The sovereign wealth funds of the Nordic countries weren't built with tax dollars, but rather with oil revenue. We could do the same thing here if there were political appetite for holding energy companies responsible and the wealth they produce as belonging to the people living on the land the resources are coming out of.

We're doing better now than we were 50 years ago, but the Nords are light years ahead.

The oil fund isn't a Nordic Thing™, it's norwegian. We in the rest of the nordics don't even have (significant amounts of) oil.

Yes, Denmark, Sweden and Finland combined don't even have 20% of the Norwegian fund. Norway is basically the Saudi Arabia of Europe.

Norway is basically anything but the Saudi Arabia of Europe. The ONLY thing that is similar is that they both have oil and natural gas in their territory.

It's a gross comparison.

Well they do both have monarchs! Though the royal palace in Oslo is a public park. As I was strolling the park, to my surprise I attended a quick fanfare as the king left his palace and his driver (I presume) almost ran over a dumb kid that darted in front of the royal sedan. then at the end of the royal avenue, at the foot of the most glorious mathematician sculpture, the royal sedan turned a corner directly into rush hour traffic, which his highness had to endure just like the rest of us commoners.

What a lovely anecdote, I've been to the royal park in Oslo once and it's gorgeous! As an Austrian, I personally prefer to look at my royals in the catacombs of St. Stephens Cathedral though ;)

I was 100% of the impression that GP was comparing petroleum resources, and explicitly not climate, traditional dress, or human rights.

Flew straight past me somehow, that's on me!

How they spend their oil resources is also quite different. :)

Grass is always greener on the other side. Trust me there is plenty of waste of tax money in the nordics too. Recent example. Every month the govt pays 4 million dollars for a healthcare journaling system that is not used (because it does not work). And that is just the on going cost (even more was spent building it).

Or a school admin system built for 100 million dollars and crap. They even spent a lot of money trying to prevent a open source client that solved a lot of the issues they had.

Maybe in absolute money it is less than the US. But remember US also have a lot more people.