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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

The US produces 10x the oil Norway does, and was producing significant amounts of oil as far back as the 1860s.

We've had that profit stream, we just let it get captured by private corporations (or in Alaska's case, given away to garner votes).

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Population of Norway, 2017: 5.258 million

Population of United States, 2018: 327.2 million

Shoulda been taxing any extraction of non-renewable resources into a fund like this. The whole country—literally, the physical country—gets poorer when that stuff's taken out. Shame we didn't capture some of that value for public, shared, long-term benefit.

[EDIT] all non-renewables, that is, not just oil. Should easily make up the difference between population and extracted natural resource value vs. Norway.

That makes a lot more sense than taxing people’s work.

Discovery of oil in the United States: 1859.

Discovery of oil in Norway: 1969.

Imagine if we'd have had the foresight to take Norway's approach that natural resources are the nation's natural resources and let the returns build for 160 years.

We used ours to build an automobile-based economy. We didn't exactly lose out on the deal. The unfortunate discovery that CO2 contributes to global warming came much, much later. But at any rate, American economic dominance largely depends on infrastructure and mass market autos.

And? The point still stands that the different conception of property rights in the US allows the revenue of natural resources like oil to go to corporations instead of the nation. Even in cases where the resources are on public land the licenses for extraction are often a pittance compared to what the company will make.

Using the "US exports 3x as much oil as Norway" figure from the sibling comment, does that mean a comparable fund in the US could be $3000B, or $9k/person?

Still sounds like quite the missed opportunity.

The Us exports 3x times as much oil as Norway

Norway is 5 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_expor...

The fund is based on oil production, not just exports. The US has a lot of oil that is not exported compared to Norway

I think Alaska's system is fine. I don't think it's morally worse to give people their money up front instead of holding on to it "for them" but only letting the majority decide how to spend it.

I do wonder if Canada could have been like Norway for the same reasons.

And Canada has more than just oil.

But a lot of it seems to be privately squandered.

Alberta has one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Heritage_Savings_Trust...

Works out to $4k per person in the fund currently.

The argument could be made that it’s because they spent the money on long-term assets, but I’d argue they spent it on lower taxes.

Even worse: Canada has actually paid US companies to come take our oil. I feel like all we had to do was charge a very high extraction rate (calculated where 20% of the profit is more than enough to fully restore the ecosystem), have stringent rules in place about pollution, then actively use funds to clean up the environment

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