As it is, Britain’s sovereign wealth was effectively distributed to taxpayers to spend or save as they chose, and in very many cases that means it ended up in bricks and mortar, in Britain’s absurdly overpriced residential property market. But it’s too late now: the end of North Sea oil is nigh, we’ve privatised everything, the pensions bill is mounting, the habit of personal saving has been all but lost, the housing market is tottering and the government’s finances are hopelessly adrift. We’re on a course set for us a generation ago; in a generation’s time, as John Hawksworth says, we’ll look enviously at Norway and the Gulf and wonder: where did our oil money go?
I think this is a somewhat lazy analysis that mars an otherwise interesting and thought-provoking piece. I'm not convinced that the government disbursing oil wealth in the form of tax cuts went mostly into higher property prices. I get that real estate is inflated - it's inflated in all major cities in the US too - but I feel like the author takes too large a leap of faith in his logic here. What is the mechanism that links this argument together?