True but even if it was 100% the amount of money per capita would be tiny compared to Norway. Only some of the smaller gulf states are comparable to Norway.
Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.
Government revenue wouldn’t increase by 8x. First increasing oil production in the US over the last 10-20 years required a massive amount of investment. Shale oil is much more expensive to extract so companies simply would have drilled less if they knew they couldn’t profit as much. Developing new wells is only profitable of oil is above $60-70, in Norway it’s up to 40-50% less.
Norway’s reserves are mostly conventional and much cheaper to exploit and develop.
Secondly even if corporations and their share holders get a much bigger share in the US a significant amount of that money ends up in the federal budget anyway.
So idk maybe 2-3x at best? Which of course is still a lot
The UK had a tiny amount of oil compared to Norway if you adjusted by population so it’s not a fair comparison. Also I’m not sure the share of the revenue the British government was getting was massively much lower than the case in Norway.
The UK government has had a huge income from the North Sea but unlike Norway we didn't invest it. We spent it as fast (or faster) than we received it. When modern Conservatives wax lyrical about Thatcher's economic miracle they seem unaware that it was mostly just oil revenue.
True, but the point is that no matter what the UK did it could never have been in the same position as Norway. Simply too many people and not enough oil.
Realistically even if they managed to accumulate a significant amount of money there would have been a lot of societal pressure to spend all of that during various economic downturns. How could a government that’s sitting on a fat pile of money ever justify cutting spending on the NHS or social services?
To be fair US is extremely rich in other natural resources other than oil. It is not the richest country in the world because Americans are such misers. Norways oil money could go to some Exxon or such and regular Norwegian could live in poverty.
OK, so the US' sovereign wealth fund would be 5-6x less per capita than Norway's, so less effective, but nonetheless capable of benefitting Americans substantially.
Except that ... it doesn't exist, because, from the beginning, we've given it all away to Big Oil, who spend some of it making sure that politicians get elected who keep supporting Big Oil.
I mean you do have a perfectly valid point but I don’t see something like that working in countries like US or UK (or other countries with large trade deficits). The money would have just been used for general spending and at best would result in lower deficits. Which is of course better than nothing. It’s just that it would be simple politically infeasible and very unpopular to not spend it.
You can only compare Norway to richest of the gulf states like UAE, though (e.g. Saudi Arabia produces less oil per capita than Norway). Put 10x more people in Norway and keep the same amount of oil like in many of those “shithole” countries and you’d end up with a slightly different situation
UAE and Qatar are doing quite well. Oman, Kuwait, SA, Brunei maybe not so much but there are obviously various socio-economic causes for that. I wouldn’t necessarily classify them as shitholes, though (as long as you are a male citizen at least..)
No other countries are comparable.
To be fair I think a good counterpoint is Denmark, they are doing about as well as Norway despite not having such massive amounts of oil. So surely Norway is underperforming despite the fact that they had a massive head start?
Norway won the lottery, sure they invested their winnings instead of wasting them but they are still playing on easy mode, you can count the number of countries which could have done the same with your fingers.
Norway is more reliant on oil/gas money than almost every country on Earth. e.g. to its small population it produces significantly more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia. So yeah for instance it is/was way easier for Britain to kill its privatized oil industry.
It’s commonly used to illustrate how absurd are some of the things the US government is doing. It’s not commonly used to refer to the actual bodies of water.
What rules? There are no laws that would require Google or other private entities (or for that matter the overwhelming majority of government organizations) to use any absurd name that the president came up with instead of the actual names. Obviously they feel coerced or are just generally into boot licking but its the opposite of “rules”.
By "strict rules" are you referring to the actual laws that govern the structure of federal contractor relationships, or are you talking about arbitrary provisions that executive branch officials attempt to include in contracts without reference to those laws?
Both. But these "arbitrary provisions" are extremely common in business contracts, and not inherently illegal unless it's asking you to break a law... but a judge can still enforce the terms if one side is not cooperating.
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