The UK and the Dutch just spent the money they got from the North Sea oil and at least the UK has little to show for it.
Anyway, the Norwegian economy is doing just fine without it, we bounced back from COVID faster than practically everywhere else and everywhere I look there are new commercial and industrial buildings going up.
The ideas that this decision can not be made in a hurry and that the spending can jump in size too quickly are reasonable. But the ones that there is absolutely nothing better to do with the money, and that most of it will be there in a large crisis when they need to withdraw are both ridiculous.
It’s why I was really sad to see the Canadian government give up on its Crown corporations. Sure, they got tens of billions of dollars for it. But that wealth took a really long time to acquire in the first place and the market cap of having a complete monopoly can’t have been priced in correctly (otherwise the private market wouldn’t have been all lathered up at the opportunity to take over).
Perhaps you could enlighten us about which services are lacking and how they are so much better in those countries that just spent the North Sea oil revenue internally?
Spend some of that money on training and paying more GPs, and you'd have my interest...
As he passed a group of travelers going in the opposite direction, he overheard one of them saying "look at this cruel old man, riding in comfort while his son has to walk." Caring very much for the opinion of others, he got off of the donkey and told his son to ride.
He passed another group of travelers, and overheard one whisper "look at the silly old man, walking his life away while his young, strong son rides in comfort."
He tried riding behind his son, but overheard people criticizing his cruelty towards the overburdened beast. He tried having them both walk, and was criticized for not realizing that donkeys could be ridden.
Finally, in frustration, he ordered his son to help him carry the donkey. As they both struggled to lift the large and uncooperative beast, another group of travelers approached, staring at him in confusion. Before they could say anything, he shouted at them "Shut up, I don't want to hear it!"
And the notion that improving living conditions - Norway is already at or near the top of nearly every quality of life measure - increases fertility is directly the opposite of real life global trends.
It's good. I think it could _amazing_ if some of the political orthodoxy was reexamined.
As such, if you pour money in you will inherently drive up prices, and inflation is effectively equivalent to applying an extra tax on everyone.
The notion that you can just pour money in and improve everything works at a household level, but is just an incredibly naive view in terms of a national economy.
It's a balancing act.
At the same time Norway, like every other country in the world is heading for a demographic time bomb nobody knows how to prevent, and so holding back money to be able to pay for that without e.g. drastically cutting back pensions and the like matters. Especially given that the "oil fund" is technically a pension fund.
With respect to mortgages, home ownership in Norway is very high in part because buying a house is affordable to the average Norwegian, in part because Norway is one of only a very small number of countries to let you deduct mortgage interest from taxable income.
But make them too cheap for supply of housing to keep up and all you do is drive up the prices and you're back to square one. Another way of saying that: Housing will "never" be cheap, because if house prices drops or interest drops or salaries go up, people buy bigger/better placed houses. We're nowhere near the housing quality where enough people go "oh, my house is big enough / in the most perfect location, I won't bother moving" if they suddenly find they can afford much more.
There's plenty to criticize about the Norwegian economy.
The taxation of the oil wealth is definitely a great success story, but how that money is used from year to year is very much a mixed bag. We have per-capita public expenditures approximately twice those of Sweden. Average household debt at 114% of income, third place globally. We don't build housing, same as California.
Oil money contributions to the national budget were approximately $6500 per capita in 2022, and on top of this we have a total taxation percentage on the order of 40% of income on average, if you do the honest calculation and look at all payments to the governments.
In addition we have an energy production infrastructure that's nominally almost 100% publicly owned, but now sell electricity to citizens at EU prices (~300% markup) with the surplus going into public budgets - this is additional taxation we're not talking about.
It could be worse and there are many things going right, but selling Norway as an unquestionable economic success story doesn't completely reflect reality.