Shoulda been taxing any extraction of non-renewable resources into a fund like this. The whole country—literally, the physical country—gets poorer when that stuff's taken out. Shame we didn't capture some of that value for public, shared, long-term benefit.

[EDIT] all non-renewables, that is, not just oil. Should easily make up the difference between population and extracted natural resource value vs. Norway.

That makes a lot more sense than taxing people’s work.

Using the "US exports 3x as much oil as Norway" figure from the sibling comment, does that mean a comparable fund in the US could be $3000B, or $9k/person?

Still sounds like quite the missed opportunity.

Discovery of oil in the United States: 1859.

Discovery of oil in Norway: 1969.

Imagine if we'd have had the foresight to take Norway's approach that natural resources are the nation's natural resources and let the returns build for 160 years.

We used ours to build an automobile-based economy. We didn't exactly lose out on the deal. The unfortunate discovery that CO2 contributes to global warming came much, much later. But at any rate, American economic dominance largely depends on infrastructure and mass market autos.

And? The point still stands that the different conception of property rights in the US allows the revenue of natural resources like oil to go to corporations instead of the nation. Even in cases where the resources are on public land the licenses for extraction are often a pittance compared to what the company will make.