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Originally Posted by VTHokieFan
If the US is to adopt socialism, how can I be assured that our government will adequately implement it?
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You can never be assured, and politically, it would be a total nightmare that would end badly.
In order for the US to implement any form of socialism, it would have to become a purely unitarian State, or it would have to re-adopt federalism.
As it stands now, the US is a quasi-unitarian State that just gives federalism lip service. Power flows from the District of Columbia to the States and the States either get in line and comply with the decrees issued by the government or they get severely punished, usually by withholding taxpayer money, for example, raise the drinking age to 21 or you net no highway improvement funds, enact a seat-belt law or we withhold highway and education funds, comply with the decrees or we withhold education and health care funds, etc.
In federalism, each State is exactly that, a State: ie a country, because that's what State means, it means country. And in the US federal system, each of the 50 independent sovereign countries, and that's what they are, have voluntarily chosen to yield on matters of war, diplomacy, foreign trade, the coining of money and inter-state commerce in order to make each of the 50 countries equally powerful in those regards. In other words, because each of the 50 countries in the US use the same currency, no country holds an advantage over the other, and so it is with the other matters, such as war, where none of the 50 countries are disadvantaged. That is to say the country of Maine doesn't have to worry about being invaded and taken over, because there are 49 other countries standing with it, ready and willing to protect it.
Socialism could only work in the US at the State level. If the pseudo-federal government would get back to the basics of the US Constitution, States would have both the money and means to implement at least some socialist-State type programs.
A good example is the Food Stamp program. The pseudo-federal government issues Food Stamp funds in the form of block grants to each county in each of the States. The result is a family of four earning $32,000 per year in Boone County, Kentucky gets food stamps, while a family of three earning $14,000 per year in Kenton County, Kentucky gets none.
Why? Again, because the pseudo-federal government issues block grants and Kenton County (an urban area) has a higher population than Boone County (semi-rural), plus a higher number of low-income families live in Kenton County.
There are no programs run by the pseudo-federal government that cannot be run by the States more cost effectively and more efficiently.
Part of that has to do with Economy of Scale. Administering an health care plan to 4 Million people is fairly easy. Administering the same plan to 308 Million people is a nightmare within a nightmare on the 99th Level of Hell.
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Originally Posted by pirate_lafitte
That sounds about right. That and the oil it exports to other places.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
The simplest answer is, they have lots of oil.
According to this, they are the 11th largest oil producer in the world.
It states they produce 2.35 million barrels a day, and at $100 a barrel, that is 235 million every day, or almost $86 billion a year.
According to this article, in 2008 Norway received about $68 billion in revenue from its oil exports. It puts that money in a sovereign growth fund(basically it invests it). And the economic growth from just that growth fund paid for by its huge oil reserves was almost 1/4th of all economic activity in the country.
Basically, Norway is rich for the same reason Kuwait is rich. Small population and huge resources. You take that away from Kuwait, and its Yemen. You take that away from Norway, and its the Czech Republic.
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That's today.
Tomorrow, Norway will not be the Czech Republic, it will be El Salvador.
Norway's fields are all in decline. They have 16 oils. A lot of those oils they are able to pump because the price of oil is < $50/barrel but if the price dropped, they'd have to stop pumping those fields.
They have an heavy sour (Grane ~150,000/bpd) and an heavy sweet oil (Heidrun ~60,000/bpd). Heidrun will disappear from Earth in your life-time.
A couple of intermediate sweet oils that will disappear from Earth in your life-time, Glitne (4,000/bpd), Norne (~45,000/bpd), plus an intermediate sour, Volve (25,000/bpd).
And then some light oils, Alvheimig (30,000/bpd -- Marathon actually runs that), Varg (25,000/bpd -- Talisman operates that), Schielhallion Blend (10,000/bpd -- BP runs that), Draugen (42,000/bpd -- Shell operates those wells), and then the rest are run by Statoil (the State-owned oil company) which includes Asgard Blend (240,000/bpd), Gullfaks (180,000/bpd), Njord (19,000/bpd), Statfjord (160,000/bpd) and Troll Blend (240,000/bpd).
I think Royal Dutch Shell runs an operation sucking up some condensate which they market as "Ormen Lange" but that's only 30,000/bpd.
If Norway only has a $40 Billion surplus, then they have failed as a socialist State. They need to have a $1 TRILLION surplus because they'll be shutting down 7 fields in less than 25 years, and they ain't gonna find 7 replacement fields.
If oil drops below $50/barrel they'll be shutting down 7 fields. It's the same sad story as Illinois Intermediate. The only reason you pump that is because oil is <$50/barrel, other it wouldn't be worth it. I mean you have 4,200 wells but you're only getting 25,000/bpd (and the average well pumps about 8 to 18 barrels per day). What does that tell you? That tells you almost 50% of a barrel is water.
In order to keep the geologic formation from collapsing, and to maintain static pressure to keep the pumps operating smoothly, you have to inject water into the field 1 barrel oil out, 1 barrel water in. Middle Eastern countries and off-shore wells pump sea-water into the field.
It costs money to process the oil so it can be sold. Processing involves removing the water/sea-water, metal ores, minerals, particulate matter, dinosaur bones and whatever else is in there.
At some point, it costs more to pump, transport, process and transport to a refinery than the price of a barrel of oil, and that's usually when you start capping wells, like the US did on its West Texas Sour and East Texas Sour fields. Of course those wells are uncapped now, because it's profitable to sell the oil.
If Norway isn't into future financial planning they'll be screwed in 25 years.
I don't know if Statoil is wholly State-owned, or if the Norwegian government only owns a percentage of the oil. Natural resources in Norway are owned by the State, so they derive profits off the sale of oil.
You'll notice that there are foreign companies drilling for oil, and that's because the cost of oil exploration has sky-rocketed in the last several decades. Norway cannot afford to explore for oil, because it uses its profits for social-welfare programs. In order to explore for oil, Norway has to use private oil companies like Marathon and BP et al who use their profits to explore and develop oil fields.
Would the US benefit from nationalization of natural resources like oil? The US Congress has proven repeatedly to be fiscally irresponsible and immature. If they couldn't keep their hands off of the money in the Social Security Trust Fund, they won't be able to keep their hands off of oil profits, and they would spend every penny in a fiscal orgy.
If you allowed the States to own the natural resources within their borders, I doubt the situation would fare better given the number of cities, counties and States that are currently facing bankruptcy.
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system has problems... socialism not the answer
