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Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

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Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#31

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

Mizza wrote: post #23
vidarh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather so that you can have the "small trickle" perpetually.

Yeah, countries always have this, they're called taxpayers. If you invest in them, they can pay you more taxes than you put in. If you make their lives good, then people can even make _more_ people! Instead, Norway invests in American businesses in order to get that slow trickle, so instead of investing in their own people and industries, they have a slow trickle which can gives pension to a population in decline.

Maybe that's the real nub of the "resource curse"-- any effort to improve the lives of its citizens will be wrong and bad, so just invest in foreign assets and otherwise preserve things as they are.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#32

Post by jutrewag »

pydry wrote: post #28

It really is amazing that there is a list as long as your arm of economies dominated by natural resource extraction for whom it has been a curse. And then there's Norway. The sole exception.

Not sure what you mean. The Middle East is making out like bandits, it makes a sizeable percentage of the GDP in south and East Asia etc. it just feels like you’re putting Norway on a pedestal for no particular reason.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#33

Post by preommr »

jutrewag wrote: post #32
pydry wrote: post #28

It really is amazing that there is a list as long as your arm of economies dominated by natural resource extraction for whom it has been a curse. And then there's Norway. The sole exception.

Not sure what you mean. The Middle East is making out like bandits, it makes a sizeable percentage of the GDP in south and East Asia etc. it just feels like you’re putting Norway on a pedestal for no particular reason.

The difference is where the money goes. You can point to any country that scores high on corruption index and go "well actually, these people made out like bandits".

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#34

Post by kwhitefoot »

Mizza wrote: post #8

Stupid use of funds for the most part, it's not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It's not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there's no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.

I suspect that the people arguing here that Norway should direct that huge volume of money internally are not Norwegian residents. Those of us who live in Norway, most of us anyway, recognize that doing that would be a disaster and would just fund short term spending and fuel inflation.

The UK and the Dutch just spent the money they got from the North Sea oil and at least the UK has little to show for it.

Anyway, the Norwegian economy is doing just fine without it, we bounced back from COVID faster than practically everywhere else and everywhere I look there are new commercial and industrial buildings going up.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#35

Post by kwhitefoot »

Mizza wrote: post #20
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my country would make "stupid" investments to the tune of $250,000 per citizen set aside for a rainy day (or decade).

It's better than the poke in the eye, that's for sure, I just don't think it's optimal and I'm tired of the way this story gets trotted out every now and then. I think there's a middle ground between solid gold rocket cars and rainy-day austerity. Norway is quite under developed in many ways, many services you'd think would be better just aren't, once the oil gets switched off they don't have much modern industry as…

> many services you'd think would be better just aren't

Perhaps you could enlighten us about which services are lacking and how they are so much better in those countries that just spent the North Sea oil revenue internally?

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#36

Post by hkon »

tpmx wrote: post #4

Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting. My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being…

Disclosure, I'm a Norwegian. Saudi Arabia of the north. Well. Actually I think Sweden might be a top contender for that name.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#37

Post by 0xDEF »

The problem now is that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is deeply tied to the US economy.

I don't understand why we Europeans are so invested into the US economy when every American on twitter/reddit is saying the US dollar and economy is about to collapse. They might be wrong and are probably wrong but it is still incredibly stupid to invest in a country when its own citizens think it will collapse in a year or two.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#38

Post by outside1234 »

> without trashing the environment

without trashing the NORWEGIAN environment, but let's not whitewash over all of the CO2 they have unleashed on the world.

More generally, I think it will be interesting to see what happens next with Norway - while they have avoided the principle resource curse - what happens when all of these oil jobs disappear (10% of direct employment and probably up to 25% in an indirect sense)?

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#39

Post by jutrewag »

preommr wrote: post #33
jutrewag wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean. The Middle East is making out like bandits, it makes a sizeable percentage of the GDP in south and East Asia etc. it just feels like you’re putting Norway on a pedestal for no particular reason.

The difference is where the money goes. You can point to any country that scores high on corruption index and go "well actually, these people made out like bandits".

The Middle East is very rich with a very high standard of living. A lot of those countries have no income tax and basically free medical and utilities. Much better than what Norway offers.

Re: Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)

#40

Post by 0xDEF »

outside1234 wrote: post #38

> without trashing the environment without trashing the NORWEGIAN environment, but let's not whitewash over all of the CO2 they have unleashed on the world. More generally, I think it will be interesting to see what happens next with Norway - while they have avoided the principle resource curse - what happens when all of these oil jobs disappear (10% of direct employment and probably up to 25% in an indirect sense)?

The intentional conflation of localized environmental pollution and the GHG damage to the global climate is something many Westerners do. That is how they have deluded themselves into thinking dirty streets in India is a bigger problem than Americans driving F150s.
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