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Norweigan oil fund

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Re: Norweigan oil fund

#131

Post by throwaway2019V »

cagenut wrote: post #85
lr4444lr wrote: post #34

The Norwegian success is the single biggest piece of evidence as to why the Venezuelan catastrophe was largely avoidable, and the fault of irresponsible leadership.

I can't stand this ideological sports-team type of commentary, so just to add some real information and context (after my downvote): Venezuela produces ~70k barrels per person per day. Norway produces a little more than half as much total oil, but with one-sixth the population it works out to ~330k barrels per person per day. An order of magnitude per-capita difference.

That's not an order of a magnitude.

Even then, so, Venezuela produces 1/5th per capita the oil of Norway. Why doesn't there exist a fund with $37k/person in Venezuela?

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#132

Post by whatshisface »

michaeljohansen wrote: post #48
BluffFace wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is why they can afford many government programs that the US simply cannot. Without a prolific income stream comparable to Norwegian oil, the only way to provide more social services is to tax individuals and businesses harder. Tax any group too heavily and you create brain drain, which hurts in the long run.

Norwegian software developer here. I pay my taxes with pleasure, knowing that the money supported my education, my ability to go to the hospital, good roads, good airports, and lots of other public functions that are great because we collectively invest in them. I think anything below 20% in taxes simply means a country's public functions will suffer. It's weird to me that Americans have so much against taxes. If a c…

All of the amenities that people like in America come from their local governments - police, roads, emergency services, courts, you name it. The surprising thing is that the local governments usually levy only a small fraction of the tax burden. Most of an American's tax goes to the federal government, where nobody knows what happens to it. It's stirred around, and a lot of it comes back to the local governments in the form of strings-attached funding that is used as an end-run around the individual state's rights to govern themselves. When the strings-attached money circles back to the local governments, they swear fealty to the federal government (which is what they're being paid to do) and then re-brand it as local services. That's why the average American sees a tiny fraction of their tax going to the local entity that does all the work, and a big fraction of their tax going to the federal system that only interacts with them when they haven't sent enough money.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#133

Post by dbatten »

cagenut wrote: post #85
lr4444lr wrote: post #34

The Norwegian success is the single biggest piece of evidence as to why the Venezuelan catastrophe was largely avoidable, and the fault of irresponsible leadership.

I can't stand this ideological sports-team type of commentary, so just to add some real information and context (after my downvote): Venezuela produces ~70k barrels per person per day. Norway produces a little more than half as much total oil, but with one-sixth the population it works out to ~330k barrels per person per day. An order of magnitude per-capita difference.

While your point about per-capita production is well-taken, I don't think the original comment was intending to score ideological points. It simply said the Venezuelan crisis was avoidable and happened due to mis-management, not that Chavismo is an inherently evil ideology...

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#134

Post by mruts »

spamizbad wrote: post #118
coliveira wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what to say about Americans, who squandered natural resources to help the rich, and now the funding to their own social security is en route to insolvency?

America should seriously consider nationalizing its resources and using that money to either fund programs to reverse the trend of its declining life expectancy or at the very least reduce the deficit (and perhaps, one day, bootstrap a sovereign wealth fund of its own)

One of my clients at my old finance firm was Alaska’s oil fund. They do pretty well for themselves and dole out 2k/year in cash to everyone living there. It’s unsurprisingly a very popular program, though I’m kind of morally opposed to a government function like that.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#135

Post by Y_Y »

daj40 wrote: post #93
lelima wrote: post #69

A friend lives in Oslo, sometimes I visit, it shock me the amount of electric vehicles, in one single street all cars parked were Tesla(not the posh area). The city have so much nature, is even hard to explain.

Along with being more eco minded, electric cars are actually more affordable in Norway, there is a significant tax placed on other vehicles. https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/

They let poor countries burn the oil, and use the money to pay for electric cars.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#136

Post by atombender »

punnerud wrote: post #18
thatguyagain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their income tax is 22% if I'm not mistaken.

Sales tax is 25% (lower on food + public transport). Income tax is close to 50% for most of people (progressive), in addition there is a 14% tax per employee that the companies have to pay. If you take out dividend there is a 25% tax that don't earn you pension.

Norway is also one of the few remaining countries that have a wealth tax (among OECD countries, the only other one is Switzerland), which is currently at 0.85% of all net assets above 1.4m NOK, including cash, public and private stock, cars, boats, and of course real estate. Material assets such as real estate is assessed based on tables that take square footage, age, etc. into consideration. The tax is, unusually and somewhat controversially, uncapped. In theory, you could end up owing 100% or more of your income in wealth tax.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#137

Post by sp332 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #16
BluffFace wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is why they can afford many government programs that the US simply cannot. Without a prolific income stream comparable to Norwegian oil, the only way to provide more social services is to tax individuals and businesses harder. Tax any group too heavily and you create brain drain, which hurts in the long run.

The US produces 10x the oil Norway does, and was producing significant amounts of oil as far back as the 1860s. We've had that profit stream, we just let it get captured by private corporations (or in Alaska's case, given away to garner votes).

I think Alaska's system is fine. I don't think it's morally worse to give people their money up front instead of holding on to it "for them" but only letting the majority decide how to spend it.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#138

Post by weberc2 »

michaeljohansen wrote: post #48
BluffFace wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is why they can afford many government programs that the US simply cannot. Without a prolific income stream comparable to Norwegian oil, the only way to provide more social services is to tax individuals and businesses harder. Tax any group too heavily and you create brain drain, which hurts in the long run.

Norwegian software developer here. I pay my taxes with pleasure, knowing that the money supported my education, my ability to go to the hospital, good roads, good airports, and lots of other public functions that are great because we collectively invest in them. I think anything below 20% in taxes simply means a country's public functions will suffer. It's weird to me that Americans have so much against taxes. If a c…

Middleclass Americans' income taxes are around or above 20%. Americans generally are opposed to taxes because there is a perception (rightly or wrongly) that our government is inefficient (due to some combination of corruption and incompetence), and we should sort that out before increasing taxes on programs with a (perceived) high probability of mismanagement.

> Obviously I can't speak for the general population, but as for my close proximity: My colleagues think taxes are good too. No brain drain here.

I think that's the critical difference--Norwegians believe they are getting value out of their taxes and Americans do not.

EDIT: Obviously this is a generalization of groups; not all Americans think the government is inefficient. Hopefully we can forego the predictable and pointless digression into "well not all Americans are that way!"

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#139

Post by giarc »

godelski wrote: post #127
belltaco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't the point of UBI is for everyone to leave their careers. If anything, it's the opposite.

Which is exactly why UBI is generally suggested to give below the poverty line. Enough to survive but not enough to be comfortable. Enough to get you through downturns but not enough where you'll abandon a well paying job.

I believe it was Andrew Yang who talked about UBI on Recode podcast recently. He also talked about UBI giving people the freedom to try something new. You may be more likely to start a business if you knew you had something to fall back on. This might be especially beneficial in the rural areas of America where $1000/month will support you longer than in urban centres.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#140

Post by fastball »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #71
godelski wrote: post #50

Considering this is explicitly stated to be for welfare, it would be really interesting to see a major UBI experiment. If the fund doesn't grow there's 186k 4 per person could be 12k/yr for over 15 years.

15 years is not UBI. If you can’t rely on it being around for the rest of your life it would be insane to leave your career to live on UBI.

"Leaving your career for UBI" is literally the opposite of what UBI is intended to do.
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