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Norway oil exports in 2015 even with low oil prices were still more than $5000 per person. Combined with the proceeds from the oil investment fund the revenues
by jedmeyers 10y ago
Norway oil exports in 2015 even with low oil prices were still more than $5000 per person. Combined with the proceeds from the oil investment fund the revenues go even higher. United States on the other hand has to "work for a living" since it does not get 60 times more revenue from selling natural resources than Norway does. And distribution of proceeds from natural resources among the population is regarded to be fair by a much higher percentage of people than distribution of revenue from taxes on the working population.
- mfoy_ 10y agoNorway isn't even really spending it's oil money, so this entire comparison is entirely invalid. Norway puts 100% of the oil revenue in a trust fund and takes out no more than 4% per year. Think again on the similar GDP Per Capita rankings, and review this: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG Norway only spends about 22% of it's GDP on Social Benefits. The U.S. spends 19.2%. Breaking that down into dollars does tell a different story: Norway spends about 50% more on social benefits than the U.S. does, but you can hardly argue that the U.S. cannot afford it. To throw Canada into the mix, it spends about 17%. That's a lower percentage of a lower GDP. In fact that would imply that Canada spends approximately 25% LESS on social benefits than the U.S. and has still has free healthcare. One caveat to this is that I am comparing social benefit percentages from 2014 and comparing them to GDP Per Capita data from 2015, so take the exact numbers with a grain of salt. The argument I'm trying to make is that it's political, not economic.