Dude, where's my Northsea money?

[Mega]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...orwegians-fund

Ha Ha Ha...........Silly limey bastards.

[GRG55]

Re: Dude, where's my Northsea money?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...orwegians-fund

Ha Ha Ha...........Silly limey bastards.

Sovereign wealth funds like the one Norway has are a TAX on current population for the benefit of a future generation. Essentially the opposite of government borrowing, which is a tax on the future generation for the benefit of the current population.

One is no more or less virtuous than the other...they are both a claim by the government on the economy.

"...At their mid-80s peak, oil and gas revenues were worth more than 3% of national income. According to the chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, John Hawksworth, had all this money been set aside and invested in ultra-safe assets it would have been worth £450bn by 2008..."

So why didn't the authors and those interviewed for this idiot article ask the obvious question:

If £450bn of compound savings from oil royalties and taxes would have been so good, why didn't the government just nationalize the oil fields, use public money and employees to develop them and keep ALL the proceeds?

Wouldn't that have set things up to amount to a great deal more than a measly £450bn or, in the case of Norway 5.11 trillion krone.

There is nothing that politicians everywhere love than a big piggy bank of other people's money to play with...

[seobook]

Re: Dude, where's my Northsea money?

Sovereign wealth funds like the one Norway has are a TAX on current population for the benefit of a future generation. Essentially the opposite of government borrowing, which is a tax on the future generation for the benefit of the current population.

One is no more or less virtuous than the other...they are both a claim by the government on the economy.

Since people who are not yet born do not have a say in what happens now, certainly one could claim that leaving them savings or at a flat zero is (at least slightly?) more virtuous than having them born into a life of debt.

Of course the debt that is took on could fund useful and valuable infrastructure which expands the pie of opportunity (or it could fund bogus wars & bank bailouts which subsidize questionable debt at the expense of the productive economy). Then again the money pre-saved could always be re-appropriated for a different project.

[Forrest]

Re: Dude, where's my Northsea money?

Virtue is boring.

I found this to be of interest, because of its source:

As the historian of neoliberalism Philip Mirowski argues, what the past 30 years have been about is using the powers of the state to divert more resources to the wealthy. You see that with privatisation: the handing over of our assets at knock-down prices to corporations and supposed "investors", who then skim off the profits.