oecarb
01-04-2008, 01:10 PM
If a country is an oil producer, who does the oil belong to?
Example 1 - Kuwait:
Kuwait has a comprehensive scheme of social welfare. The needy receive financial assistance; loans are provided to the handicapped to start businesses; the disabled can get treatment and training; and education is available for adult illiterates. The Ministry of Social Affairs offers a program that provides adequate, affordable housing, fully equipped with modern facilities, for citizens with limited incomes. Kuwait also has a comprehensive and highly developed subsidized national health-care system. In 1976 the government established Kuwait's Reserve Fund for Future Generations, and it has set aside 10 percent of the state's revenues annually for it. The government found it necessary, however, to tap into that fund during the Iraqi occupation.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-93654/Kuwait
Example 2 - Norway:
Welfare's Cozy Coat Eases Norwegian Cold
By YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM
Published: December 13, 1996
Suffer from rheumatism? The Norwegian state will send you to the Canary Islands for a month of therapy, all expenses paid. Husband walked out, leaving children to raise? Not to worry. As a single mother under the generous Norwegian welfare system, you will get special subsidies for the children and paid leave from your job so you can stay home and rear them........
...Buoyed by an unending gush of oil revenue and guided by a national commitment to egalitarianism, Norway's 4.35 million people are fattening the mother of all welfare states......
......The Norwegian welfare cake, surely the sweetest in the world today, includes these ingredients:
Annual stipends of $1,620 for every Norwegian child under 17, which rise slightly for every other child as a family grows and rise still more if the family lives in a remote part of the country.
[/*:m:afa70]
Retirement pay, equivalent to industrial workers' pensions, for all homemakers, even those who have worked outside the home.
[/*:m:afa70]
Forty-two weeks of fully paid maternity leave.
[/*:m:afa70]
Reimbursement for all medical costs exceeding $187 a year per individual.[/*:m:afa70]
....The 165-member Parliament, dominated by the Labor Party, is expected to approve legislation soon for a ''Lifelong Learning'' program, which would give Norwegians a year off their jobs at full pay every decade or so to hone their work skills. The employers and the state would split the cost of paying their salaries.
Even with so many social programs, Norwegian business is doing quite well for itself. It doesn't hurt that it has one of the best-educated and technologically savvy work forces in the world. It certainly helps that Norway reduced the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 50 percent four years ago.....
....''We are a very social democratic society,'' he said, ''and we don't know another system. It may be costly, but there is social peace. There are no poor people in Norway, and I don't want to see any. There are no strikes, and no high demand for salary increases. I want to adjust the system, but only to preserve it.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A960958260 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E0DD143EF930A25751C1A9609582 60)
Example 1 - Kuwait:
Kuwait has a comprehensive scheme of social welfare. The needy receive financial assistance; loans are provided to the handicapped to start businesses; the disabled can get treatment and training; and education is available for adult illiterates. The Ministry of Social Affairs offers a program that provides adequate, affordable housing, fully equipped with modern facilities, for citizens with limited incomes. Kuwait also has a comprehensive and highly developed subsidized national health-care system. In 1976 the government established Kuwait's Reserve Fund for Future Generations, and it has set aside 10 percent of the state's revenues annually for it. The government found it necessary, however, to tap into that fund during the Iraqi occupation.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-93654/Kuwait
Example 2 - Norway:
Welfare's Cozy Coat Eases Norwegian Cold
By YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM
Published: December 13, 1996
Suffer from rheumatism? The Norwegian state will send you to the Canary Islands for a month of therapy, all expenses paid. Husband walked out, leaving children to raise? Not to worry. As a single mother under the generous Norwegian welfare system, you will get special subsidies for the children and paid leave from your job so you can stay home and rear them........
...Buoyed by an unending gush of oil revenue and guided by a national commitment to egalitarianism, Norway's 4.35 million people are fattening the mother of all welfare states......
......The Norwegian welfare cake, surely the sweetest in the world today, includes these ingredients:
Annual stipends of $1,620 for every Norwegian child under 17, which rise slightly for every other child as a family grows and rise still more if the family lives in a remote part of the country.
[/*:m:afa70]
Retirement pay, equivalent to industrial workers' pensions, for all homemakers, even those who have worked outside the home.
[/*:m:afa70]
Forty-two weeks of fully paid maternity leave.
[/*:m:afa70]
Reimbursement for all medical costs exceeding $187 a year per individual.[/*:m:afa70]
....The 165-member Parliament, dominated by the Labor Party, is expected to approve legislation soon for a ''Lifelong Learning'' program, which would give Norwegians a year off their jobs at full pay every decade or so to hone their work skills. The employers and the state would split the cost of paying their salaries.
Even with so many social programs, Norwegian business is doing quite well for itself. It doesn't hurt that it has one of the best-educated and technologically savvy work forces in the world. It certainly helps that Norway reduced the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 50 percent four years ago.....
....''We are a very social democratic society,'' he said, ''and we don't know another system. It may be costly, but there is social peace. There are no poor people in Norway, and I don't want to see any. There are no strikes, and no high demand for salary increases. I want to adjust the system, but only to preserve it.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A960958260 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E0DD143EF930A25751C1A9609582 60)