Norway's oil money story is one of the weirdest. Are there any examples in history where a country has saved up such a big stash? Are they planning to retire young, as a nation?
I live in Calgary, Alberta which is pretty much the exact counterpoint to Norway with a very similar historical starting point (size, population, dynamics). It doesn't matter who's in power, all our governments spend like drunken sailors on shore-leave, no sales tax to even out the boom/bust (and counter low-ish taxes), A savings fund that is now empty going into an incredibly rough period.
I'm not says one is better than the other - Norway looks great right now, but didn't when I visited ~10 years ago and my Subway "value" meal cost over $25 CDN - just an interesting counterpoint.
I keep waiting for that manufacturing "bump" from Eastern Canada we were promised from a sinking dollar...
> I'm not says one is better than the other - Norway looks great right now, but didn't when I visited ~10 years ago and my Subway "value" meal cost over $25 CDN - just an interesting counterpoint.
Careful with such examples. Local prices are first of all adjusted for local wages, and second of all the NOK exchange rate is just nasty.
Alberta did spend most of the their oil money. Based on a Google search, it looks like the Heritage Trust Fund maxed out at ~$20B for a population of ~2.5M. So maybe 1/20th of what Norway has put away on a per capita basis?
Countries that rely on income from natural resources are worse off because they tend to neglect everything else that might generate wealth; also with these countries a small elite tends to get hold of the oil well, this leads to authoritarian rule and other goodies.
A windfall from oil often turns out to have many toxic side effects, so it was a very wise decision to stash it far away, as far as possible.
What an amusing thought. One big problem is that, one part of the idea of retirement is that you eventually die. I hope Norwegians aren't planning doing that, as a nation...
Maybe the term we are looking after is "living on the interest", as old middle class ladies plan to do in the 19th century novels.
I think the idea is that why trade in oil or gas, forestry or fishing, when you can trade in money? The way the global economy works being that money is not a result of other industries but an industry, a commodity, in and of itself. Money has its own industry, so just produce that instead of oil. Could that not be the long term plan?
