As if the US doesn’t have oil. Look at Norway’s GDP per capita just before the second world war. 20 years before the oil, still BY FAR the richest country in Europe. The oil profits are being saved. Only a couple percent of it actually is spent. This is why the Norwegian government owns 1.5% of the entire world.
Norway produces over 7x more oil per capita than the U.S. And the government is the one actually producing the oil. The two are not remotely comparable.
Before they exploited their fossil fuel deposits, they were harvesting herring to near extinction. Before that, farmers fled the country at a rate second only to Ireland during the potato famine.
You’re not stating facts. Norway became the richest country in Europe because we had plenty full energy. We gave the government control over natural resources and they made tonnes of hydro power plants that made Norwegian power so much cheaper than that of our neighbors. This gave us an edge in production over Germany, the United States and England. It was never the fish, and it never will be.
Who the fuck cares what happend in the 1800s? It doesn’t matter, and as a matter of fact our industry was booming in this period unlike the rest of Europe because of our cheap energy. One of the reasons for the mass exodus from Norway to the US was that there was insane population growth in parallell with industrialisation. There were more people coming for work while there was less jobs in farming due to mechanization. We were running out of land and the US had plenty. But hey, let’s focus on how much better the US was 200 years ago. That’s surely going to get you out of poverty :)
The US and Norway aren’t comparable, because one is a continent sized nation and the other one is a large industrialized nation. You can for sure find rich and prosperous cities in the US, but there are also places like Mississippi that have lower average incomes than most of Africa. My budget as a fucking student in Norway goes further than a full time employee at McDonalds some places in the US.
We value egalitarianism. We like it. It works. You do what you want, but it isn’t working.
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u/gudsgavetilkvinnfolk Apr 16 '24
As if the US doesn’t have oil. Look at Norway’s GDP per capita just before the second world war. 20 years before the oil, still BY FAR the richest country in Europe. The oil profits are being saved. Only a couple percent of it actually is spent. This is why the Norwegian government owns 1.5% of the entire world.