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RE: Norway's sovereign wealth fund pass 1 trillion US Dollars for the first time
Nice post! I have mixed feeling about this fund. I think the generous welfare state increases spendings on guess what, welfare, and you also see decrease in participation rate in the work force. Also, you get a lot of immigrant that will extract much more resources than they bring in. A lot of money also decrease competitiveness in my opinion. Scarcity breeds innovation and disruptive capitalism. Perhaps, the Sovereign Wealth Fund should consider investing some money in blockchain technology, as a option like (barbell) strategy.
Thank you for your comment @janusface and sorry for a somewhat late reply.
I'm totally with you as regards to the side effects of too much welfare, how it can make people lazy and less innovative or how providing a total safety net seems to unlearn personal responsibility.
It's sad to see in much of my own generation, that rather than young people thinking "lucky me, I was born in Norway so I can aspire to be anything!" too many seem to think "lucky me, I was born in Norway so I don't really have to do anything". Life without a sense of urgency is indeed a killer of creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and productivity.
But I'm not sure I would agree that this is an argument against the structure of the oil fund. To the contrary, I think one could say the opposite. Countries that do not save the money but instead spend it on its citizens instantly, seem to fall into the welfare trap even harder. And it is not necessarily a "Public versus Private" question either. Looking at people who got rich from their own businesses supplying services to the oil and gas sector in my home-city of Stavanger, you see a lot of the same "we don't need to work, we already own the world" mentality in a lot of people from upper-middle-class families that own their own businesses.
In any case, Norway has gone very well through years of global economic uncertainty, much thanks to the fund. Now I do have many ideas for how it could be handled or allocated better, but overall I think it's been done pretty well. At least when you consider how no nations of Norway's size have ever been in this type of situation ever before. We're a first in trying this out, and nothing is perfect on the first attempt :)