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As the article points out, the economic miracle of Norway is fueled by oil and gas, just like Spain economic miracle was fueled by cheap industrial labour and c
by angarg12 8y ago
As the article points out, the economic miracle of Norway is fueled by oil and gas, just like Spain economic miracle was fueled by cheap industrial labour and construction decades ago.
Unlike Spain, they have been wise enough to use their money to diversify their economy, aware that this won't last forever.
Sadly there are few lessons we can learn and apply here to other countries, as not everyone has a tiny population and literally sits on mountains of money. Still I'm looking forward to see if their efforts pay off, and we don't find that the next generation of norwegians have a drop of 30% in their disposable income with respect to their parents.
- flatfilefan 8y agoLooks like Spaniards were really keen to build them houses and all EU structural help went into residential construction. OK, young families now own cheep places, but where should they work?
- massysett 8y ago"the economic miracle of Norway is fueled by oil and gas" It can't be that simple. Plenty of other countries have lots of oil and gas (Russia, Venezuela, the US) and they aren't necessarily having economic miracles.
- ordinaryperson 8y agoVenezuela has almost totally collapsed under Chavez-Maduro's "socialism". Russia is a kleptocracy of Putin and his inner circles of billionaires. The US economy has seen a fairly significant boost from shale gas and fracking. Better counter-examples than those 3 would be Saudi Arabia and (to a lesser extent) Nigeria. And yes, as those 2 demonstrate it's not that simple, it's easy to fall prey to "the resource curse" aka "Dutch disease": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease Norway has been wiser in its approach.
- jaredklewis 8y agoThe lesson of Norway is how to manage a valuable natural resource. I.e. Don't sell it off in a one time auction to the highest bidder who then reaps all the gains. Norway tightly controls access to its oil and the profits have been very well managed. I agree that other nations like Venezuela and the US have squandered their natural wealth when compared with Norway's careful management. That being said, I agree with the parent that the aforementioned lesson isn't particularly universal, as a perquisite is having a plentiful and valuable natural resource to manage. So what lesson can a country like the UK or Germany take from Norway, given their natural resources are, for the most part, already exploited?
- wetpaws 8y agoRussia and Venezuella never diversified their economy which made them highly reliable on oil industry, promoted corruption/populism politics and backfired badly when oil prices dropped.
- adventured 8y agoNorway has 9-10x the oil output per capita of the US and over 5x that of Russia. Norway is a well run petro state. For the US to match Norway on that, it'd have to produce more than the equivalent of all the annual oil output on earth. Total oil production per day per capita in 2017. Norway: 1.9m bbl/day, 0.365 barrels per day per capita. US: 13m bbl/day, 0.04 barrels per day per capita. Russia: 11.2m bbl/day, 0.07 barrels per day per capita.
- scrollaway 8y agoThe difference is in the political system. Read The Dictator's Handbook for more on that (but also, just read that book, it's an awesome book).
- ohhhwell 8y agoFurthermore, Sweden and Denmark have similar outcomes, without the oil and gas
- bmer 8y agoInterestingly, an Iraqi immigrant was responsible for setting up Norway's wealth management system: https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab... I always think about this when I read comments on HN declaring that immigration implies a breakdown/dilution in the value of the host nation's "superior culture".