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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

Well, causality is hard to establish here. Note, post north sea oil the UK had an economic boom that saw it move ahead of both Italy and France on many measures. The UK did not use Marshall aid for industrial investment, but it did build a welfare state, and did eventually pay off its debts of 200% gdp.

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I do agree to some extent, but when you look at the sovereign wealth fund that Norway has that still generates huge amounts of revenue and then look at what the UK has left... it does seem like the word "squander" is appropriate.

Well - currently the UK has the City of London, which makes much more money than the Norwegian fund. Now, you could argue that The City will be swept away by global forces and brexit - this is possible, and you could argue that The City was here before north sea oil, and you would have a point. On the other hand I would say that the flood of money through London from north sea oil played a significant role in providing capital for speculation and investment and without that The City might have lost out to Paris or Frankfurt in the 1980's and 90's.

> Well - currently the UK has the City of London

As a UK citizen I'm not sure that's such a good thing for the average Brit.

Doesn't have to be, people just want numbers on the paper showing how great everything is, until you move further north / west of the city to see the reality of the other 90%

Yup, agree. I think we need the long term view to decide, and I think that we need a big range of perspectives to decide. Unfortunately the people who get the money from it tend to have the loudest voice. Even quite a lot of those might reflect that their lives would be better spent doing other things than standing on the tube or arguing about spreadsheets.

YOou could have the City AND a sovereign wealth fund. It's not like they are mutually exclusive choices.

The rise of the City was more to do with loosened regulations, privatization and the leveraging of historical factors like trade links and banking presence globally than anything else AFAIK

A fund generated via sale of a commodity the use of which according to consensus will bring about global catastrophe.

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