Human Development Report Office itself:

[S]everal data quality issues, in addition to the existing data gaps in many areas, constantly pose questions on the accuracy and reliability of the international data presented in the Report.
Three types of data quality issues are of main concerns to the HDR: inconsistency between national and international data; inconsistency/incoherence between international data series; and the differences in timing and frequency of data revisions among international agencies. These data issues, in particular, the more visible issue of discrepancy between national and international data...

Which results in absurdities such as Cuba scoring higher than Brazil.

This is ho-hum, dog bites man material. The United states is both a multi-cultural and a free society. Bluntly, this means we are free as individuals to wallow in dysfunctional lifestyles if we so choose and therefore free to enjoy a diminished standard of living, if we so choose.
Pass over a correction for recent immigrants, whose presence further skews the comparison between the City of the Hill and places like Norway. If we only factor out those individuals whose choices on education, savings and other forms of capital formation drag our numbers down, we find that there is no better place to live.

Considering that Norway has been independent less than 100 years and was the poorest part of Europe 150 years ago, carping that it falls a degree short of Paradise in 2004 is meanspirited.

The correct comparison would be to other rural places with populations around 5 million. Botswana, say, or Nicaragua.

Harry:

Nothing meanspirited at all. Norway is a well-ordered, prosperous, peaceful and very agreeable place to live, populated by hard-working and decent, if somewhat dull and self-satisfied, people. The criticism was directed at the UN, which chooses nice soft-leftist criteria, probably at the behest of its Nordic employees. If you throw in dissent, political tolerance, the ability to start a business, the reception given immigrants, educational choice, taxation rates, etc., etc., the rankings might be very different. But I agree it is silly to try to paint the Nordic countries as statist hellholes or pretend they are teetering on a precipice. Even P.J. O'Rourke gives a few respectful nods to Sweden.

We are constantly grappling here with the relative importance of general, collective prosperity and security vs. political and economic freedoms and self-reliance. Many of us have a tendency to argue that they go hand in hand, at least in the long term. I'm not so sure it is all that neat or inevitable, but if material comfort and security is the be all and end all, the ideological tussles for future "best place to live" awards will be between Norway and Singapore.

Sorry, to which I would add that neither of those will be the places most immigrants actually want to go.

A great place to visit and some wonderful people.

Great food but unconscionable prices for alcohol.

All things considered, beyond May, June and July there, I'd rather die younger.

Harry:

Maui or Norway? Which will it be? The Lady or the Tiger?

Here's a bone for Orrin.

Norway (and Sweden, of which it was a province until 1905), went from poorest to richest in under a century because Scandinavia had a rural population that was 100% literate, and when investors built factories, they found a highly efficient workforce starving -- literally -- for factory jobs.

The reason all those rural kids could read was that, by law, each village had to teach the kids to read the Lutheran Bible.

(Now I take the bone back. They didn't read only the Bible, and they aren't as Lutheran as the plan intended.)