7 ms·

To anyone who is thinking: 1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us. America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia

To anyone who is thinking: 1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us. America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but chose not to do it. UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same with America, Australia and Canada. It is really remarkable how Norway was able to and still is able to think so far ahead then the rest of us.

cm3 10y ago
It's a matter of different politics. Norway chose not to basically let private companies take all the profit from natural resources, while in the UK there's this weird system in place that has politicians ruining public orgs like infrastructure providers to afterwards claim they fixed it, once they pushed for privatization, and all they did was get it back to where it was before in quality of service. After that, it's profit-driven and the population has to fight for laws to keep up existing quality standards they pay for with taxes. There are European countries like Finland where you don't worry which school your kids go to because there are no good or bad school districts. Same for hospitals. If you have to pay taxes for public services, then it must be fair and of equal quality for everybody, or you must turn it all into a Friedman-style privatize-everything system, which may or may not work but sounds thought through and might.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Norway is turning UK year by year...
  - to3m 10y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      The current government wants to sell off the Flytog (Airport Train). This is a state owned enterprise that even the seriously capitalist Norwegian financial magazine Kapital says is one of the best run companies in the country and should not be privatised. There have been serious suggestions that Statoil should be sold off completely. The electricity system has been privatised even though most of the energy is generated by rain that can hardly be said to be owned by anyone.
      - tyfon 10y ago
        Regarding Statoil. The government currently owns about 1/3 of it. The oil income for the state does not come from the profit of the company but the taxes they put on the companies that extract oil (which is about 80%) and the sale of licenses through Petoro. Selling Statoil (and the other ones) have absolutely no comparison to what Thatcher did in the 80s if that is what you are insinuating. Regarding the power, the majority of the plants are owned by Statkraft, a 100% government owned company and is most definitely not privatized. Flytoget runs well because even though it is owned by the government, they have had a very hands off approach and let them operate without interference. The same can be said of Statoil, the only reason it has done so well is that the government has been mostly hands off. My father was in the top management before retirement and has been very clear on this. Whenever the government tried to interfere it just made problems. In essence, as a fellow Norwegian i disagree with you on these subjects (and some of what you write is simply not true).
        kochthesecond 10y ago
        Why sell off the train if it's earning money? Plenty of government run ventures don't.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        uola 10y ago
        Because they are jelous they can't make as bad a deal as Stockholm did with Arlanda. Express? More seriously, to finance populistic reforms to increase the power of their own party.
vixen99 10y ago
Venezuela is also resource rich.
- labster 10y ago
  Venezuela is run by inept kleptocrats. Either the ineptitude or the kleptocracy part would be enough to keep a similar scheme from working in Venezuela.
oldmanjay 10y ago
Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness
- fleitz 10y ago
  It's also much less diverse than America.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    How's that relevant?
    - larsiusprime 10y ago
      The more opinions there are from different people the harder it is to reach consensus?
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
        Are we talking about ideological diversity or ethnical diversity?
        larsiusprime 10y ago
        I'm talking about the former, the latter i guess is at least somewhat correlated with differing opinions too. Reaaly its the vast difference in size that matters -- USA has SO many differing constituencies with differing needs and wants and opinions. Norway is a municipal government by comparison.
        adamnemecek 10y ago
        How do you measure ideological diversity? Also how do different parts of the US have different needs?
oldmanjay 10y ago
Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness
jpollock 10y ago
All of the countries mentioned have royalty regimes which companies have to pay to extract natural resources. Oil extraction in Texas has a 25% royalty rate [2]. This is typically based off of the retail price, not some interim price too. Governments are very careful to set royalty rates appropriately. Extraction companies compare total costs, so countries with low labour and shipping costs can have higher royalties than countries with high costs. [3] I've seen a report out of New Zealand showing just how mercenary this is, comparing the cost-to-market from several countries complete with royalty rate comparisons. The difference is in what the countries do with the royalties. For example, Alberta does have a sovereign wealth fund, but it also doesn't collect sales tax. Saudi Arabia has a huge sovereign fund - just not quite as big as Norway's. Saudi Arabia also has no personal income taxes. Norway's genius is in sending the royalties through the fund, and then only allowing them to spend at most 4% of the total [1] - the estimated average annual return. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor... [2] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2015/06/19/115580/federal-oil-and-gas-royalty-and-revenue-reform/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2015/06... [3] http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/the-cost-to-produce-a-barrel-of-oil/ http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/the-cost-to-produce...

cm3 10y ago

It's a matter of different politics. Norway chose not to basically let private companies take all the profit from natural resources, while in the UK there's this weird system in place that has politicians ruining public orgs like infrastructure providers to afterwards claim they fixed it, once they pushed for privatization, and all they did was get it back to where it was before in quality of service. After that, it's profit-driven and the population has to fight for laws to keep up existing quality standards they pay for with taxes. There are European countries like Finland where you don't worry which school your kids go to because there are no good or bad school districts. Same for hospitals. If you have to pay taxes for public services, then it must be fair and of equal quality for everybody, or you must turn it all into a Friedman-style privatize-everything system, which may or may not work but sounds thought through and might.

digi_owl 10y ago
Norway is turning UK year by year...
- to3m 10y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    The current government wants to sell off the Flytog (Airport Train). This is a state owned enterprise that even the seriously capitalist Norwegian financial magazine Kapital says is one of the best run companies in the country and should not be privatised. There have been serious suggestions that Statoil should be sold off completely. The electricity system has been privatised even though most of the energy is generated by rain that can hardly be said to be owned by anyone.
    - tyfon 10y ago
      Regarding Statoil. The government currently owns about 1/3 of it. The oil income for the state does not come from the profit of the company but the taxes they put on the companies that extract oil (which is about 80%) and the sale of licenses through Petoro. Selling Statoil (and the other ones) have absolutely no comparison to what Thatcher did in the 80s if that is what you are insinuating. Regarding the power, the majority of the plants are owned by Statkraft, a 100% government owned company and is most definitely not privatized. Flytoget runs well because even though it is owned by the government, they have had a very hands off approach and let them operate without interference. The same can be said of Statoil, the only reason it has done so well is that the government has been mostly hands off. My father was in the top management before retirement and has been very clear on this. Whenever the government tried to interfere it just made problems. In essence, as a fellow Norwegian i disagree with you on these subjects (and some of what you write is simply not true).
      - kochthesecond 10y ago
        Why sell off the train if it's earning money? Plenty of government run ventures don't.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        uola 10y ago
        Because they are jelous they can't make as bad a deal as Stockholm did with Arlanda. Express? More seriously, to finance populistic reforms to increase the power of their own party.

vixen99 10y ago

Venezuela is also resource rich.

labster 10y ago
Venezuela is run by inept kleptocrats. Either the ineptitude or the kleptocracy part would be enough to keep a similar scheme from working in Venezuela.

oldmanjay 10y ago

Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness

fleitz 10y ago
It's also much less diverse than America.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  How's that relevant?
  - larsiusprime 10y ago
    The more opinions there are from different people the harder it is to reach consensus?
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      Are we talking about ideological diversity or ethnical diversity?
      - larsiusprime 10y ago
        I'm talking about the former, the latter i guess is at least somewhat correlated with differing opinions too. Reaaly its the vast difference in size that matters -- USA has SO many differing constituencies with differing needs and wants and opinions. Norway is a municipal government by comparison.
        adamnemecek 10y ago
        How do you measure ideological diversity? Also how do different parts of the US have different needs?

oldmanjay 10y ago

jpollock 10y ago

All of the countries mentioned have royalty regimes which companies have to pay to extract natural resources. Oil extraction in Texas has a 25% royalty rate [2]. This is typically based off of the retail price, not some interim price too. Governments are very careful to set royalty rates appropriately. Extraction companies compare total costs, so countries with low labour and shipping costs can have higher royalties than countries with high costs. [3] I've seen a report out of New Zealand showing just how mercenary this is, comparing the cost-to-market from several countries complete with royalty rate comparisons. The difference is in what the countries do with the royalties. For example, Alberta does have a sovereign wealth fund, but it also doesn't collect sales tax. Saudi Arabia has a huge sovereign fund - just not quite as big as Norway's. Saudi Arabia also has no personal income taxes. Norway's genius is in sending the royalties through the fund, and then only allowing them to spend at most 4% of the total [1] - the estimated average annual return. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor... [2] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2015/06/19/115580/federal-oil-and-gas-royalty-and-revenue-reform/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2015/06... [3] http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/the-cost-to-produce-a-barrel-of-oil/ http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/the-cost-to-produce...