Proud to be an American?

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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Looks to me like were tied for 2nd. Either you cant read or Im missing something.

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Not that it matters, but Norwegian GDP/capita is higher than the US.

[lehighguy]

Is that just because of the oil? How big of an effect does it have on GDP?

[Arnfinn Madsen]

Huge direct positive effect, and an indirect negative effect (which is luckily smaller).

The oil production is a huge contributor to GDP, but also pushes up the price for the input factors, thus leading to many industries being incompetitive. So if we would not have oil, the "non-oil" GDP would likely be considerably higher. This is the "curse" that will make our post-oil GDP lower than if we had not discovered oil. The petroleum fund is there for many reasons, but one is to have cash available to inject into the economy to stimulate it in the post-oil era.

[lehighguy]

You think so. What industries do you have that are so productive.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

First of all, I checked the numbers now, and if I understand correctly petroleum related activities accounted for approx. 22,6% of GDP in 2004.

We don't have many huge productive industry sectors. The best engineers, the investment capital and the government focus went to the oil industry. In addition, oil wealth has pushed up demand for services, and thus wages and made virtually all labor-intensive industries unable to compete (we have relatively free trade for these kind of goods).

In the US you did not find that substantial amount of oil, so your other industries did not suffer from it.

But, as I said, these negative effects are smaller than the positive ones, so if we had not discovered oil, our GDP/capita would be lower than it is (and lower than the US), but not 22% lower.

P.S. Not so many are conscious about it, but much of our wealth is the result of this guy who negotiated a deal with Soviet etc. on maritime claims:

Link

[lehighguy]

Russia sold us Alaska too, they aren't to good at setting prices :P

[sweetjazz]

It would be expensive to build private roads to all the places I go to.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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Russia sold us Alaska too, they aren't to good at setting prices :P

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We still have an unsettled conflict with them regarding an area in the North, which originates from a pecularity in the shape of Northeastern Norway. It is further North than Russia, making an oilrich seabed of 41,500 km2 closer to Norway than Russia; but they claim it too.

A temporary 1-year agreement from 1978 has been prolonged 26 times [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. It seems to be an unresolvable issue.