OT Should Venezuela invade its oil-rich neighbor? Maduro will put it to a vote Sunday

[oldfisherman]

Of course revenues go up and down by year. And Norway has an over $1t ($1.477t) fund built up from that. Roughly $185k ($273k) per Norwegian.

Basically, in comparison, Venezuela's struggles appear to have been due to excessive corruption and/or incompetence rather than generous social programs. They could easily afford very generous social programs if they weren't regularly shooting themselves in the foot.

*EDIT* Updated dollar value of the Norway fund with more current info from @SlyPokerDog's post.

OK got it, sort of.

Norway has a huge fund because they invested a good portion of their oil revenues. And Venezuela did not, which means they shot themselves in the foot. Norway can afford huge social programs, but Venezuela can not.

Question, how big is our fund now? Or have we also shot ourselves in the foot?

 

[oldfisherman]

Or, we could make emotional decisions about the USA based on inaccurate histories of what happened a half-century ago in a country that is not even remotely similar to ours.

barfo

This is the kind of drivel that happens when you take the "P" out of the pirate. They become "irate".

 

[Phatguysrule]

OK got it, sort of.

Norway has a huge fund because they invested a good portion of their oil revenues. And Venezuela did not, which means they shot themselves in the foot. Norway can afford huge social programs, but Venezuela can not.

Question, how big is our fund now? Or have we also shot ourselves in the foot?

We shoot ourselves in the foot constantly. We've done an absolutely horrible job building a logical and healthy society, quite frankly.

I truly believe if we weren't the luckiest people in the world by living on the most easily defendable land mass in the world with more miles of effectively navigable waterway than the rest of the world (combined) and the most natural resources in the world we wouldn't be near the world power we are.

We have so many natural advantages over everywhere else that we almost couldn't screw it up if we tried.

And we're trying to screw it up every day.