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Norweigan oil fund

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Re: Norweigan oil fund

#261

Post by kyruzic »

buboard wrote: post #73
lnsru wrote: post #28

Wow! These people must be extraordinary to use oil money this way! Not kidding! Never been in Norway, but in countries I have ever been this would be barely possible due to corruption and the needs of the politician’s buddies. Like yachts, private jets, Bentleys and Vertu phones. This $186k/person isn’t far from what average German poses: https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/617492/cd59713c156ad...

Norway was lucky to be a very developed society before oil was discovered. In most countries oil is a curse

The US and Canada (Alberta) both were as well. Yet both have massive debt instead of huge amounts of money.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#263

Post by endorphone »

kyruzic wrote: post #261
buboard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway was lucky to be a very developed society before oil was discovered. In most countries oil is a curse

The US and Canada (Alberta) both were as well. Yet both have massive debt instead of huge amounts of money.

In the US, and to a lesser extent Canada, the idea of the state benefiting too much is seen as lefty socialism (Canada briefly flirted with economic nationalism with the creation of Petro-Canada, but this was vehemently opposed by US energy companies). So we have a classic situation where the profits are privatized to the very few, and the costs are socialized (climate change, abandoned wells, pollution, etc).

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#264

Post by hcurtiss »

odonnellryan wrote: post #246
outside1234 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oil fund is Exxon, which is in the S&P 500, which is in your 401k.

Only available to people who have the means or opportunity to invest. We're taking from everyone and giving to few.

There are a lot of people who rely on those investments, whether through their government retirement, their employer's retirement, or through their own holdings. Even many social programs are funded with investments in equities.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#265

Post by crdoconnor »

ramblerman wrote: post #142
Ididntdothis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anybody claiming otherwise? It seems pretty obvious that someone there messed up majorly for a long time.

The people who barricaded the Venezuelan embassy when there was an attempted coup against Maduro for one. There is a big ideological drive to show that communism works, and as such all the problems Venezuela faces are just imperialism at work (In their argument).

There's a bigger ideological drive to show that taking US oil assets in the country and diverting the funds toward social programs was a dire mistake.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#266

Post by smcl »

laurencerowe wrote: post #259
smcl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as the UK. This was an opportunity squandered, and we can only look to Norway and think of what might have been

It would not have been the same since the UK has a similar amount of oil and 12x the number of people. Proportionately it was far less significant.

I'm fully aware of that, however currently as a population we have nearly nothing to show for decades of oil extraction other than pockets of extremely concentrated wealth. If we make a wild assumption that we did exactly the same with our reserves and somehow contrived to create exactly the same sovereign wealth fund, that'd work out to around £13,000 per person. That's not enough to make everyone a millionaire, but it's much greater than the £0 we put aside the way we did it.

Of course this is speculation, featuring ifs/buts and using numbers plucked from our neighbour across the North Sea ... however it's pretty plain to see that we screwed this opportunity up.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#267

Post by munk-a »

rcpt wrote: post #240
lordnacho wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's about being developed, vs being about having a high-trust society? In a lot of places people will immediately get suspicious if you say you're setting up a government fund to hold everyone's money. For the benefit of society, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

This could use a bit more explanation and CGP Grey actually has a very good video out called "The Rules for Rulers" which touches on one of the reasons this really is a terrible situation. Whenever funds are diverted to the common good the party in power is, by definition, kicking less money into cronyism than is possible - in a setting with a poorly activated public, where power ends up being concentrated into the hands of the few, there is a constant pressure from those in power to divert more money to those representative voices from the voices you're unaccountable to - this makes it more likely that even a well intentioned leader will be ousted in a coup.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#268

Post by kaibee »

hcurtiss wrote: post #260
navigatesol wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what to say about Americans, who squandered natural resources Yeah, they squandered their natural resources on the way to becoming the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the planet... How can people say things like this with a straight face? The fact that there are some tough political issues that have or may span a couple decades doesn't erase centuries of history, or millennia of future prospects…

Exactly right. Many Americans are so ashamed of the US, when in many ways it's a shining example of how to do things right -- certainly relative to many other countries. The US is a spectacularly prosperous country, and all it seems anyone talks about is how to fundamentally change the systems that made it that way. There are always in which a society can improve, but man -- let's not forget what's worked well.

> The US is a spectacularly prosperous country, and all it seems anyone talks about is how to fundamentally change the systems that made it that way.

The things that made America so wealthy were changed pre-2000. It takes time for those changes to really impact society, and for people to realize it. And no one really talking about "fundamental" change. They're talking about raising taxes back to what they used to be like in the 60s and 70s. Not just in terms of the rate, but the percentage of the tax burden that falls on each segment of society.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#269

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #161
buboard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway was lucky to be a very developed society before oil was discovered. In most countries oil is a curse

I wonder if it's about being developed, vs being about having a high-trust society? In a lot of places people will immediately get suspicious if you say you're setting up a government fund to hold everyone's money. For the benefit of society, of course.

[deleted]

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#270

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

hcurtiss wrote: post #256
Spooky23 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. No. Usually where there are significant amounts of minerals, there are separate mineral rights. Mineral rights trump surface ownership, and usually the rights were sold off decades or centuries ago. If you find something under your property, it probably doesn't belong to you. Also, state laws vary in weird ways. Should you find gold in New York, it's the property of the state.

Outside developed oil or coal plays, severed mineral estates in the US are the exception, not the rule. Also, to the point above, those severed mineral interests are almost always privately held.

Unless they happen to be on "sovereign" indian reservation land.
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