Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

Thanks. As discussed further down the thread, it is disingenuous to add natural resources to Australia's total but not Norway's total. (Metals and fishing are both 10% each of Norways exports.) This makes it 15.5k per person in Norway, giving a ratio of 3, halfway between the ratio I eyeballed (4) and the one you did (2).

View on HN

As far as I'm aware, metals and fishing do not contribute to the Government Pension Fund of Norway, which is why I did not include them on the Norwegian side and similarly only looked at the top items on the Australian side (eg adding Refined Petrolium on the Autralian side would push the balance closer to 2 again).

Point is, while Australia isn't quite as well off as Norway, there are resources aplenty to pull off something similar on a somewhat smaller scale.

That may be your point, which is fine, but the original comment I was replying to was comparing the tax rate of Norway and Australia, and I was arguing this is not a sensible comparison in light of the much larger natural resource inheritance of Norway.

I think the original comment only really mentioned taxes in passing and then the discussion went off down a rabbit hole; but a wonderful rabbit hole in which each subsequent comment added more interesting and relevant information.

Fishing, unless you feel that the fisheries are being overfished, is in quit a different bucket because it's a renewable resource.

Metals is an interesting case because on the one hand they are definitely a non-renewable resource. On the other hand, it seems like there's a difference between exporting ore and exporting refined metals, in terms of whether it's "just" resource extraction or not...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com