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

Kinda like Iran?

 

This would be a very dumb decision

We are gonna find out that amount of corruption in the Venezuelan government/military is at russia’s level

 

So the reasons Venezuela's economy went from one of the richest, to one of the worst, is because their politicians:

Spent money like they are Bernie Sanders
Reduced oil production and revenues like they are Joe Biden
And printed money like they are Donald Trump.

Therefore:
This makes the Venezuelan politicians incompetent and corrupt.

Which leads to the emotional conclusion that the USA politicians should:
spend more money on huge projects and social programs,
cut more oil production and revenues,
and print more money, because,

Just thinking about it makes people feel soooo gooood!

 

Is Norway just emotional too?
Seems like they might just be more competent and less corrupt...

 

Not sure what your point is?

Does it have to do with Norway's slight decline in oil related revenues the last year or two?

If so, clink the link below. There is a chart part way down of the yearly oil related income. If I wanted to play games, and cherry pick dates. I could make the claim that oil revenues are now about 10 times higher than 2015.

Revenues go up and down by year. But take a look at when the huge increase happened. Norway could not afford their social programs without the oil renenues.

https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/economy/governments-revenues/#taxes

 

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?

 

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

 

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.