Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
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The above, btw, should pretty much be the ur-reason for the Nordic model.
Even with only barely profitable fishing industry, Norway had created a health care sector that drew a rich executive of a major company to abandon his career, and move to a place with less than welcoming climate. This led to Norway having the know-how to avoid the Resource Curse, pretty much the only country to do so.
In other words: high Gini may create nice palaces, but it doesn't ensure healthy people.
Also worth saying that high Gini also creates high class borders, which means the ultrarich feel more loyal to their global clique than they do to their own homeland.
(This is what the "we'll move if taxed" actually boils down to. Also the classic "how do we stop the guards from killing us at the nuclear bunker" -dilemma.)
Low Gini leads more connections between classes, which leads to higher loyalty to your society, which leads to acceptance of higher taxes.
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@_chris_real @Geri Just kinda wish we were going through a cool goth phase and not a Nazi skinhead phase though....
Not to be argumentative, but as countries go, we are the oldest DEMOCRACY since the Greeks (who were only democratic to a point).
Upon encountering a nihilist who is simply treating the U.S. as an asset he needs to liquidate to weaken to allow him to make his qetaway, future leaders need to make MASSIVE revisions to the deeply flawed U.S. constitution, or accept the fact that we are a legacy government ripe for raiding.
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Not to be argumentative, but as countries go, we are the oldest DEMOCRACY since the Greeks (who were only democratic to a point).
Upon encountering a nihilist who is simply treating the U.S. as an asset he needs to liquidate to weaken to allow him to make his qetaway, future leaders need to make MASSIVE revisions to the deeply flawed U.S. constitution, or accept the fact that we are a legacy government ripe for raiding.
@_chris_real @Geri I don't think the Constitution is flawed as much as the style of government that it is dictating is. Republicanism is a failed system of government. Parliamentary systems are far better, and have consistently shown to be less corrupt. I think the American experiment of a federal republic is a failure, not necessarily the document guiding it.
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@_chris_real @Geri I don't think the Constitution is flawed as much as the style of government that it is dictating is. Republicanism is a failed system of government. Parliamentary systems are far better, and have consistently shown to be less corrupt. I think the American experiment of a federal republic is a failure, not necessarily the document guiding it.
My view:
1) the founders were deeply against rule by political parties. Yet here we are.
2) The Electoral College is no longer a solution for anything. We will remain a democratic farce until it is abolished.
3) Gerrymandering is a direct result of clever racists gaming the Electoral College. So . . .
4) Slavery was never REALLY abolished, with that short phrase " . . . EXCEPT as a condition of involuntary servitude" in the amendment purporting to END slavery. So now our slavery is corporate.
Nothing will change until these wrongs have been righted.
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Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri 10 trillion pounds seemed a little over the top so I poked around and sure enough... https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/norway-does-not-have-wealth-equivalent-10-trillion-british-pounds-per-citizen-2024-11-05/
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The North Sea oil fields are shared between several states, so it isn't the difference between UK and Norway.
Bigger part, imho, is how a former officer of the British Iraq Petroleum Company named Farouk al-Kasim moved to Norway due to his son needing treatment for cerebral palsy.
He applied for a position at the ministry of industry at the same time as the Fields were found, and ended up drafting almost singlehandedly the Sovereign Fund, which he hoped to solve the Resource Curse.
@iju
Fascinating bit of history, completely unknown to me - & thank you for adding more info & tying it to the artefacts of high/low Gini. I’ve heard it said that Chinese leaders get nervous as Gini approaches 1 (max. inequality - see the Wiki entry below). Do you know anything about that? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient -
Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
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Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri
Yeah, but the Norwegians are heretics who think that state ownership is good. -
Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri
I'm sure it's coincidental but many of the 'entrepreneurs' who extracted a lot of money from privatised industries are major donors to the Conservative party. And probably to all those 'think tanks' that refuse to disclose who funds them. -
Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri Some other stats. Norway has 3 times the oil reserves, 14 times smaller the population, and enough hydro power resources that they can export almost all their oil.
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Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri t the time the Norwegians and UK (Tony Benn) set up Wealth funds to use to support the country. Norway still has there's and very successful. Thatcher closed ours
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Some of you are too young to remember when we found the 'black gold' in the North Sea ....
@Geri I'd argue that, in this case, the differentiator isn't privatisation but that, in the UK, if we'd had a sovereign wealth fund, the boomers would have voted to sell it off to get a temporary reduction in tax, rather than holding it as a long term investment.
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