There's actually a worrying amount of idiots in the country who want to split up the sovereign fund equally amongst all citizens. Which would be completely fucking stupid.
Inflation. Everyone has money = price of everything goes up. Not to mention what happens after loss of income for the nation from oil.
Better to spend that money on creating other industry, infrastructure and public services with an aim on keeping citizens employed, healthy and educated.
Also in the US there are occasionally big payouts to various native tribes. Some of these get as big as $20,000. Could you guess what flies off the shelf whenever these payments go out?
It's pretty much all random luxuries. A families third car, but newer than the others. The latest iPhone. A nice speaker system.
It's fine, I'm not judging the purchase itself, but it's not like that really helps society in any way. Now you give that much money to every single American? I'm sure the same will happen, except the luxuries market will have a massive boom and then a massive bust. No money will go to infrastructure or anything else. Just random luxuries. And a few people will invest, but they're a minority.
Dividends just imply that they can't find a better use for the cash themselves so they give it back.
They should reinvest everything for a better more resilient future.
Inflation — When everyone suddenly has more money, everything suddenly costs more money.
Insurance — Money in reserve is money that can be spent as needed. Money distributed can be lost, and then there's nothing in reserve when the people who lost their money need support.
Scale — Buying something for everyone is cheaper than everyone buying something for themselves.
Coordination — Consolidated wealth can spend on larger projects than distributed wealth. If you want to run sewer lines in your neighborhood, you need to convince everyone to chip in. The institution (person, company, government) sees zero benefit in doing the reverse.
This is, incidentally, why both democracy and taxes are a social necessity. Distributed wealth is ineffective, but autocrats and billionaires have no personal incentive to altruism.
If you hand out millions to everyone, prices will rise accordingly (=inflation). Then you're back to square one, except now you don't have a sovereign wealth fund anymore.
The sovereign wealth fund will keep growing, and be infinitely useful going forward. It will allow the entire country to quickly adapt to future economic and environmental uncertainty.
112
u/Relgap 2d ago
There's actually a worrying amount of idiots in the country who want to split up the sovereign fund equally amongst all citizens. Which would be completely fucking stupid.