Why do women run away?

[C0ckney]

i think it's concerned with long term investments (stock market, real estate etc.), not supplementing the state's budget to a large extent.

[Asher]

I'm talking about the dividends. It's my impression that they never withdraw the principal, but they use the dividends to fund lots of their nannystate goodness.

[C0ckney]

hmmm i thought differently, but i wouldn't stake my reputation on it

we need a norwegian to solve this one. nikolai?

[Nikolai]

All political parties except one agrees we should not use more than 1% of the yearly income from our oil, the rest is invested in the Oil Fund, now named "The State's Pension Fund - Abroad". I kid you not, that is the name. Everyone just calls it the oil fund though. The last few years we've used a little more than 1%, some 1.2 or so I think. Of the income.

[Nikolai]

BTW, as of Oct 19th 2010, the value of the fund has surpassed 3000 billion NOK. (billion is what comes after million, right? In Norway it's what comes after milliard, which comes after million. A bit confusing.)

[Kidlicious]

Why is it that if you express any interest in women, they run away?

Did anyone say because they want you to chase them? Duh

[Nikolai]

Sorry. My bad. Seems the rule is use nothing more than X, which equals the total expected interests of the fund. This again seems to be around that 1% I spoke about the last few years, which is probably why the media have written that...

[KrazyHorse]

If the fund is earning 1% then it's run by idiots.

If I was Norwegian I'd be agitating for the government to start handing out cheques to its citizens.

[Jon Miller]

Why should it do that? The citizens could just move to a different country then. The government is looking towards it's future citizens, not just to take care of it's citizens right now.

I agree that 1% is terrible.

JM

[Nikolai]

I'm honestly a little confused. You see, the number 1% has been quoted all the time in the news papers, but when I checked now, I got this long and complex story about interest and stuff. I had to read fast, as I was being called down to be chaffeur for my mum when I replied though, I might have missed something.

Anyhow, I'm out of here in a moment. Found this stub on the English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_budgetary_rule. Seems it was 4%, dunno where I got 1% from then...

[KrazyHorse]

Jon, its future citizens are to large extent the children of its current citizens.

Those that aren't children of current citizens (immigrants anf their children) don't seem to have any particular claim to Norway's current mineral wealth.

Moreover, the affirmative reason it should do so is that individuals make better use of their own money than others do on their behalf. The thought of "trusting" somebody else to take care of tens of thousands of dollars in my money with very little input from me would make me extraordinarily uncomfortable, whether that be the government or somebody else.

This is the same reason companies without good reason to hang on to capital should return it to shareholders.

[Kidlicious]

individuals make better use of their own money than others do on their behalf.

No

[DriXnaK]

Maybe you don't Kidicious, but the rest of us do.

[Kidlicious]

Maybe you don't Kidicious, but the rest of us do.

What? Porn or something?

[Jon Miller]

So you think that in the times in the past, when some natural resource has began to be exploited, that the behavior was correct and appropriate?

What generally happened was that those who had the capital to exploit it did. Those who didn't have the capital to exploit it, got jobs and were better off. All well and good.

But what has happened when the resource ended, in many of these situations, is that the area went into poverty. The smart capitalists moved away (with their money and children), and the populace now lived where there were no way to make jobs.

This is what has happened over and over again in history. Doesn't even need to be some rare resource, look at Flint/etc. But also look at the old mining towns in the west, at the lumber towns in the pacific northwest and so on.

What happens is that the people left are broken after a bit. They don't have the skills to be successful, they don't know how to get the skills to be successful, it is mostly people being supported by the government. Most are more clueless than Al.

It is a trap.

And Norway doesn't want to fall into that trap. If their return is anywhere near 1% than there methods are terrible, but doing something so that their is business and industry that will continue past the oil/mineral/etc wealth is crucial for governments (which depend on geographical location as much as citizenry).

Maybe a better option would be to invest in some 'non oil' industry. But this is difficult for the government to do.

Just increasing the pay for the citizens (giving back oil wealth) would just make it so that there are more strip clubs and car salesmen and drug dens. Most of it wouldn't encourage some non-oil dependent industry to form. Because the smart people would realize they could just move when the good times end (and prepare for that), and the rest will just suffer.

JM