Ever wonder how other oil-rich places are handling their "misfortune windfall?"

According to MSNBC, Venezuela (world’s sixth largest producer, at 2.9 million barrels of oil a day), has raised taxes and royalties on foreign-owned oil companies, and has used this money to reduce fuel prices not only in Venezuela, but for neighbouring nations in South American and the Caribbean. A gallon of gas in Caracas costs 14 cents. Four billion US dollars of the money has gone to social programs and public works programs that provide jobs to the country’s poor.

In addition to getting a dividend check, Alaskans don’t pay a state income tax or a statewide sales tax. State residents off the beaten track, however, "have seen heating oil prices soar and gasoline rise to about $6 a gallon, about what Norwegians pay.

But Norwegians aren’t complaining. "This revenue provides the tiny country’s pension system and other social benefits, including full college scholarships and universal health care. United Nations studies have found it to be the world’s best place to live, for five years running, with high incomes and low income inequality among its residents."

WHAT AN HONOUR

Knight-Ridder Newspapers in the US notes that "Canada already quietly has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the United States’ largest foreign supplier of crude oil and petroleum products."

MORE BRAIN, LESS BRAWN

The Western economy, as everyone knows, is fueled by natural resources. Diversification proponents promote "value-added" industries: we process and manufacture goods from those resources ourselves instead of shipping them elsewhere.

But Todd Hirsch, writing in the Brandon Sun, has another idea. He notes that "sewing, bolting, packaging and other assembly-line tasks that go with ‘value-added’ manufacturing usually involve low-skill jobs. We cannot compete with low-wage China, India, Bangladesh or Thailand."

If we’re going to diversify, he says, let’s really diversify:

"I believe a third option allows the West to prosper, with or without high commodity prices. It lies not in the manufacturing of consumer items, but in the design, research, testing, and imagination that such items require.

Why not design the chair in Kamloops, test the new wheat hybrid in Winnipeg, develop the more efficient system of enhanced oil recovery in Edmonton, and create the new line of clothing in Prince Albert?... We need more training centres and medical research labs, not potato chip factories."

And solar, hydrogen, and wind power R and D, for that matter.

GOOD ONE, DAVE!

Dave at NAIT intends to send his $400 in oil dividend to the Green party to help offset environmental damage done by the fossil fuel industry, "half to the Federal Greens and the other half to the Alberta Greens."

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I can run the country or I can control my daughter. I can’t do both." Theodore Roosevelt on his irreverent, misbehaving daughter Alice. (tinyurl.com/8hjyy)