Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahdum | Hacker News Reader

This is a great way to sidestep the political process to fund popular projects. The political constraints will ensure returns are middling, so unless they subsidize with tax breaks on dividend income I think it would be a poor commercial investment.

Whether its perfect or not, it almost has to be better than the current status quo.

View on HN

How are you going to have a Sovereign Wealth Fund when you're in debt ~300% to GDP?

Are they going to fund their "wealth" with debt?

This is an oxymoron.

You aren't "rich" if you have $1M and you owe $4M. You're a con-man living a lie that will crush you eventually.

And by the way, if you have -$3M, sorry, but you're the last person I want to invest money with...

Norway gets to have a wealth fund because they have a small population with a massive amount of oil revenue, and they aren't run by morons.

Canada only produces about 2x as much oil as Norway, but it's got 10x the population. Sorry, you can't all be rich like Norwegians unless you start pumping 5x more oil.

Things like this should be laughed off the world stage.

We live in an upside down world.

GDP isn't wealth. This is closer to making $1M/year and owing $4 million.

> How are you going to have a Sovereign Wealth Fund when you're in debt ~300% to GDP?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_public_debt this article says it's 57% of GDP. Where are you getting your 300% from?

GDP isn't the only measure of wealth. Canada has vast resources that act as collateral for the debt. You wouldn't be friends with a billionaire who only owns stock and lives mostly off the debt issued against that stock?

>How are you going to have a Sovereign Wealth Fund when you're in debt ~300% to GDP?

This seems to be incorrect. Including federal, provincial and local, the debt is about 110% of the GDP.[1]

The US has 3x more debt per citizen than Canada.

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CAN/...

> You aren't "rich" if you have $1M and you owe $4M. You're a con-man living a lie that will crush you eventually.

I'm not sure the simile lands. If that $1M is financing a lavish lifestyle, then you are for all intents and purposes rich. As for the crushing down part, the modern economy shows us one can stay solvent longer than the market is irrational (especially true the more zeros are added to the numbers above).

Canada has tens of trillions of dollars in natural resources it could choose to monetize at any time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com