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by cardy31 901 days ago
Lots of American Exceptionalism in this comment and the replies.

The Norwegian state makes so much money off of oil because of how well they manage the revenues. The US could do the same thing but chooses not to.

The difference between the US and Norway isn’t in the amount of fossil fuel reserves one possesses vs the other. It is in how the money from those resources is used. The US privatizes it while Norway puts it towards the public good.

1 comments

Their oil per citizen is not equivalent. Norway is producing 0.38 barrels of oil per day per citizen, while US is 0.034. That's over an order of magnitude difference. Could the US do better? Yes. Is Norway well run and has an abnormally high amount of oil per citizen? Yes of course. Yet your claim is still mostly false if US was run just as well.
> Could the US do better? Yes.

That is like comparing a toddler to Usain Bolt in a race and saying the toddler could have done better.

The US isn’t even trying to manage any money from its resources in a way that benefits its citizens in the long term. Americans should be furious about how poorly managed the wealth from these natural resources is being managed, but instead seem to think that America is too different from Norway to even consider doing a similar sovereign wealth fund. The same bad arguments get made about healthcare all the time.

> The US isn’t even trying to manage any money from its resources in a way that benefits its citizens in the long term

Different goals. Gas is and has always been (afaik) cheaper for American citizens than for Norwegians. Having more money in your pocket is a long term benefit for Americans.