You say that as though big companies and government are not part of us. They are. We elect them and work for them. We also make extensive use of the resources they extract for the enormous benefit of everyone.

In economics this is called "The Resource Curse":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Basically, if you've got riches under your feet then your government will almost certainly be corrupted by that.

Virtually all major oil companies are directly related to their respective governments, publicly or privately.

these companies are our government. dick cheney and rex tillerson.

Australian here. In Norway, oil wealth on government land was turned into arguably the highest standard of living in the world. In Australia, it went mostly into the profits of companies headquartered overseas and the government negotiated with them so badly and/or corruptly that it's managing to run a budget deficit.

Of course mining is essential to humankind and the companies that do it are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and that's fine. But extractive industries are by definition not sustainable and they incur very real health, environmental and infrastructure costs that have to be paid by someone.

Recommended reading: https://penguin.com.au/books/boom-the-underground-history-of...

Something has gone badly wrong in public policy in this area. Consider:

That's seen our Petroleum Resources Rent Tax proceeds, which in the past delivered around $2 billion a year, plummet. In fact, by the time we overtake Qatar for global gas domination, it's anticipated our resources tax will collect just $800 million.

Qatar, on the other hand, is expected to receive $26.6 billion in royalties that same year for roughly the same volume of exports.

(from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/ian-verrender-how-the-... )

From here in Norway we just look across the North Sea to see the same foolishness in the UK. The UK just wasted the North Sea oil, none of it was invested for the future. Of course the UK has 15 times the population of Norway so an oil fund would not have the same impact on the population but it would surely have helped a lot to cushion the country against the bad times. But I think the Norwegian experience is hard to export; solidarity and a social conscience are much more popular here than in many other countries. Large numbers of people here, including politicians, really do believe that "We are all in it together".

No, it's not paradise, but with continued vigilance it can go a long way towards it.

> In Australia, it went mostly into the profits of companies headquartered overseas and the government negotiated with them so badly and/or corruptly that it's managing to run a budget deficit.

That's incorrect. Australians have a higher median net worth than Norway (100% higher in fact!), thanks to the commodity boom (which prompted the real estate boom). Look at where the number was 20 years ago compared to the rest of the world, versus where it's at now. You can also track that exact same thing in the median income and the GDP per capita, they all simultaneously skyrocketed.

Australia's median net worth per capita figure, is higher than Luxembourg. It's 100% higher than the UK, Japan, Iceland. It's nearly four times that of Sweden (!).

Australia went from having a GDP per capita half that of the US in 2000/2001, to having a higher GDP per capita than the US by 2010 (now back to being slightly below the US, thanks to the dollar run). Median incomes in Australia have soared in line, as witnessed by the $17.70 minimum wage (which only a handful of countries could ever attempt / support). All of that was due to the commodity boom, driven mostly by China.

Today, Australia has a standard of living nearly unheard of in the history of humanity. It has clearly surpassed Norway. Whether it ends in a bust - as it's heavily chained to both commodities and real estate - is the question.

GDP, minimum wage, median net worth are all essentially meaningless. My house here in Perth is "worth" AU$700k, 4 years ago it was "worth" AU$850k. Medium house prices in Aus is $630k. The current US$ exchange rate is 0.75.

I pay AU$60 for a box of Little Creatures pale ale, AU$5 for a flat white, $AU12 for a nice Pat Thai. AU$1.26 for a liter of petrol.

I earn about AU$110k/year.

Real estate in Aus is, as you probably know, a real systemic risk. Australians household debt to GDP sits at 123%, at the end of an unprecedented resource boom. Something is wrong with this picture.

I'm sure you could have made this point in a less ass-holish way.