[baroomba]

> So what's the United State's excuse?

Massive, continual, and ongoing failure to capture any significant part of the outgoing and diminishing value of the ground under our feet for the future needs of citizens, thereby reducing the wealth of our country as a whole so a few people can capture all the benefit of that lost stored wealth, rather than merely almost all of it?

It's not just oil—anything non-renewable coming out of the ground ought to pay into a trust fund like Norway's. We had a huge amount of it—oil, coal, minerals—and still have quite a bit, but we can't even figure out how to have anything resembling an OECD-standard healthcare system so I reckon a fix for that's not gonna enter the public debate for decades yet, if ever, meanwhile the stored value in our physical country itself drops every day.