An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)

That is what I am saying - If the $3 trillion in super were shared equally, poverty would be a lot lower. Keating himself says that he could have set the system up this way, but didn't because he wanted it to be a privatized system of individual ownership.

> Norway has trillions in oil reserves to support a small population.

Norway has $1 trillion in retirement savings to support a small population. Australia has $3 trillion in retirement savings to support a small population. What's the difference? Why does what asset class the money originally came from matter?

> I am not sure why I need to explain this, but having a trillion dollar windfall reduces poverty much more effectively than subsidizing the savings of each individual.

Once again, both countries have trillions in assets, that can be distributed in many possible ways. You can either distribute them equally and reduce inequality (Norway), or individually and make it worse (Australia).

> Moreover, when you save each pay period you have to make lots of small little asset purchases, as opposed to making huge purchases in a SWF fund in which the money comes from selling oil, so transaction costs are higher in a 401K style system than when you are sitting on an ocean of free oil.

That is not how super funds work (they don't make small asset purchases each time you make a deposit, they run a combined asset pool and just keep track of your allocation) and not why super fees are high. They are high because there are so many small funds which spend money advertising against each other and duplicating admin costs, instead of simply having one big fund like Norway does.

Yes - and that was a terrible decision. Australia could have put super contributions into a collective pool, and used the money to increase equality and fund above-poverty-line universal pensions, but it didn't. Instead they put it in individually owned accounts - inequality and poverty is much higher in Australia as a consequence. Elderly women are the most impoverished demographic in the country.

> What you want is a defined benefit federal savings program (like social security), but that needs to be funded by taxing incomes, not by seizing existing private retirement savings.

No, what you want is a collective fund like Norway's - you are talking like this doesn't exist. It would be very straightforward to tax super balances (particularly large ones) and move money into a collective pool.

> Some nations have that and others don't, but it's not a sovereign wealth fund. Please don't confuse the two issues being discussed.

Norway's SWF is literally a pension fund, and explicitly has the goal of creating equally shared wealth.

> SWFs, OTOH, are created when a nation gets some unexpected windfall that is short lived, and it wants to smooth the life of that windfall into the future.

No, that is one reason SWFs are created, but there are many - Australia's own SWF for instance was not created for this reason.

> But in Australia, the extraction of coal and iron results in a much smaller surplus spread over a much larger population, and so Australia's mineral wealth, while large in absolute terms, does not support the same level of surplus income per person as Norway's oil wealth

If we lack the surplus income of Norway, how have we managed to create a pool of wealth 3x as big from surplus incomes, in spite of wasting much more of it on fees each year?

> Australia is very much dependent on all the jobs that mining creates, but that is not surplus income, it is income that has to be earned with labor.

This is incoherent - both oil and mining resources require labor to extract. There's nothing special about oil or resources compared to any other type of capital - you can make a fund out of any type of capital.

Here's a 2001 legal review from glasgow Caledonia university which obviously favours Scottish interests: https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/12/1/77/359040?login=t...

Here's closing remarks from the SNP on a parliamentary debate, that shows the predominant driving factor was fisheries, and (if you read the rest of the debate) suggests a lot of confusion about what was being discussed and why): https://www.theyworkforyou.com/sp/?id=2000-04-26.9.0#g58.1

Here's two extremely partisan takes by a pro Indy scot who claims to have previously negotiated sea boundary changes. What's interesting is the "northward drift" : https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/scotlands-st...

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/01/scotlandengl...

But no, I am not confused about the symbolic roles vs what is written in law.

I am an indian and our current Parliamentary system is a British legacy. We understood the need of a titular role like the Queen in our system, and thus created the position of the President for it. So in India, everything happens in the name of the President of India. E.g. A law becomes a law only if the President signs it. However, our constitution clearly defines the role and the post has no real power over the Executive, Parliament or the Judiciary.

Personally, my perception of the British monarchy has been that the laws assigning the power to the monarchy, as it was then written gives them a lot of power. But it is only in the last 3 - 4 decades that they are being interpreted more "democratically" in modern parliamentary traditions (a reflection of the changing times). And thus it is being taken to mean that all her powers can only be exercised "under the advise of the cabinet", even if some of the laws don't explicitly state that. (As you rightly pointed out, the lack of a written constitution is a very interesting feature of the British system, as it allows for a more "flexible" interpretation of the law by the courts).

Interestingly, unlike in the indian system, a Queen can actually refuse to sign a bill into law. (In India, it is clearly spelled out that the President can refuse to sign a bill into law and send it back to the parliament with his objections. But if it is sent back again, the President has no choice but to sign and make it a law). So in theory, the Queen can over rule any law abolishing the monarchy or its role in the British system! There's also enough leeway, in theory, in the laws for the Queen to assume full power anytime in the future as the Queen can dismiss an elected government and elections can only be held when the Queen calls for it.

> The power to go to war used to be a Royal Perogative (the PM could declare war) but even this is now lost after adventures in Iraq and requires assent by parliament.

If I remember right, didn't the Queen refuse to give her assent to table this bill to the Parliament? (One of the rare times she exercised this power).

    In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member's bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament. 

The big example is the National Energy Program which (aside from its economic impact on the province) basically tainted politics in Alberta and probably contributed to their hesitancy to contribute to a fund which could potentially be raided by the Federal government in the future.