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lesuorac • today at 5:59 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

IIUC, USA is ~60x more people than Norway.

Increasing the tax rate by ~8x to match Norway would drop 60x to ~8x. What percent of Norway's per capita is from Oil & Gas? I have to imagine that 10% of that is actually still meaningful for an average American.


Replies

klrefg • today at 7:51 PM

Government revenue wouldn’t increase by 8x. First increasing oil production in the US over the last 10-20 years required a massive amount of investment. Shale oil is much more expensive to extract so companies simply would have drilled less if they knew they couldn’t profit as much. Developing new wells is only profitable of oil is above $60-70, in Norway it’s up to 40-50% less.

Norway’s reserves are mostly conventional and much cheaper to exploit and develop.

Secondly even if corporations and their share holders get a much bigger share in the US a significant amount of that money ends up in the federal budget anyway.

So idk maybe 2-3x at best? Which of course is still a lot